Florida’s probate files are public, a deposited will is public even if never used, and the property appraiser already knows where you live; here is what a trust, a land trust, or an entity actually keeps private, and what nothing does.
Key Takeaways
- A Florida probate file, including the will and the petition naming beneficiaries and their addresses, is a public record, and the original will must be deposited with the clerk within ten days of death whether or not a probate is ever opened.
- A funded revocable trust is a private agreement: Banks and title companies see only a certification of trust, nothing is inventoried at the courthouse, and the only public filing after death is a short notice of trust.
- Privacy is not secrecy; no arrangement hides property from a judgment creditor, the IRS, or a surviving spouse’s elective share, and an unfunded trust gives no privacy at all because its assets go through probate anyway.
Florida’s open government tradition is older than most of its residents. The Public Records Act, chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes, and Article I, section 24 of the Florida Constitution make the records of every court and agency open to anyone who asks. That includes the clerk’s probate files. Clients who have never thought about privacy are often surprised by what their family’s affairs will look like in a public file. Clients who care about it a great deal are sometimes surprised by how little a trust actually hides. This article is about both.
A probate file is a public record
A formal administration in Florida is a court case, and its file is open. It contains the will, the petition for administration, which lists the surviving spouse and the beneficiaries with their addresses, the order appointing the personal representative, the notice to creditors and the claims filed in response, any accountings the court requires, and the petitions and orders in any dispute. The inventory, which lists each asset and its value, is confidential by statute and available only to the personal representative, the beneficiaries, and other interested persons. The clerk does not post images of probate filings on its website for general browsing, but anyone who visits the courthouse, or registers for access, can read the rest.
Suppose a retired physician in Belleair dies with a will that divides her estate unequally among three children and leaves a bequest to a friend. The will, the children’s names and addresses, the friend’s name and address, and the fact of the unequal division are available to the children’s neighbors, a curious reporter, and anyone with something to sell to people who have recently inherited.
Even a will that is never used becomes public
Whoever holds the original will of a person who dies in Florida must deposit it with the clerk of the court within ten days after learning of the death (Fla. Stat. § 732.901). The duty does not depend on whether a probate is ever opened. A will that pours everything into a trust is deposited like any other, and once deposited it is a court record. This is one reason my pour-over wills say as little as possible. The beneficiaries, the shares, and the conditions are in the trust; the will names a personal representative and hands the residue to the trustee.
A funded revocable trust is a private document
A revocable trust is an agreement between you and your trustee, not a court filing. No one records it. When the trustee needs to prove that the trust exists and who has authority, Florida lets the trustee hand over a certification of trust under Fla. Stat. § 736.1017, a short document that identifies the trust, the trustee, and the trustee’s powers, and says nothing about the beneficiaries or the assets. Banks, brokerages, and title companies accept it. After your death, the trustee administers the trust without a court. There is no inventory on file, no petition listing beneficiaries, and no accounting at the courthouse. The trustee must file a short notice of trust with the clerk under Fla. Stat. § 736.05055, which gives your name, the date of death, the name and date of the trust, and the trustee’s name and address, and nothing else.
Privacy from the public is not privacy from the people who matter. Florida requires a trustee to give the qualified beneficiaries a copy of the trust instrument on request and to account to them each year (Fla. Stat. § 736.0813). Your children will know what each of them received. What they will not have is a public file about it.
The property appraiser already knows where you live
Every parcel of land in Florida has a page on the county property appraiser’s website showing the owner’s name, the mailing address, whether a homestead exemption is claimed, and the sale history. The recorded deed shows the documentary stamp tax paid, from which anyone with a calculator can compute the price, and a recorded mortgage shows the lender and the original loan amount. Titling your home in a revocable trust changes little of this. The deed to the trustee is recorded, and the appraiser’s page then shows your name as trustee.
A Florida land trust under Fla. Stat. § 689.071 does better, within limits. Title is in a trustee’s name, the deed to the trustee is recorded, and the trust agreement, which names the beneficiary, is not. A beneficiary who lives in the home keeps the homestead tax exemption, because the statute says so; whether the constitutional protection of homestead from creditors follows the beneficiary into the trust is a question no Florida statute answers expressly, and I do not treat a land trust as asset protection. The privacy works best when the trust takes title at the purchase. Deeding a home you already own into a land trust leaves your name in the chain of title for anyone to find. And the trustee has to be someone other than you or your immediate family, which means a professional trustee and an annual fee. I wrote about all of this at length in Who Needs a Florida Land Trust?; the short answer is that for a concrete security or business reason, yes, and to keep your name off a house you already own, usually no.
A limited liability company gives a partial screen for property that is not your homestead. The Florida Division of Corporations publishes the names of the company’s managers or of a person authorized to act for it, but it does not require the members to be listed, so a manager-managed company with someone else as manager keeps the owner off the state’s record. The federal Corporate Transparency Act, which would have required most small companies to report their owners to the Treasury, was narrowed in March 2025 so that domestic companies no longer file. An LLC is not a vehicle for a homestead, which belongs only to natural persons, and the deed into the company is still recorded.
Some addresses can be kept out of the public record
Fla. Stat. § 119.071(4)(d) exempts the home addresses, telephone numbers, and certain other identifying information of judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and a long list of other public servants and their families from the public records, and the property appraiser will remove the information from its website on written request. Victims of domestic violence and certain other crimes can use the Attorney General’s Address Confidentiality Program under chapter 741, which provides a substitute address for public purposes. These are exemptions for people the Legislature has decided face a particular risk. They do not apply to the merely private.
Beneficiary designations are private, but not secret
Life insurance, retirement accounts, annuities, and pay-on-death or transfer-on-death registrations pass outside probate, and the designations are not filed anywhere public. The institution knows, the beneficiary learns, and anyone who later obtains the statements, in a divorce, a lawsuit, or an audit, learns too. The same is true of an Enhanced Life Estate “Lady Bird” Deed. It keeps the home out of probate, but it is recorded, and the names of the remainder beneficiaries are on it for anyone to read. That is a trade I discuss with every client who signs one. For most, a child’s name on a recorded deed is no concern. For some, a trust as the remainder beneficiary is the better answer, and the deed then shows only the trust’s name.
Privacy is not secrecy, and the law knows the difference
A private arrangement does not hide property from a creditor with a judgment. Florida’s fraudulent transfer law, chapter 726, undoes transfers made to defeat existing creditors, and a judgment creditor can take your deposition and ask where everything went. It does not hide property from the IRS. It does not hide property from a spouse: The elective share is computed on an elective estate that includes your revocable trust (Fla. Stat. § 732.2035). And a trust that is never funded gives no privacy at all, because the assets left outside it go through probate anyway, with the public file that follows. The privacy failure I see again and again is not a bad document. It is a good trust with the brokerage account and the condominium still titled in the client’s own name.
What I do about it
When privacy is one of the client’s goals, I draft a trust-based plan with a spare pour-over will, fund the trust while the client is alive rather than leaving it to the family, consider a land trust or an entity for property where there is a real reason for one, and write the Lady Bird Deed with the trust as remainder beneficiary where names should stay off the record. I also tell the client which of their wishes the law will not keep private, so that no one is surprised later.
If you would like to know how much of your own plan would be public, the first step is the questionnaire, followed by an hour with me in Palm Harbor, or by appointment in Tampa or St. Petersburg.