Wills and Estate Planning
Domain overview
Wills and Estate Planning tests whether you can create, execute, revoke, and challenge a Florida will, and whether you can plan around the elective share, homestead limits, and nonprobate transfers. Expect statutory formalities, capacity and undue influence, lapse, pretermitted heirs, and the boundaries between probate and nonprobate property.
Core rules
- Execution under Fla. Stat. § 732.502 requires the testator to sign at the end in the presence of two witnesses, each of whom signs in the testator's presence and in the presence of the other witness. A self-proving affidavit under § 732.503 is evidence of due execution, not a substitute for attestation.
- Florida does not validate a holographic will merely because the handwriting and signature are genuine; the statutory ceremony still applies.
- Capacity requires age 18 and sound mind. Undue influence may be presumed when a substantial beneficiary had a confidential relationship with the testator and was active in procuring the will.
- Revocation occurs by a later will, by a physical act done with intent, or by another person acting at the testator's direction and in the testator's presence (§§ 732.505-.506). Divorce revokes provisions for the former spouse under § 732.507(2).
- Anti-lapse under § 732.603 saves a gift to the testator's grandparent or a descendant of the testator's grandparent who leaves descendants. Other lapsed gifts fall into residue or intestacy.
- A pretermitted spouse under § 732.301 or omitted child under § 732.302 may claim an intestate share unless the will shows intent to exclude or the claimant was provided for by transfers.
- The elective share is 30% of the elective estate (§ 732.2065). The petition deadline is the earlier of six months after first publication of notice of administration or two years after death (§ 732.2135).
- Homestead restricts a devise if the testator is survived by a spouse or minor child (Fla. Const. art. X, § 4; § 732.4015).
Worked example
T signs a will leaving half to her new spouse and half to her adult child, and both are the only witnesses. Under § 732.504 the will is valid; interest does not disqualify a witness. However, a beneficial devise to an attesting witness is void unless that witness would take by intestacy, so the gifts may fail and the estate may pass differently. Independent witnesses avoid the issue.
Traps that cost marks
Signing in the margin instead of at the end; witnesses signing separately; treating a notarized but unwitnessed will as valid; assuming a self-proving affidavit cures a defective ceremony; ignoring elective share and homestead limits; and confusing a will contest with a creditor claim.