Florida Probate & Trust Litigation Blog: If a married couple take title to their home jointly, does it have to say anything else to trigger the tenancy by the entireties (TBE) presumption? (January 31, 2022)

Juan C. Antúnez, in his Florida Probate & Trust Litigation Blog, discusses married couple taking title to their homes and its relation to tenancy by the entireties presumption. The article begins as follows:

Married couples take title to their homes in joint deeds all the time. The vast majority of these deeds are simple form documents that don’t go beyond the bare minimum needed to convey title. For example, the deed doesn’t have to say if the grantor intended to convey the home to them as “tenants in common” or as a “tenancy by the entireties” (TBE). And for most couples it doesn’t matter.

But when it does matter, this esoteric sounding property-law distinction can have profound implications. How the property’s owned can be the difference between whether you lose it to creditors in bankruptcy (or not), or whether it gets divvied up in a probate proceeding when the first spouse dies (or not). (A key characteristic of TBE property is that it automatically passes 100% to the surviving spouse without going through probate; tenants in common property doesn’t.)

To see the full article, click: If a married couple take title to their home jointly, does it have to say anything else to trigger the tenancy by the entireties (TBE) presumption?

Posted by Anthony Tran, Associate Editor, Wealth Strategies Journal