How can we claim our Homestead Exemption?

Your Questions Answered

At Ashlar, I firmly b that an educated home buyer or seller is best equipped to make their own decisions. That’s why I take time out of my day each and every day to answer someone’s real estate question. And, when I think the answer can be useful to you as well, I share it here. So without further ado:

Question:

Mother and I live in California, inhereted ahouse in Florida with two other heirs. The county has removed our homestead exemption and is asking for all sorts of proof! (drivers license, affidavits, etc). How do we get our homestead exemption back?

If you don’t live in the house you can’t claim homestead exemption, full stop. To do otherwise is fraud and people have gone to jail for homestead exemption fraud.

The people living in the house, if they have some ownership, could potentially claim their percentage as homestead exemption, but the details of this is way outside the scope of an internet forum as well as the online form you use on the website. This probably really complicated since there’s a trust of some sort.

You need to speak with a real estate attorney. You will need to pay them for their advice on how best to handle this. You SHOULD have gotten this advice from the attorney you hired to create the trust. Which hopefully you didn’t try to DIY because this is the sort of nightmare that happens with DIY creation.

Anyways, fraud is bad, they will likely look really, really, really closely at this your claim here especially if you have an out of state drivers license (which means the home likely isn’t your primary residence) and like I said people go to jail for this.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/florida-keys/article238071914.html