Florida Statute 765.514
“Manner of making anatomical gifts”
What it means
Florida gives a donor six ways to make an anatomical gift: sign a donor card; register online with the donor registry; mark the donor designation on a driver license or ID card; express the wish in a living will or other advance directive; put it in a will; or sign any other document in the presence of two witnesses, who sign in the donor's presence.
The will route carries a startling rule: the gift is effective at death without waiting for probate — and if the will is never probated or is declared invalid for testamentary purposes, the gift remains valid to the extent it was acted on in good faith. Delivery of a gift document during the donor's lifetime is not required.
- Six methods: donor card, online registry, license/ID designation, advance directive, will, or a signed two-witness document.
- The license/ID gift survives revocation, suspension, expiration, or cancellation of the card itself.
- A will gift is effective at death without probate — and survives the will's invalidity to the extent acted on in good faith.
- Non-will documents: signed by the donor before two witnesses who sign in the donor's presence; another may sign for a donor who cannot, at the donor's direction.
- Delivery during the donor's lifetime is not necessary for a gift document to be valid.
How it plays out
The planning mistake this section invites is choosing the wrong one of the six: a gift written only into a will sits in a drawer during the hours that matter. We treat the registry and the license box as the operative gift and the will language as backup. The two-witness signed writing is the tool we actually draft — it's where a client records limits (organs but not tissue, transplantation but not research) that no checkbox can carry. It lives with the advance directives, not in the will envelope.
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