Will requirements in Florida

Florida requires you to be 18 or an emancipated minor, and of sound mind. Emancipation is the narrow exception — a minor who has been legally emancipated may make a will.

Sound mind is assessed at signing. Florida courts look at whether you understood the nature of the act, the general extent of your property, and the people who would ordinarily expect to inherit.

A Florida will is valid without a notary, but the self-proving affidavit under section 732.503 is close to standard practice here and worth taking. You and both witnesses swear to the execution before a notary, and the will can then be admitted without locating the witnesses.

Florida also authorizes electronic wills, with its own set of requirements covering remote witnessing and qualified custodians. That is a distinct process, not simply a scanned PDF of a signed document, and it deserves professional guidance.

Florida does not recognise holographic wills. This is the point most worth understanding: writing the whole will in your own hand does not exempt it from the witness requirement. A handwritten, unwitnessed Florida will is simply not a will.

Florida also does not accept nuncupative (oral) wills. Deathbed instructions to family members, however clear and however many people heard them, have no effect.

One important wrinkle for people who moved here: a handwritten will that was valid where it was executed may still fail Florida's test, because Florida judges validity by its own execution standards for residents. If you arrived with a holographic will from another state, have it reviewed and re-executed.

Florida has two abbreviated routes. Summary administration is available below a statutory value threshold, and separately whenever the decedent has been dead for more than two years regardless of size. There is also a disposition without administration route for very small estates consisting mainly of exempt property and final expenses.

The two-year alternative is genuinely useful and often overlooked. Confirm the current dollar threshold with the circuit court clerk in the county of administration rather than relying on a figure quoted online.

Florida is a common law property state, but couples may opt into community property treatment through a community property trust. That is an election, not a default — nothing happens automatically.

Florida's homestead rules deserve separate attention, because they constrain what a will can do. Homestead property passes under constitutional rules that can override your will's directions when there is a surviving spouse or minor child. Devising the family home in Florida is not a simple matter of naming who gets it.

Florida provides a statutory living will and lets you designate a health-care surrogate under Chapter 765. Florida also allows a surrogate designation that takes effect immediately rather than only on incapacity, which some people prefer.

The durable power of attorney under Chapter 709 is notably strict: Florida requires certain powers to be specifically enumerated and separately initialled. A general form drafted for another state often fails to grant what you assumed it did.