With the Florida lady bird deed, you give yourself a life estate interest in your property. A life estate is a right to live in the property until your death.
When you pass away, the real property passes to your beneficiaries designated in the lady bird deed, called the remaindermen.
The lady bird deed works similarly to a pay-on-death provision on a bank account. With a pay-on-death account you can spend the funds in the account during your lifetime and change the beneficiaries at any time, and the beneficiary is only entitled to what is left on the account when you die.
What makes Florida lady bird deeds so valuable is that you are able to retain certain interests in the real property even being the life tenant. I will go over those rights in the next section.
Some terms used in this article are as follows:
Grantor: the person(s) that transfer the property right into the Lady Bird Deed.
Remainder Beneficiary: the person listed under the Lady Bird Deed to inherit the property once you have passed away.