By Chuck Roulet, Attorney · Licensed in Florida and Minnesota
Short answer: Yes, you can do it. But it carries a real risk. The deed controls the house and your will controls the money, and they don't talk to each other. If the money runs low, the child with the house still gets the whole house, and the others may get very little.
How This Plan Usually Looks
A parent wants to be fair. One child gets the house through a Lady Bird deed. The other children get savings and investments through the will. On paper, everyone ends up with about the same amount.
Where It Goes Wrong
The problem is that the numbers change and the deed doesn't.
Say Mom needs years of care at the end of her life. Her savings pay for it. By the time she passes, the money is mostly gone. The house, though, still passes to the one child named on the deed, all of it.
The other children get whatever is left in the accounts, which may be very little. That's not what Mom planned. And it's how families stop speaking to each other.
Care is expensive. According to the 2026 Care Scout Cost of Care Survey, a private nursing home room in the North Port area of Southwest Florida runs over $120,000 a year, and assisted living runs over $60,000 a year. Costs like that can use up savings far faster than most families expect. So a plan that looks even today can look very uneven a few years from now.
A Better Way to Keep Things Fair
A trust can hold both the house and the money. You can tell the trustee to divide the total fairly, no matter how the numbers change. If the savings shrink, the trust can still balance things out using the value of the house.
If protecting your home from long-term care costs is part of your worry, download my free guide, How to Protect Your Home from Nursing Home Costs.
Watch the Video
I answer this question in my video "I Already Signed a Lady Bird Deed — Now What?" above.
Read the full article: I Already Signed a Lady Bird Deed — Now What?
If you want an attorney to look at whether your deed and will still match, schedule a consultation with our Venice, Florida office by calling us 941-909-4644 or you can fill out the contact form on this page and a member of our team will reach out to you.
About the Author
Chuck Roulet is the founding attorney of Roulet Law Firm, P.A., with offices in Minnetonka, Minnesota and Venice, Florida. He has practiced estate planning and elder law for nearly 30 years and is one of very few attorneys licensed in both Minnesota and Florida. Chuck has trained more than 35,000 attorneys and financial professionals as a continuing education speaker and is the author of three books, including The Florida Snowbird Guide. Florida: 941-909-4644 · Minnesota: 763-420-5087 · rouletlaw.com
This page is general information, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
