Florida Statute 732.7025
“Waiver of homestead rights through deed”
What it means
Florida's Constitution blocks an owner from devising homestead away from a surviving spouse, and bars devise entirely when a minor child survives. Section 732.7025 gives spouses the simplest waiver of that devise restriction: one sentence in the deed itself — “By executing or joining this deed, I intend to waive homestead rights that would otherwise prevent my spouse from devising the homestead property described in this deed to someone other than me.”
Subsection (2) draws the line: the deed language waives the devise restriction only — not the homestead's protection from creditors, and not the requirement of spousal joinder for a mortgage, sale, gift, or deed.
- A spouse waives homestead devise rights by executing or joining a deed containing the exact statutory sentence.
- The waiver does not touch the exemption from the owner's creditors' claims, during life or after death.
- It does not waive the alienation restriction — the spouse must still join any mortgage, sale, gift, or deed of the homestead.
- It waives homestead devise rights only; the elective share and other spousal rights still require a §732.702 agreement.
How it plays out
This section gave couples a far simpler tool than a full marital agreement: the waiver rides inside a deed both spouses were signing anyway. We see it in estate-plan retitlings and in deeds for a home one spouse brought into the marriage, and it works — a spouse who joined a deed with this language cannot later void a devise of that property to children from a first marriage. The mistakes come from overreading it: the signing spouse keeps the elective share, and the owner still cannot sell or mortgage without joinder.
Questions people ask
