Florida Revocable Living Trusts vs. Wills: Which Fits Your Family

A Florida revocable living trust is a written arrangement you create during your lifetime to hold and manage your assets, with instructions for distributing them at death without court-supervised probate. A will is a document that takes effect only at death and must be admitted to a Florida probate court before any assets pass to your heirs. For most Palm Beach families with meaningful wealth, the practical question is not which tool is “better” in the abstract, but how each one handles probate, incapacity, homestead, and privacy for your particular estate.

I have sat across the table from too many surviving spouses who assumed a will would spare them the courthouse. It does not. In Florida, a will is a ticket into probate, not around it. Understanding that single distinction is where every good estate plan begins.

What a Florida revocable living trust actually does

A revocable living trust (“RLT” or “living trust”) is governed by the Florida Trust Code, Chapter 736 of the Florida Statutes. You wear three hats when you create one: you are the settlor (the person funding it), the trustee (the person managing it), and the beneficiary (the person enjoying it). Because you keep all three roles, nothing about your day-to-day life changes. You still buy, sell, refinance, and spend exactly as before.

The word “revocable” matters. You can amend it, restate it, or tear it up entirely at any time while you have capacity. That flexibility is also why a revocable trust offers no protection from your own creditors during your lifetime—if you can reach the assets, so can they. Under Florida law, property in a revocable trust remains subject to the settlor’s creditors to the same extent it would if you owned it outright.

When you die, the trust does not die with you. It becomes irrevocable, and a successor trustee you named steps in to pay debts and distribute assets according to your instructions—privately, and generally without a judge involved.

The catch most people miss: funding

An unfunded trust is an expensive binder on a shelf. The trust only controls what you actually transfer into it—retitling your home, brokerage accounts, business interests, and bank accounts into the name of the trust, and coordinating beneficiary designations. A signed trust with assets still titled in your individual name will land those assets in probate anyway. Funding is where a great many do-it-yourself plans quietly fail.

What a Florida will does—and doesn’t do

A last will and testament is your written instruction sheet for the probate court. It names a personal representative (Florida’s term for an executor), directs how assets are distributed, and—critically for parents—nominates a guardian for minor children. A will has no effect while you are alive and no effect on assets that pass by other means, such as jointly titled property or accounts with beneficiary designations.

To be valid in Florida, a will must meet the execution formalities in Chapter 732: it must be signed at the end by the testator in the presence of two witnesses, who must sign in the presence of the testator and of each other. Florida does not recognize holographic (handwritten, unwitnessed) wills, even if they would be valid in another state. After death, the original will must be deposited with the clerk of court within ten days under section 732.901, and the estate proceeds through probate under Chapter 733.

What probate really involves in Palm Beach County

Formal administration in Florida is a court process supervised by the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit here in Palm Beach County. It typically runs six months to over a year, requires a licensed Florida attorney in nearly every case, and follows a sequence that does not bend to your schedule:

• Petition to admit the will and appoint the personal representative
• Issuance of Letters of Administration granting authority to act
• A creditor claim period that runs three months from first publication of notice
• Inventory, payment of valid claims and taxes, and accounting
• Petition for discharge and final distribution to beneficiaries

Probate is also a public proceeding. The will, the inventory, and the names of your beneficiaries become part of the court record—searchable by anyone, including the solicitors who comb obituaries looking for newly wealthy widows. For high-net-worth families, that loss of privacy is often a bigger objection than the cost.

Side-by-side: the practical differences for a Palm Beach estate

Notice the last row. Neither tool, by itself, shields assets from your own creditors while you are living. That surprises high-net-worth clients who expect a “trust” to be a fortress. Lifetime asset protection in Florida comes from other mechanisms—homestead, tenancy by the entireties, properly structured business entities, and irrevocable trusts—which we layer on top of, not inside of, a revocable plan. Our regularly builds these layers for Palm Beach families with concentrated real estate or business wealth.

The two things a trust does that a will simply cannot

1. It plans for incapacity, not just death

A will is silent if you are alive but incapacitated—after a stroke, an advancing dementia diagnosis, or a serious accident. Without a trust (and a durable power of attorney), your family may have to petition the court for a guardianship under Chapter 744, a public, expensive, and often adversarial process that strips you of legal autonomy. With a funded revocable trust, your hand-picked successor trustee simply takes over management of trust assets the moment a physician certifies your incapacity. No courtroom, no judge, no public airing of your medical condition.

2. It avoids ancillary probate on out-of-state property

Many Palm Beach residents own a ski condo in Colorado, a lake house up north, or mineral interests in Texas. Real property is governed by the law of the state where it sits. If that property is in your individual name at death, your family faces a second probate—ancillary administration—in each of those states, with separate attorneys and separate timelines. Deed those properties into your revocable trust and the trust owns them everywhere at once. One administration, handled by your successor trustee.

Where Florida homestead changes the calculus

Florida homestead law is its own animal, and it trips up plans drafted by lawyers from other states. The Florida Constitution restricts how you can devise your homestead if you are survived by a spouse or minor child, and it grants powerful creditor protection to the homestead during life. You can hold homestead in a revocable trust—section 736.1109 of the Florida Trust Code was written to preserve the homestead’s creditor protection and tax benefits when title is in trust. But the trust language must be drafted carefully. If a trust distribution would violate the constitutional limits on devising homestead, title passes instead under section 732.401 as if there were no trust at all, which can scramble your intended plan.

The lesson: never assume a generic trust form protects your Palm Beach home. Homestead, the Florida elective share for a surviving spouse, and the documentary stamp tax rules on transfers all need a Florida hand. A trust drafted in another state and carried here is a recurring source of litigation.

So which one fits your family?

Here is the honest version I give clients. A will alone may be enough if your estate is modest, your assets are simple, you have no real property outside Florida, and you are comfortable with your family going through probate. A revocable living trust earns its higher upfront cost when one or more of these is true:

1. Your estate is large enough that probate cost and delay are a real burden
2. You own real estate in more than one state
3. Privacy matters—because of business interests, public profile, or family dynamics
4. You want a seamless plan for incapacity that keeps the courts out
5. You have a blended family, a special-needs beneficiary, or heirs you do not want receiving a lump sum at once
6. You hold concentrated wealth—a closely held business, investment real estate, or a significant securities portfolio

For most high-net-worth Palm Beach families, the answer is not “trust or will.” It is both. The trust is the centerpiece; a “pour-over” will catches anything you forgot to fund and—just as importantly—is where you nominate a guardian for minor children, something a trust cannot do.

The supporting documents no plan should skip

Whether you center your plan on a trust or a will, a complete Florida estate plan includes a durable power of attorney, a designation of health care surrogate, a living will, and—for parents—a preneed guardian designation. These govern decisions while you are alive; the will and trust govern what happens after. Skipping them is the most common gap I see in otherwise expensive plans. You can review the core building blocks on our wills page and learn how administration unfolds on our Florida probate overview.

Advanced trust planning for larger estates

Once the foundation is set, families with significant wealth often layer in specialized vehicles. Charitably inclined clients sometimes use a approach to generate income while supporting a cause—a tool our affiliated New York attorneys use frequently for clients with cross-state ties. Others who want to remain in their home while removing its value from a taxable estate explore strategies such as . These are powerful but unforgiving instruments; the wrong move can trigger gift tax, loss of homestead protection, or unintended Medicaid consequences. They belong in the hands of an attorney who plans them every week, not a download from the internet.

A word on do-it-yourself plans

Online trust mills sell a polished PDF and a false sense of completion. They do not fund your trust, do not account for Florida homestead, do not coordinate your beneficiary designations, and do not know that your second marriage and your daughter’s creditor problems change everything. I have spent more hours cleaning up failed DIY plans in probate court than I would ever have spent drafting them correctly the first time. The cost of fixing a broken plan—after you are gone, when no one can ask you what you meant—falls on the very family you were trying to protect.

If you are weighing a revocable trust against a will for your Palm Beach family, the right next step is a focused conversation about your assets, your people, and your goals. Contact our office to map out a plan that actually fits—and that holds up when your family needs it most.

This article is general information about Florida law and is not legal advice. Estate planning is highly fact-specific; consult a licensed Florida attorney about your circumstances.