Davie Lady Bird Deed Attorney

Q: What happens if I name three children on one acreage parcel?

At your death they become tenants in common, each owning an undivided fractional interest in the whole property. Any one of them can then file a partition action under Chapter 64 of the Florida Statutes to force a division or a sale, and that includes a child who simply wants their money out. Florida's Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, at sections 64.201 through 64.214, gives the other cotenants a right to buy out the interest of the one demanding a sale and directs the court to prefer physically dividing the land over selling it, but the case still costs money and strains families. On a parcel that can genuinely be divided, splitting it during your lifetime is often the better answer.

Q: Where do I record a Lady Bird Deed for Davie property?

With the Broward County Records, Taxes and Treasury Division, located at 115 South Andrews Avenue, Room 114, Fort Lauderdale. This trips people up because in most Florida counties the Clerk of the Circuit Court handles recording. In Broward it is a county division, not the Clerk. Recording fees are $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page, plus $1.00 for each name over four that has to be indexed.

Written and reviewed by Yanitza Schoonover, Florida probate and estate planning attorney The Schoonover Law Firm, P.A. · Updated August 2026

A Davie Lady Bird Deed, known formally as a Florida enhanced life estate deed, lets your property pass directly to the beneficiaries you name at your death, with no Broward County probate case. Nothing changes while you are alive: you stay on title, you keep your homestead exemption, and you can live on the property, lease it, refinance it, sell it, or revoke the deed entirely.

Davie is not shaped like the rest of Broward. Owner-occupancy runs at 67.1% against a median owner-occupied value of $462,900, and a great deal of that ownership sits on parcels far larger than a standard subdivision lot, the one-acre, two-acre and five-acre ranchettes that gave the Town its character, many of them still zoned to keep horses.

That extra land introduces a wrinkle almost nobody knows about until a lawyer raises it. Florida's constitutional homestead protection is not measured in dollars. It is measured in acres, and inside an incorporated municipality it stops at one-half acre. On a Davie ranchette, most of your land is not constitutional homestead at all.

Davie Lady Bird Deed: the short version

The deed covers the entire legal description. Every acre passes to your beneficiaries outside probate, homestead or not.
Constitutional homestead stops at one-half acre inside a municipality, and Davie is a municipality.
The excess acreage is ordinary real property: exposed to creditors, freely devisable, not subject to the devise restriction.
Nobody has surveyed which half acre it is. That is why spouses should join in the deed across the whole parcel.
Naming several children on one parcel creates a tenancy in common and a live partition risk under Chapter 64.
Where it records: Broward County Records, Taxes & Treasury, not the Clerk of Courts.

What Is a Davie Lady Bird Deed?

A Lady Bird Deed is a deed you record now that takes effect only when you die. It splits your ownership into two pieces. You keep an enhanced life estate: the right to live on the property for life, plus the reserved power to sell it, mortgage it, lease it, give it away or cancel the deed entirely, all without asking anyone. Your beneficiaries hold a remainder interest that means nothing at all until the day you die.

That second half is what separates this from an ordinary life estate deed. In a traditional life estate, the remainder beneficiaries own something the moment the deed is recorded. They have to sign to sell. Their divorces and their creditors attach to your house. Under a Lady Bird Deed they own nothing you cannot take back, so none of that happens.

When you die, the property is already theirs. There is no probate case, no petition, no personal representative and no waiting. They record a certified death certificate against the parcel and the chain of title is complete.

On a Davie acreage parcel that means the whole thing (house, barn, pasture, paddock, the back three acres) passes together in one motion. The deed does not care how much land is in the legal description. Florida's homestead protections, as the next section explains, care a great deal.

Davie Lady Bird Deed document prepared by a Broward County estate planning attorney

Florida Homestead Protection Stops at One-Half Acre Inside Davie

Most people use the word "homestead" to mean the tax break on their property bill. Florida law uses it for something considerably bigger: a constitutional shield that protects the family home from forced sale by creditors and restricts who you are allowed to leave it to. That protection has no dollar cap. A ten million dollar house is fully protected. What it has instead is an acreage cap, and the cap depends entirely on which side of a city limit line the property sits.

The constitutional text

Homestead protection extends to "one hundred sixty acres of contiguous land and improvements thereon" if the property is located outside a municipality; or, "if located within a municipality, to the extent of one-half acre of contiguous land, upon which the exemption shall be limited to the residence of the owner or the owner's family."

The Town of Davie is an incorporated municipality. Property inside the town limits gets the one-half acre figure, no matter how rural the parcel looks, how many horses are on it, or whether the county has given the land an agricultural classification for tax purposes. The constitution asks one question (is this inside a municipality) and Davie's answer is yes.

What that actually costs you

Run the arithmetic on a typical Davie holding. On a two-acre parcel, one-half acre is constitutional homestead and the remaining acre and a half is not. On a five-acre parcel, ninety percent of your land sits outside the protection. Three consequences follow, and they cut in different directions.

How the same Davie parcel is treated in two halves
Question	The protected half acre	The excess acreage
Can a judgment creditor force a sale?	No. Exempt from forced sale.	Yes. Ordinary real property.
Can you leave it to whoever you like?	Not if you are survived by a spouse or a minor child.	Yes. No devise restriction.
Must your spouse join to convey it?	Yes. Constitutionally required.	Not constitutionally required.
Does it pass under the Lady Bird Deed?	Yes.	Yes.
Does it avoid probate?	Yes.	Yes.

Read the last two rows first, because they are the reassuring ones. The Lady Bird Deed works on all of it. Probate avoidance does not depend on homestead status. Every acre in the legal description passes to your named beneficiaries at your death whether the constitution calls it homestead or not.

The first three rows are where a Davie owner needs to pay attention. If you have exposure to creditors (a business, a professional practice, a rental operation, an uninsured accident), the shield you were counting on covers a fraction of your land. And if you have been told that Florida law would stop you leaving the house away from your spouse, that restriction likewise covers a fraction of your land, which occasionally works in a planner's favor.

Source: Art. X, § 4(a)(1), (c), Fla. Const. Municipal boundaries are a matter of local record; whether a specific parcel is inside the Town of Davie should be confirmed against the Broward County Property Appraiser record for the folio.

Which Half Acre Is It? Nobody Has Ever Decided

Here is the part that turns an academic distinction into a practical drafting problem. The constitution says one-half acre. It does not say which one-half acre, and on your parcel no surveyor has drawn that line and no judge has ruled on it. The exemption is limited to the land "upon which... the residence of the owner or the owner's family" sits, which points at the ground around the house, but the boundary exists only as a legal abstraction until a creditor or a title examiner forces the question.

For a Lady Bird Deed that creates one specific risk, and it is easy to eliminate.

The spousal joinder trap

Article X, Section 4(c) says homestead cannot be conveyed unless the owner's spouse joins in the deed. On the excess acreage, that requirement does not apply as a constitutional matter. A clever reading says an unmarried-in-form deed covering only the back acres would be fine.

The problem is that your deed does not describe "the back acres." It describes the whole parcel by its legal description, homestead and excess together, in one instrument. If the spouse has not signed it, a title examiner ten years from now cannot tell whether the constitutional requirement was satisfied, because nobody can say where the protected half acre begins and ends. The result is a title objection your beneficiaries have to clear, possibly by the very court proceeding the deed was supposed to avoid.

The fix costs nothing: if you are married, your spouse joins in the deed, full stop. Not because the outer acreage requires it, but because no one can prove afterward which part did. This is one of the clearest cases in Florida deed practice where the conservative approach is also the free one.

The same uncertainty cuts the other way

If a judgment creditor ever comes after a Davie ranchette, the creditor bears the burden of establishing what is not exempt. The owner claims the half acre; the creditor argues about where it sits. That fight has been litigated in Florida in various forms and the outcomes turn on the particular geometry of the parcel, the location of the residence, and how the land has actually been used. It is not a fight you want your children having on your behalf, which is another argument for dealing with creditor exposure while you are alive rather than leaving it as an inheritance.

Davie Estate Planning Snapshot

A younger, higher-earning, high-ownership market whose defining feature is land area rather than building value.

14.0% of Davie residents are age 65+
67.1% of housing units are owner-occupied
$462,900 median value of owner-occupied housing
$87,250 median household income
32.5% of residents are foreign-born
47.3% speak a language other than English at home

At 14.0% aged 65 or older, Davie skews younger than most of Broward, and its residents earn more, a median household income of $87,250 against a county profile that runs well below it. That combination tends to produce owners who think of estate planning as a task for later.

The 67.1% owner-occupancy rate is the number that matters most here. Two out of three Davie housing units are lived in by the people who own them, which is high for South Florida, and it means the population most exposed to a probate case is the population that lives here permanently rather than a transient or investor base.

At 32.5% foreign-born and 47.3% speaking a language other than English at home, a substantial share of Davie families also have relatives outside the United States who would find administering a Florida probate case from abroad genuinely difficult.

Demographic figures: U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts, Davie town, Florida (most recent American Community Survey five-year estimates available at publication).

Chart of the Davie median home price trend over the past decade, used for Broward County estate planning and Davie Lady Bird Deed research — **Davie median home price trend (past decade)**
On acreage parcels, a rising number often reflects land value rather than the house.

SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION

Barns, Workshops and the "Improvements Thereon" Question

A Davie parcel frequently carries more than a house. A barn. A tack room. A detached workshop. A second dwelling for a parent or an adult child. A pole building over equipment. All of it is real property, all of it passes under the Lady Bird Deed with the land, and none of that is in doubt.

What varies is protection. The constitution extends homestead to the land "and improvements thereon", but inside a municipality it does so only across one-half acre, and it limits the exemption to the residence of the owner or the owner's family. A structure sitting three hundred feet back on the rear acreage is an improvement on land that is not constitutional homestead, and it is not the residence.

Practical translation for a Davie owner:

The house and the ground around it: protected, restricted on devise, spouse must join.
The barn out back: passes under the deed, but not shielded from a judgment creditor.
A second dwelling occupied by a relative: passes under the deed; whether it counts as "the residence of the owner or the owner's family" is fact-specific and has been litigated both ways.
Fencing, wells, riding arenas, paddock improvements: follow the land they sit on.

Why this matters more than it sounds

Owners of large Davie parcels often have exactly the profile that generates judgment risk: a contracting business, a landscaping or equipment operation run from the property, boarding or lesson income from the horses, a professional practice. A judgment does not attach to the protected homestead. It can attach to everything else on the parcel, and on a five-acre holding "everything else" is most of the asset.

A Lady Bird Deed is not the tool for that problem. It is a probate tool, and it does its job. But an honest conversation about a Davie acreage parcel covers both questions in the same sitting, because the answer to the second one sometimes changes how the property should be held in the first place.

Sources: Art. X, § 4(a)(1), Fla. Const. Whether a particular structure falls within the protected homestead is a question of fact decided case by case.

Three Children, One Parcel: The Partition Problem

This is the most common expensive mistake made on Davie land, and it is made with the best of intentions.

A parent has three children and wants to treat them equally, so the Lady Bird Deed names all three. At the parent's death they become tenants in common, each holding an undivided one-third interest in the whole parcel. Not one-third of the land, but a one-third share of every square foot of it. Nobody owns the barn. Nobody owns the pasture. Everyone owns a fraction of everything.

On a condominium unit or a quarter-acre subdivision lot, that resolves itself: the siblings sell and split the money. On a Davie ranchette it frequently does not, because one child wants to keep living there with the horses and two want to be paid.

What happens next

Any one cotenant can file a partition action. Under Fla. Stat. § 64.041, an action may be filed by "any one or more of several joint tenants, tenants in common, or coparceners, against their cotenants." One sibling out of three is enough. There is no vote and no majority requirement.

Florida softened this in one important respect by adopting the Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, now at Fla. Stat. §§ 64.201–64.214, which applies to exactly this situation, property that passed within a family without a partition agreement in place. Two protections matter:

A cotenant buyout right. Before any sale, the court determines the value of the property and gives the other cotenants a window to purchase the interest of the cotenant who demanded a sale, at that cotenant's proportional share of the appraised value. The sibling who wants out gets paid; the sibling who wants to stay keeps the land.
A preference for dividing rather than selling. If the buyout does not resolve everything, the court is directed to order partition in kind (physically dividing the land) unless doing so would prejudice the cotenants as a group, weighing practicability, whether division would reduce total value, whether any cotenant has a sentimental or long-standing attachment to the property, and how the land is actually used.

That is a real improvement over the old rule, and on acreage that can genuinely be split it sometimes produces a sensible outcome. It is still a lawsuit. It still costs money that comes out of the inheritance, it still takes many months, and it still puts siblings on opposite sides of a caption.

The Davie-specific option nobody mentions

Here is what large-parcel ownership gives you that a condominium owner does not have: the land may already be divisible, or capable of being divided.

A surprising number of Davie holdings that everyone thinks of as "the property" are in fact two or three separate platted parcels with separate folio numbers, assembled by a previous generation and simply used as one. If that is true of yours, you do not have to leave three children a fractional share of everything. You can record a separate Lady Bird Deed for each parcel, name a different child on each, and hand each of them a distinct piece of land with its own legal description. No tenancy in common. No partition exposure. Same probate avoidance.

If the holding is genuinely one indivisible parcel, that option is not available in the deed. Whether it could be made available (by splitting the parcel during your lifetime) is a land use question controlled by the Town of Davie's platting, zoning and minimum-lot-size rules, and it has to be answered before the deed is drafted rather than discovered afterward by your children.

Questions worth answering before you sign anything

How many folio numbers does the Property Appraiser show for what you call "the property"?
Is the residence on one of them and the acreage on another?
Do any of your children actually want the land, as opposed to the money?
If one does and two do not, where does the money to buy them out come from?
Is there life insurance, or a retirement account, that could equalize instead?

Sources: Fla. Stat. § 64.041; Fla. Stat. §§ 64.201–64.214 (Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act), including the cotenant buyout provisions and the partition-in-kind preference.

If Part of Your Land Carries an Agricultural Classification

Some Davie parcels are assessed in two pieces: a homesite assessed at market value with the homestead exemption applied, and acreage assessed under an agricultural classification at a use-based value that can be dramatically lower. Owners who have that classification know how much it is worth. What they usually do not know is how fragile it is.

Under Fla. Stat. § 193.461, agricultural classification depends on the land being used primarily for bona fide commercial agricultural purposes. It is applied for, it is granted by the property appraiser, and it is reviewed. It is not a permanent attribute of the parcel and it does not travel with title automatically.

What the Lady Bird Deed does and does not do here

During your lifetime: nothing changes. You remain the owner, no interest is transferred, and the classification is unaffected by recording the deed.
At your death: the question reopens. New ownership, and the classification depends on continued bona fide agricultural use by the new owners.
If the use stops, the classification stops. If the cattle or the horses or the nursery operation leave when you do, your children will see the acreage reassessed.
The homestead exemption does not transfer either. Beneficiaries must apply for their own on their own residence.

The practical planning point is not to avoid the deed. It is to have the conversation with your beneficiaries in advance, so the tax bill that arrives after your death is the one they expected. Families who intend to keep the operation running should also understand what documentation the property appraiser expects to see from a new owner, because the burden falls on the applicant.

Our Homestead page covers agricultural classification in more depth for owners in south Miami-Dade's growing areas.

Source: Fla. Stat. § 193.461 (agricultural lands; classification and assessment). Classification decisions are made by the county property appraiser on the facts of each parcel.

Homestead Exemption, Save Our Homes and Spousal Rights

Three separate things share the word "homestead" in Florida, and a Davie owner runs into all three.

Three different homesteads
What it is	What it does	Effect of a Lady Bird Deed
The tax exemption	Reduces assessed value on your primary residence, with Save Our Homes capping annual assessment increases.	Unaffected. You remain the owner and the resident, so the exemption and the accumulated cap stay in place.
Creditor protection	Shields the home from forced sale, up to one-half acre inside a municipality.	Unaffected during your life. Does not extend the protection to the excess acreage.
The devise restriction	Limits who you may leave the homestead to if you are survived by a spouse or a minor child.	Not defeated by the deed. The restriction has to be planned around, not drafted around.

The devise restriction, in plain terms

If you are survived by a minor child, the constitutional homestead cannot be devised at all. If you are survived by a spouse and no minor child, it may be devised only to the spouse. This is not a default rule you can override with clear drafting; it is a constitutional limit, and a deed that ignores it produces litigation rather than a clean transfer.

Two Davie-specific notes follow from the half-acre rule. First, the restriction reaches only the constitutional homestead, so the excess acreage is not subject to it, but see the earlier section on why nobody can prove where that line falls. Second, if you are married and both spouses are on title as tenants by the entireties, the property passes automatically to the survivor at the first death, and the Lady Bird Deed does its real work at the second death. It has to be drafted with that sequence in mind.

Save Our Homes and what your children inherit

The Save Our Homes cap is personal to you. It does not pass with the land. A Davie parcel that has been in one family for twenty-five years may be assessed at a small fraction of its market value, and at your death that assessment resets. Beneficiaries who plan to keep the property should be told this in advance and should run the arithmetic, because on a large parcel the difference between the capped assessment and the market assessment can be the difference between keeping the land and selling it.

Medicaid and Estate Recovery

Florida recovers long-term care Medicaid costs from a deceased recipient's probate estate. That single word is the whole strategy. Property that passes by a properly drafted enhanced life estate deed never enters the probate estate, so there is no probate asset for the state to file a claim against.

Just as importantly, Florida does not treat recording a Lady Bird Deed as a disqualifying transfer for Medicaid eligibility, because you have not given anything away. You retain the full power to sell the property and keep the proceeds. Nothing left your control, so nothing triggers the transfer penalty that an outright gift to a child would trigger.

The limits and one specific to Davie

The deed does not shelter the land from the eligibility calculation in the way people assume. Florida's homestead is generally an exempt asset for eligibility purposes subject to equity limits and residency requirements, and acreage complicates that analysis rather than simplifying it. A large parcel is a large asset, and how much of it the agency treats as exempt homestead is a question to work through with counsel before an application is filed.
Income-producing use changes the picture. Boarding horses, leasing pasture, running a nursery or renting a second dwelling on the parcel turns part of the property into an income-producing asset, which is analyzed differently from a residence.
The deed does not help with anything outside real property. Bank accounts, brokerage accounts and vehicles without beneficiary designations still go through probate, and the state can reach them there.
Timing matters more than people expect. The deed is far more useful recorded years before anyone needs care than executed during a hospital discharge conversation.

Sources: 42 U.S.C. § 1396p; Fla. Stat. §§ 409.910 and 409.9101; Art. X, § 4, Fla. Const.

Recording a Davie Lady Bird Deed

Where it goes

Broward County is one of the exceptions in Florida. Deeds are recorded by the Broward County Records, Taxes & Treasury Division at 115 South Andrews Avenue, Room 114, Fort Lauderdale, not by the Clerk of the Circuit Court, which is where recording happens in most Florida counties. People who look up "clerk of court deed recording" for a Davie property end up in the wrong building.

Execution requirements

A deed conveying an interest in Florida real property must be signed by the grantor in the presence of two subscribing witnesses and acknowledged before a notary public (Fla. Stat. §§ 689.01 and 695.03). Both witnesses must be present and must sign. A notary may serve as one of the two witnesses if the notary also actually witnessed the signing, but using two independent witnesses avoids the argument entirely.

Getting the legal description right on acreage

This is where Davie deeds go wrong more often than elsewhere. An acreage legal description is frequently a metes and bounds description rather than a tidy "Lot 4, Block 2" reference, and it may run to a full paragraph of bearings and distances. Copying it from a tax bill or a property appraiser summary page is not good enough. The description must be taken from the last recorded deed in the Broward County Official Records, character for character, including any recorded easements, reservations or exceptions that are part of it.

A single transposed digit in a metes and bounds call can leave a gap in the description, and a gap is a cloud on title that surfaces years later, when your beneficiaries try to sell and a title underwriter reads the deed carefully for the first time.

Recording fees and documentary stamp tax

Recording fees in Broward County are $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page, plus $1.00 for each name over four that must be indexed. On a metes and bounds description that runs long, budget for the extra pages.

Documentary stamp tax on a deed is charged at $0.70 per $100 of consideration outside Miami-Dade County. A Lady Bird Deed given for no consideration on an unencumbered property generally carries only minimal tax. If there is a mortgage on the parcel, the outstanding balance is treated as consideration, and on a Davie acreage parcel with a substantial loan the tax is real money. That calculation belongs in the conversation before the deed is signed, not after it is recorded.

Sources: Florida Department of Revenue, Technical Assistance Advisement 20B4-004 (Oct. 16, 2020); Fla. Stat. ch. 201; Fla. Stat. § 28.24(13) (statutory service charges) together with the Broward County recorder's published fee schedule; Fla. Stat. §§ 689.01, 695.03.

After a Death: What Your Family Actually Does

The whole point of the deed is that this list is short. Here is what a Davie beneficiary actually does.

Order certified death certificates

From the Florida Department of Health. Order several: banks, insurers and the property appraiser will each want one, and on an acreage parcel there are often more moving parts than on a house.
Record one against the property

A certified copy is recorded in the Broward County Official Records against the folio. That single filing is what makes the transfer visible in the chain of title. There is no petition and no court file.
Check every folio number

Specific to acreage: if the holding covers more than one parcel, the death certificate should be recorded against each of them. Beneficiaries have discovered years later that one back parcel was never handled.
Deal with the insurance immediately

Homeowner's coverage, any farm or equine liability policy, and coverage on outbuildings all need to be rewritten in the new owners' names. A vacant, uninsured acreage parcel is a genuine exposure, and a lapse discovered after a loss is unrecoverable.
Apply for their own homestead exemption, if applicable

A beneficiary who moves in must apply in their own name with the Broward County Property Appraiser. Nothing carries over, including the Save Our Homes cap.
Reapply for agricultural classification, if it applies

If part of the land was agriculturally classified and the operation is continuing, the new owner applies in their own name and documents the bona fide agricultural use.
Provide an affidavit if a title company asks

On a later sale or refinance, a title underwriter may want a short affidavit confirming the deed was never revoked and identifying the beneficiaries. Routine, and far less work than a probate case.

What a Davie Lady Bird Deed Does Not Do

Being clear about the boundaries is more useful than overselling the tool.

The honest limits
It does	It does not
Pass every acre in the legal description outside probate.	Extend constitutional homestead protection past one-half acre.
Keep your homestead exemption and Save Our Homes cap intact during your life.	Transfer that cap to your beneficiaries.
Leave you free to sell, mortgage, lease or revoke without anyone's consent.	Protect the excess acreage from your own judgment creditors.
Give beneficiaries a stepped-up basis at your death for capital gains purposes.	Wipe out the mortgage. It follows the land to whoever receives it.
Avoid the cost and delay of a Broward probate case on real property.	Cover bank accounts, vehicles, equipment, livestock or anything else that is not real property.
Work alongside a will, a trust and beneficiary designations.	Prevent a partition action among the beneficiaries you name.
Preserve the agricultural classification during your lifetime.	Guarantee it survives your death. That depends on continued use.
Be revoked or replaced at any time while you are competent.	Do anything at all if you become incapacitated before signing it.

That last row is the one people underestimate. A Lady Bird Deed requires capacity. It is a document for people who are well, executed comfortably in advance, not a document to reach for after a diagnosis.

How a Davie Lady Bird Deed Compares to the Alternatives

Options for passing a Davie acreage parcel
Option	Avoids probate?	Keeps control?	Fits acreage?	Main drawback
Lady Bird Deed	Yes	Yes, full power to sell or revoke	Yes, on any legal description	Cannot divide a single parcel among beneficiaries
Do nothing (rely on a will)	No	Yes	N/A	A Broward probate case on every acre
Traditional life estate deed	Yes	No, remaindermen must consent to sell	Poorly. Their creditors attach to your land.	You lose control of your own property
Outright gift to children now	Yes	No, it is theirs	No	Medicaid transfer penalty, loss of stepped-up basis, exposure to their creditors and divorces
Revocable living trust	Yes	Yes	Yes, and it can stage distributions	Higher cost; must be funded and maintained
Adding a child to the deed as joint owner	Partly	No	No	Gift tax exposure, their creditors reach your land, and you cannot undo it
LLC holding the acreage	Depends on the operating agreement	Yes	Yes	Forfeits the homestead exemption on the residence portion

The last row is worth a sentence, because Davie owners with a business on the property ask about it regularly. Moving the residence into an LLC costs you the homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes cap on that portion. Occasionally there is a structure that separates the operating acreage from the residence sensibly. It is not a decision to make from a template.

Florida, it is worth repeating, has no transfer-on-death deed. Owners who have moved here from a state that offers one are often surprised. The Lady Bird Deed is the Florida equivalent, and it is a creature of practice and title custom rather than a statute of its own, which is exactly why the drafting has to be right.

How to Get a Davie Lady Bird Deed

Find out how much land is actually in the parcel

Pull the acreage and the legal description from the Broward County Property Appraiser record. Anything past one-half acre inside the Town of Davie sits outside the constitutional homestead, and that shapes the rest of the conversation.
Check whether it is one parcel or several

Count the folio numbers. If the holding is two or three separate platted parcels, you have options for dividing it between beneficiaries that a single-parcel owner does not.
Check for an agricultural classification

If part of the land is agriculturally classified, decide with your beneficiaries whether the bona fide agricultural use will continue, and tell them what the reassessment looks like if it does not.
Decide whether beneficiaries take together or separately

Naming three children on one indivisible parcel creates a tenancy in common and a partition risk. Choose it deliberately, or choose a different structure.
Pull the vesting deed

The legal description must come from the last recorded deed in the Broward County Official Records, exactly as written, metes and bounds calls included.
Draft the enhanced life estate reservation

The deed must reserve the power to sell, convey, mortgage, lease and revoke without the consent of the remainder beneficiaries. Weak reservation language is the single most common defect in deeds prepared from online forms.
Have your spouse join, across the whole description

Not because the outer acreage requires it, but because nobody can prove afterward which half acre did.
Sign with two witnesses and a notary

Two subscribing witnesses present at the signing, plus a notarial acknowledgment. Fla. Stat. §§ 689.01 and 695.03.
Record with Broward Records, Taxes & Treasury

115 South Andrews Avenue, Room 114, Fort Lauderdale. $10.00 first page, $8.50 each additional page, $1.00 per name over four. Keep the recorded copy with your other documents and tell your beneficiaries where it is.

Plain-English Glossary

Terms that come up on a Davie acreage parcel
Term	What it means here
Enhanced life estate deed	The formal name for a Lady Bird Deed. You keep everything during your life, including the right to cancel it.
Contiguous land	Land that touches. The constitution measures the half acre in contiguous land, which is why an owner's scattered parcels are analyzed separately.
Metes and bounds	A legal description written as compass bearings and distances rather than a lot and block number. Common on acreage and easy to copy incorrectly.
Folio number	The parcel identifier used by the Broward County Property Appraiser. One holding can carry several.
Tenancy in common	Two or more owners each holding an undivided fractional share of the whole. What your beneficiaries get if you name several of them on one parcel.
Partition	A court action to divide or sell jointly owned property. Any single cotenant can bring one.
Partition in kind	Physically dividing land between cotenants rather than selling it. Preferred by the court under the heirs property act, where practical.
Agricultural classification	A use-based property tax assessment under Fla. Stat. § 193.461. Applied for, granted annually, and dependent on continued bona fide agricultural use.
Devise restriction	The constitutional limit on leaving homestead away from a spouse or minor child. Applies to the protected half acre.
Spousal joinder	The requirement that a spouse sign a deed conveying homestead, whether or not the spouse is on title.
Save Our Homes	The cap on annual increases in the assessed value of a homestead. Personal to the owner; it resets at death.
Stepped-up basis	Your beneficiaries' capital gains basis is the value at your death, not what you paid. A significant benefit on long-held Davie land.

Davie Areas We Serve

We prepare Lady Bird Deeds for owners throughout the Town of Davie and the surrounding unincorporated pockets, including:

Downtown Davie Old Davie Rolling Oaks Forest Ridge Shenandoah Long Lake Ranches Sunshine Ranches area Orange Drive corridor Griffin Road corridor Nova Drive Pine Island Ridge Ivanhoe Hawks Landing Grand Oaks Silver Lakes area Flamingo Road corridor South Florida Education Center area Bergeron Rodeo Grounds area

All Davie property is recorded in the Broward County Official Records through the Records, Taxes & Treasury Division in Fort Lauderdale, and any probate case would be filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Probate Division.

Work With a Davie Lady Bird Deed Attorney

Yanitza Schoonover focuses her practice on probate administration and estate planning for Florida families. She helps Davie owners with:

Davie Lady Bird Deed drafting, execution and recording
Acreage and multi-parcel planning, including separate deeds per parcel
Formal and summary probate administration
Estate planning coordination for Florida homesteads

If your property is bigger than a subdivision lot, the questions are different and worth an hour of someone's attention. Bring the folio numbers and we will start there.

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Yanitza Schoonover

Davie Lady Bird Deed Frequently Asked Questions

Does Florida homestead protection cover my whole Davie acreage?

No. Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution protects a homestead of up to 160 contiguous acres if the property is located outside a municipality, but only one-half acre of contiguous land if it is located within one. Davie is an incorporated town, so property inside the town limits gets the half-acre figure. On a two-acre ranchette that means roughly a quarter of your land carries constitutional homestead protection and the rest is ordinary real property. This does not stop a Lady Bird Deed from working. It changes what the deed is protecting the land from.

Which half acre counts as the homestead?

Nobody knows until it matters. The constitution limits the exemption to one-half acre of contiguous land and, where it applies, to the residence of the owner or the owner's family. In practice the half acre is treated as the ground around and under the residence, but no surveyor has drawn that line on your parcel and no court has ruled on it. That uncertainty is exactly why the safe practice on Davie acreage is to have a spouse join in the deed across the entire legal description rather than assume the outer acreage is unrestricted.

Can I leave different parts of my Davie land to different children?

Sometimes, and it is worth asking early. If your holding is actually two or three separate platted parcels with separate folio numbers, you can record a separate Lady Bird Deed for each and give each child a distinct piece of land instead of a fractional share of everything. If it is a single legally indivisible parcel, you cannot carve it up in the deed. Splitting a single parcel is a land use question governed by the Town's platting and zoning rules, and it has to be answered before the deed is drafted, not after.

What happens if I name three children on one acreage parcel?

At your death they become tenants in common, each owning an undivided fractional interest in the whole property. Any one of them can then file a partition action under Chapter 64 of the Florida Statutes to force a division or a sale, including a child who simply wants their money out. Florida's Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, at §§ 64.201–64.214, gives the other cotenants a right to buy out the interest of the one demanding a sale and directs the court to prefer physically dividing the land over selling it. The case still costs money and strains families. On a parcel that can genuinely be divided, splitting it during your lifetime is often the better answer.

Will a Lady Bird Deed keep my Davie agricultural classification?

The deed itself does not disturb it, because you remain the owner during your lifetime and nothing transfers until your death. What matters is what happens afterward. Agricultural classification under Fla. Stat. § 193.461 depends on bona fide commercial agricultural use, it must be applied for, and it is granted year by year. If the horses leave when you do, the classification goes with them, and the tax bill your children receive will not look like yours.

Are the barn and outbuildings protected?

Only if they sit within the protected half acre. The constitution extends the exemption to the land and improvements on it, but inside a municipality it limits the exemption to one-half acre and to the residence of the owner or the owner's family. A barn, workshop or second structure three hundred feet back on the rear acreage is an improvement on land that is not constitutional homestead. It still passes under the Lady Bird Deed like the rest of the parcel. It simply does not carry the same protection from creditors.

Where do I record a Lady Bird Deed for Davie property?

With the Broward County Records, Taxes & Treasury Division, at 115 South Andrews Avenue, Room 114, Fort Lauderdale. This trips people up because in most Florida counties the Clerk of the Circuit Court handles recording; in Broward it is a county division. Recording fees are $10.00 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page, plus $1.00 for each name over four that has to be indexed.

Do I owe documentary stamp tax on a Davie Lady Bird Deed?

Generally the tax is minimal on an unencumbered homestead conveyed for no consideration. The Florida Department of Revenue addressed enhanced life estate deeds in Technical Assistance Advisement 20B4-004, and the analysis turns on whether there is consideration, which normally means whether there is a mortgage. If your Davie parcel carries a mortgage, documentary stamp tax is calculated on the outstanding balance at $0.70 per $100, and on an acreage parcel that balance can be substantial. Run the calculation before the deed is signed.

Does a Davie Lady Bird Deed protect the property from Medicaid estate recovery?

In practice it usually does, because Florida limits estate recovery to the probate estate. Property that passes by a properly drafted enhanced life estate deed is not part of the probate estate, so there is nothing there for the state to recover against. Florida also does not treat the deed as a disqualifying transfer for eligibility purposes, since you keep full control during your life. This is a technical area governed by 42 U.S.C. § 1396p and Fla. Stat. §§ 409.910 and 409.9101, and acreage complicates the eligibility analysis, so it should be reviewed against your own facts.

Do my beneficiaries get a stepped-up basis?

Yes. Because the transfer happens at your death rather than during your life, your beneficiaries take the property with a basis equal to its fair market value on the date of death. On Davie land held since the 1980s or 1990s, that step-up can eliminate an enormous capital gain that an outright lifetime gift would have handed straight to your children. It is one of the strongest arguments for the deed over simply adding a child to the title now.

Can a Davie Lady Bird Deed be changed or revoked later?

Yes. That is the defining feature of the enhanced life estate deed and the reason it suits people who are not ready to give anything away. Because you reserve the power to sell, convey, mortgage, lease and revoke without anyone's consent, you can record a new deed that revokes or replaces the old one at any time while you are competent. Your named beneficiaries have no vote and no veto, and they cannot place a lien on the property, because they hold nothing until you die.

Is a Lady Bird Deed better than a trust for Davie acreage?

It depends on how complicated the rest of the picture is. For a single parcel going to adult children who get along, the deed does the job at a fraction of the cost and with no ongoing administration. A revocable trust earns its keep when there are several properties, a beneficiary with special needs, a minor child, a blended family, or a desire to control the timing of what beneficiaries receive rather than handing it over outright. Acreage with a working agricultural operation on it is a common reason Davie families end up choosing the trust.

We also assist owners in nearby Broward markets including Plantation, Sunrise, Weston, Pembroke Pines, Fort Lauderdale, and Hollywood. Browse every market on our areas we serve page.

Florida Lady Bird Deed Attorney Serves Homeowners Across Florida

We help homeowners throughout Florida with Lady Bird Deeds and probate avoidance planning. Below are many of the primary Florida markets we serve, but we're not limited to these locations. You can also browse the full Florida Lady Bird Deed city and county directory.

• Boca Raton • Boynton Beach • Cape Coral • Clearwater • Coral Springs • Davie • Daytona Beach • Deerfield Beach • Doral • Fort Lauderdale • Hallandale Beach • Hialeah • Hollywood • Homestead • Jacksonville • Kendall • Lauderdale Lakes • Miami • Miami Beach • Miramar • Orlando • Parkland • Pembroke Pines • Pine Hills • Plantation • Pompano Beach • Port Saint Lucie • Saint Petersburg • Sunrise • Tallahassee • Tampa • West Palm Beach • Weston

Davie Lady Bird Deed Attorney

A Davie Lady Bird Deed keeps the whole parcel out of probate. Florida homestead protection only covers half an acre of it.