Irrevocable Trusts on the Treasure Coast: What Vero Beach Families Should Know

Don and Marlene's question: what makes their situation different

Don and Marlene are a composite couple I use to talk through a common Vero Beach scenario, not actual clients. They are 74 and 72, they own a home on the barrier island, they keep a boat at a nearby marina, and their grandchildren live in three different states. Like a lot of Treasure Coast couples, they came to me not sure whether an irrevocable trust made sense for them at all, or whether their revocable trust and a good power of attorney would do the job.

An irrevocable trust is one the person who creates it cannot simply revoke or amend on their own; that structure is what lets it move assets out of the person's own estate for creditor protection, Medicaid planning, or tax purposes. The rules that govern irrevocable trusts come from Florida's Trust Code, Chapter 736, and they apply the same way whether you live in Vero Beach, Orlando, or the Panhandle. What changes from family to family is not the law itself, but how that law interacts with a barrier-island house, a titled boat, and heirs who do not live in Florida.

What is statewide: the Florida Trust Code basics

A few things hold true no matter which Florida county you live in:

• Florida has no domestic asset protection trust statute. Unlike some states, Florida generally does not let you put your own assets into a trust you control the benefits of and shield those assets from your own creditors. A self-settled irrevocable trust, in most cases, does not protect the person who created it from their own creditors.
• Spendthrift provisions protect a beneficiary's interest, with exceptions. If you set up an irrevocable trust for a child or grandchild, a properly drafted spendthrift clause can shield that beneficiary's inheritance from many of their own creditors, though Florida law recognizes some exceptions to that protection.
• "Irrevocable" does not mean frozen forever. Florida law allows an irrevocable trust to be changed through a nonjudicial settlement agreement among the interested parties, through judicial modification when circumstances the settlor did not anticipate have arisen, through decanting under F.S. 736.04117 (pouring assets into a new trust with updated terms), through a trust protector named in the document, or through modification with the consent of the settlor and all beneficiaries.
• Florida has no state income tax and no state estate tax. That remains true for trusts as well as individuals, which is part of why Florida is often a favorable place to house a trust, though federal income and estate tax rules still apply and depend on the trust's terms.

What is local: barrier-island values, insurance, and the county property appraiser

This is where Don and Marlene's plan started to look different from a generic template. Their home sits on the barrier island, and Indian River County values on the island have climbed enough that the property is a meaningful piece of their estate. A few local realities shaped the conversation:

• Homestead status is separate from trust planning. Florida's homestead protections, found in Article X, Section 4 and Article VII, Section 6 of the Florida Constitution, and the devise restrictions in F.S. 732.4015, apply to a primary residence regardless of county. Moving a homesteaded property into any trust, revocable or irrevocable, raises its own questions about whether homestead tax treatment and creditor protection continue, and those questions deserve their own careful review rather than a generic assumption.
• Save Our Homes portability matters more on high-value coastal property. The assessment cap under F.S. 193.155 can mean a large gap between market value and assessed value on a long-held barrier-island home. How a transfer into trust is structured can affect whether that cap survives, and the Indian River County Property Appraiser's office is the authority that will ultimately apply the rule to a specific parcel.
• Insurance and rebuild cost drive real numbers into the plan. Coastal wind and flood coverage on a barrier-island home is its own variable, and any trust plan should account for how premiums, deductibles, and rebuild requirements affect what the property is actually worth to pass on.
• Probate, if it happens, runs through the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit. Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin, and Okeechobee Counties all sit within the Nineteenth Circuit, and each county has its own probate division and clerk's office. Keeping property out of probate through a properly funded trust, revocable or irrevocable, is one reason Treasure Coast families use these tools, since it avoids routing the barrier-island home or other titled assets through that court process.

Boats, titled property, and snowbird heirs across three states

Don and Marlene's boat and their scattered grandchildren raised two more local wrinkles.

A boat is titled personal property, and if it is meant to pass through a trust rather than through probate, the title needs to actually be retitled or otherwise addressed in the trust's funding, the same way a home deed does. An irrevocable trust that never gets a boat's title changed into its name does not accomplish much for that asset, no matter how well the trust document itself is written.

Grandchildren in three different states is not unusual on the Treasure Coast, where retirees and part-time residents (sometimes called snowbirds) often have children and grandchildren scattered around the country. An irrevocable trust with a spendthrift provision can be useful here, since it lets Don and Marlene control the timing and structure of distributions to out-of-state grandchildren rather than handing over a lump sum at a set age. It also means the family does not need separate ancillary probate proceedings in other states for assets the trust already holds.

The plan Don and Marlene chose

After reviewing their goals, Don and Marlene did not move their barrier-island home into an irrevocable trust. Because it is their homestead, and because they wanted to preserve flexibility and their existing Save Our Homes assessment, we kept the home in their revocable trust instead, with the will-like formalities that a revocable trust's testamentary provisions require under Florida law. What they did place into an irrevocable structure was a portion of investment assets they did not expect to need, set up with spendthrift protection for their grandchildren and a named trust protector who could adjust administrative terms down the road if tax law or family circumstances changed. The boat was retitled to align with their overall plan, and distribution terms were written with their out-of-state grandchildren specifically in mind, so no single beneficiary would need to open a proceeding in another state to receive what was left to them.

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice, nor does reading it create an attorney-client relationship. Florida estate, elder, probate, and real estate law are fact-specific and change over time. Consult a licensed Florida attorney about your individual circumstances. Arthur Simpson, Esq. is licensed to practice law in the State of Florida. Attorney advertising.