Boca Raton Estate Planning

Boca Raton Estate Planning and Probate Attorney

Boca is Palm Beach County, and that changes things.

Every other city we serve sits in Broward County. Boca Raton does not. Boca is in Palm Beach County, which means probate here is filed with the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, not the Seventeenth.

Why should you care? Because the two counties do not run identically. Filing requirements, local practice and timelines differ, and a firm that mostly files in one county can be slower in the other. We file in both, routinely. Having our Boca office means we are not treating your case as an away game.

If you split your year, read this part

A lot of Boca residents live somewhere else for part of the year. New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Canada. That is where dual residency questions start, and where expensive mistakes hide.

Florida has no state income tax and no state estate tax. Your other state may have both, and it may be quite motivated to claim you as its resident. Being taxed by two states on the same estate is a real outcome, not a scare story.

So establishing Florida domicile properly matters. That means more than owning a place here. It is a collection of things done consistently, and the more of them that point to Florida, the stronger your position:

• Filing a Declaration of Domicile with the county
• Applying for the Florida homestead exemption
• Florida driver license and voter registration
• Actually spending more of the year here, and being able to show it
• Making sure your estate documents are Florida documents

About the will you signed up north

An out of state will is usually valid in Florida, so please do not panic. But there is a specific problem worth knowing about. Florida has rules about who may serve as your personal representative (many states call this role the “executor”). Broadly, the person must be a Florida resident, or a close relative such as a spouse, child, parent or sibling, no matter where they live.

So the trusted friend or professional you named back home may not be permitted to serve here. Families usually find this out at the worst possible moment. A quick review of an out of state plan is one of the most useful hours you can spend after a move.

Where a Boca Raton probate case goes

Boca Raton probate is filed with the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit in Palm Beach County. We handle the filing and the court communication, and in most cases you never need to appear.