Florida Land Trust: Privacy, Probate, and Asset Protection Limits

A Florida land trust is a statutory arrangement under Section 689.071 of the Florida Statutes where a trustee holds title to your real estate for you, the beneficiary, under a private agreement that never gets recorded.¹ Your name stays off the deed and out of public property records, the property passes to a named successor without probate, and you keep full control over what happens to it. What the trust does not do is protect the property from your creditors once they find you, and a few practical details around homestead, mortgages, and insurance need attention before you sign anything.

How the Structure Works

Three pieces make up a Florida land trust: a trustee, at least one beneficiary, and a written trust agreement between them.

The trustee holds legal and equitable title. Their name is on the recorded deed, but their role is almost entirely passive. The statute limits the trustee’s duties to conveying, leasing, or mortgaging the property when instructed, handling administrative tasks the trust agreement assigns, and disposing of the property when the trust ends.¹ The trustee signs what you tell them to sign.

You, the beneficiary, hold what the statute calls the power of direction. You collect rent, make every management decision, and decide when the property gets sold. All of the practical benefits of ownership sit with you, and none of it appears on the deed.

The trust agreement is the private contract that ties the two roles together. It names the beneficiaries and their percentage interests, assigns the power of direction, sets out the trustee’s limited duties, and describes what happens when the trust terminates. This document is never recorded, and that is the foundation of the privacy the arrangement offers.

The trustee and the beneficiary can be the same person. The statute explicitly allows a trustee to also serve as a beneficiary of the same land trust.¹ Doing both eliminates the privacy benefit, because your name goes back on the deed as trustee, but you still get probate avoidance and the simplified transfer mechanics.

Setting One Up

Three steps: draft the agreement, sign a deed transferring the property to the trustee, and record that deed.

The Trust Agreement

The agreement identifies beneficiaries, assigns the power of direction, spells out the trustee’s duties, and names successor beneficiaries who take over when someone dies. Because it stays private, it can contain detailed provisions on sale proceeds, successor arrangements, and how multiple beneficiaries share decisions.

One clause is easy to miss and expensive to omit: a declaration that all beneficial interests are personal property rather than real property. Under the statute, beneficial interests are treated as personal property only if the trust agreement or the recorded instrument explicitly says so.¹ Without that language, the interests default to real property, which changes how they can be transferred and how creditors reach them. Skipping the clause takes away one of the trust’s biggest practical advantages.

The Deed

You sign a deed transferring the property to the trustee. Like any Florida real estate conveyance, this deed must be signed before two subscribing witnesses.² The deed names the trustee as grantee and references the date of the unrecorded trust agreement. It does not name the beneficiary. For recording, it also needs to be notarized.

Then it gets recorded in the public records of the county where the property sits. Recording fees generally run from about $10 to $80 for a standard multi-page deed. From that point on, the world sees the trustee’s name and knows a trust exists, and nothing more.

Documentary Stamp Tax

Florida’s documentary stamp tax normally applies to deed transfers, but moving property into your own land trust is generally exempt. Under Florida Administrative Code Rule 12B-4.013, a deed from a grantor to a trustee is exempt from the stamp tax to the extent of the grantor’s beneficial ownership interest.³ If you own the property outright and transfer it to a trust where you’re the sole beneficiary, no stamp tax is owed, and that holds true whether the property carries a mortgage. Deeds to and from a revocable trust are explicitly treated as non-transfers for stamp tax purposes. The tax comes due only when a deed actually transfers beneficial ownership to someone else.

Privacy in Public Records

This is the main draw. When someone pulls the county recorder’s file on the property, they see the trustee’s name and a reference to a trust agreement dated on a particular day. Your name, the trust terms, and any later transfers of beneficial interest stay off the record.

The practical uses are familiar. A landlord with multiple rentals can hold each in a separate trust so a tenant researching the owner can’t map out the full portfolio. A business owner can keep personal real estate out of an asset search. A buyer in a competitive market can avoid tipping off sellers about who’s behind the purchase.

The privacy is real but not absolute. A court can order disclosure during litigation. Property tax records may still show your name if you claim a homestead exemption. And if you serve as your own trustee, the deed reveals you regardless.

Avoiding Probate

The trust agreement can name one or more successor beneficiaries who automatically take over when you die. Because the beneficial interest passes under the private trust agreement rather than under your will, it never enters probate.

The mechanics are simple. When the original beneficiary dies, the successor steps into the power of direction. The trustee keeps holding title, the property stays in the trust, and no court proceeding, executor, or public filing is required. For many people, this alone is worth the effort of creating the trust.

Transferring Beneficial Interests

When the trust agreement includes the personal property designation, you can transfer your beneficial interest with a simple written assignment rather than a recorded deed.¹ You sign the assignment, and the new owner takes over the power of direction.

Two things follow. The transfer stays off public records, so the change of ownership is invisible to anyone searching the county files. And there’s no documentary stamp tax or recording fee, because no deed is being recorded. The assignee simply steps into your position.

What It Does Not Do for Asset Protection

This is where people get in trouble. A Florida land trust gives you privacy, not protection, and treating those as the same thing can be expensive.

The statute does draw a real line between the trustee’s title and your interest. A personal judgment against the trustee doesn’t automatically reach the trust property, a judgment against you doesn’t automatically attach to the trustee’s legal title, and you aren’t personally liable for the trust’s debts just because you hold a beneficial interest.¹

But once a creditor identifies you as the beneficiary, they can attach the beneficial interest directly. If it’s classified as personal property, they can use the Uniform Commercial Code’s procedures to perfect a security interest. If it’s classified as real property, they can record a lien in the county.¹ Either way, the underlying property is reachable.

The trust forces a creditor to take an extra investigative step to find you, and a court order will eventually strip the privacy away. If your goal is genuine asset protection, the common approach is to name a limited liability company as the beneficiary rather than relying on the land trust by itself.

Keeping the Homestead Exemption

Florida’s homestead exemption reduces the taxable value of a primary residence, and moving your home into a land trust can jeopardize the exemption if the trust isn’t drafted carefully. Under Section 196.041, a person qualifies when their possessory right rests on an instrument granting a “beneficial interest for life.”⁴

The Florida Attorney General addressed this in Advisory Opinion 2008-44, concluding that a beneficiary can keep the homestead exemption as long as they meet the residency requirements and the trust agreement grants them a beneficial interest for their lifetime.⁵ The trust agreement should say so explicitly; a vague term may not satisfy the statute. If the trustee is also the person living in the home, the trustee can claim the exemption because the statute vests full ownership rights in the trustee.

Florida’s Save Our Homes cap, which limits annual increases in assessed value to 3% or the change in the Consumer Price Index (whichever is lower), should carry over as long as the property continues to qualify for the homestead exemption. Confirm the “beneficial interest for life” language is in the agreement before the deed gets recorded.

Your Mortgage and the Due-on-Sale Clause

Most mortgages contain a due-on-sale clause that lets the lender demand full repayment if title changes hands. Transferring your home into a land trust does change the title holder, at least on paper.

Federal law blocks the lender from calling the loan. Under the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act, a lender cannot accelerate the loan when the property is transferred into a trust in which the borrower remains a beneficiary and occupancy doesn’t change.⁶ The protection applies to residential properties with fewer than five dwelling units. You don’t need the lender’s permission, though notifying the servicer can head off confusion later.

Updating Your Insurance

The transfer changes the legal owner from you to the trustee, and your homeowner’s policy is issued to you. That mismatch gives an insurer grounds to deny a claim on damage that happens after the transfer.

Fix it before or immediately after recording. Contact your insurer and ask them to add the trust as a named insured or issue a trust endorsement on the existing policy. Most carriers handle this routinely at little or no cost. Missing this step is one of the most common and most avoidable mistakes people make when setting up a land trust.

Title insurance deserves the same look. Some owner’s policies automatically extend coverage to a transfer into a trust, and others don’t. Read the policy, and if the coverage doesn’t carry over, request an endorsement naming the trust. Without it, the trust as legal owner has no protection against title defects discovered after the transfer.

Tax Reporting

A land trust where you can revoke the trust at any time is treated as a grantor trust for federal income tax purposes. Income and expenses flow through to your personal return under your Social Security number, and the trust needs no separate Employer Identification Number and files no separate return.

If the trust is irrevocable, meaning you can’t dissolve it unilaterally, it becomes a separate tax entity. It needs its own EIN and files its own return. Several irrevocable trusts mean several EINs.

Florida has no personal income tax, so the trust creates no state-level filing obligation either way.

1
Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 689.071 – Florida Land Trust Act
2
Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 689.01 – Conveyances of Land
3
Legal Information Institute. Florida Admin Code 12B-4.013 – Conveyances Subject to Tax
4
Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 196.041 – Extent of Homestead Exemptions
5
Office of the Attorney General, State of Florida. Homestead Exemption, Florida Land Trust
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 12 U.S. Code 1701j-3 – Preemption of Due-on-Sale Prohibitions