Verras Law focuses on estate planning, trusts, and probate. From Palm Harbor, Spiro Verras helps Tampa Bay families make thoughtful decisions about the people and property that matter to them. You work directly with Spiro, with support from a small staff that helps with scheduling, document preparation, recording, and communication.

A plan that fits your life

Estate planning brings together decisions about who should act for you and how your property should pass. Your plan may include a will, powers of attorney, health care documents, and trusts tailored to your family. Spiro explains the options, including probate, cost, privacy, and the responsibilities each arrangement creates.

We help identify the deeds, account changes, and beneficiary designations needed to carry out your plan and explain who is responsible for each step. Work with other lawyers, financial institutions, or tax professionals is coordinated as part of the agreed scope.

Guidance for personal representatives and trustees

Probate is the court process for administering assets that require it. Spiro helps personal representatives understand their duties, identify estate assets, address creditor claims, and distribute property under the will or Florida law. The appropriate procedure depends on the estate. In trust administration, he helps trustees understand the trust terms, communicate with beneficiaries, keep records, and make distributions.

Planning for changing needs

As health and care needs change, elder law and Medicaid planning can be considered alongside your estate plan. The available approaches depend on eligibility rules, your circumstances, and the timing of any transfers.

Asset protection planning considers Florida exemptions, ownership, insurance, and business structures together. The available options depend on your assets, obligations, and the timing of any transfer. Spiro helps you understand how those choices fit your estate plan.

For business owners, Spiro advises on the business matters connected with planning, including company ownership, agreements, and succession. He works with your CPA and other advisers to connect those decisions with your family’s plans.

A lawyer you can keep turning to

Spiro takes a holistic view of your needs, considering each legal question in the context of your life. When another legal or financial need arises, he can introduce you to attorneys and CPAs whose work and judgment he respects. If you would like him to stay involved, he can join conversations with your other advisers, help you think through decisions, and keep your family’s broader plans in view.

Begin with a conversation

Contact our office to arrange a consultation with Spiro. Your estate planning consultation lasts at least an hour. Meet in Palm Harbor, in Tampa or St. Petersburg by appointment, or online, usually by Zoom.

Fees are discussed with you privately. The consultation fee is credited in full toward documents or other services if you engage us; existing clients ordinarily do not pay it. Document work is quoted for a flat fee in writing before it begins. The engagement letter explains the services and fee basis for your matter. How We Work describes the process.

Florida Durable Powers of Attorney:

Current notes for the power-of-attorney video

Reviewed October 26, 2026. This video was published on March 31, 2020. Please read these clarifications alongside it when considering a Florida durable power of attorney.

  • When authority begins, 0:18–0:37. A Florida power of attorney generally becomes exercisable when properly executed. There are exceptions for qualifying powers signed before October 1, 2011, that depend on incapacity, and for certain military powers. Sections 709.2106 and 709.2108 of the Florida Power of Attorney Act explain those exceptions. An older document needs individual review before deciding whether it can be used.
  • The agent’s authority and your bank account, 0:01–0:13 and 0:47–1:00. The agent may exercise the authority the document grants, subject to legal limits and fiduciary duties. Some acts, such as executing your will, cannot be delegated through a power of attorney. Naming your child as agent does not, by itself, authorize that child to become a joint owner or beneficiary of your account. Changes that give the agent an ownership interest require appropriate authority and must comply with the agent’s duties. Ordinary authority to conduct banking transactions is not a general permission to make gifts to the agent.
  • Powers needing a separate signature or initials, 2:02–3:25. Section 709.2202 identifies seven categories: creating a trust during your lifetime; changing or ending your trust when the trust expressly permits your agent to do so; making gifts; creating or changing survivorship rights; creating or changing beneficiary designations; waiving your right to be a beneficiary of a joint-and-survivor annuity; and disclaiming property or powers of appointment. The statute calls for a signature or initials next to each specific grant, subject to its other requirements and exceptions. It does not apply to powers of attorney executed before October 1, 2011. Applying for government benefits and accessing digital assets are not, by themselves, additional categories on that list. A benefits or tax-planning strategy involving gifts, trusts or another listed power may require the corresponding separate authorization.
  • Digital assets and benefit programs, 2:21–3:25. Florida’s digital-assets law separately addresses an agent’s access. Section 740.008 requires express authority over the contents of electronic communications; section 740.009 addresses other digital assets and the catalog of communications. The owner’s directions and the required supporting documents also matter. These provisions do not impose the video’s blanket requirement to initial every digital-access power. Benefit programs may have their own authorization rules. For example, a power of attorney does not replace appointment by Social Security as a representative payee to manage another person’s Social Security or SSI benefits.

The three-part arrangement described in the video is a way to organize the document, rather than a required statutory format. We will help you consider whom to appoint, which powers fit your circumstances and how the document works with the rest of your estate plan.

Attorney Spiro Verras interviewed by Andrew Chen for Hack Your Wealth:

October 2026 update: This conversation was published in 2020. Some answers were too broad when made, and tax figures and other law have changed. Please read the dated corrections and current-law notes alongside the recording, particularly the explanations of irrevocable trusts, professional liability, homestead and probate fees.