♿ Miami-Dade Disability & Autism Newsletter 🧩

Today's Edition Includes

1. Keep Kids Safe from Drowning: Layers of Protection
2. The Family Home And The Special-Needs Heir: The Florida Deed Parents Keep Getting Wrong
3. Disability News Headlines
4. New Podcast Episode: How to Become a Foster Parent, What Every Parent Needs to Know

Florida loses more children under 5 to drowning than any other state, and autism families carry the extra risk that comes with a child who wanders and loves water. Read the flyer, then pick 1 layer you don't have yet and add it this week.

👉 WaterSmartFL.com​

The Family Home And The Special-Needs Heir: The Florida Deed Parents Keep Getting Wrong 🏠

A family with a disabled child does everything right on the trust, then makes one move that unravels it: they retitle the homestead into the special needs trust while they're still living, thinking they're getting ahead of probate. Instead they've stripped the homestead exemption and handed themselves a property tax reassessment. The trust was sound, the wiring around the home wasn't.

The homestead doesn't go into the trust during life, it goes to the trust at death, through a Lady Bird deed. Florida is one of a handful of states that recognizes the enhanced life estate deed, and for a family with a disabled heir it does the work no lifetime transfer can. The family keeps the homestead exemption, keeps the Save Our Homes cap, and keeps full power to sell, mortgage, or revoke without anyone's consent. At death, title passes to the special needs trust automatically. No probate, no Medicaid estate recovery against the home, no loss of protection along the way. The trust holds the house for the disabled beneficiary the moment it's needed, and not a day before, when it would have caused harm.

Two things I see families miss. The first is homestead's constitutional limit: Florida won't let a family devise the homestead away from a surviving spouse or minor child, and with a minor child in the picture it can't be devised at all, regardless of what the will says. The second is the drafting. A Lady Bird deed that omits the retained-powers language reads as an ordinary life estate, which forces the remainder beneficiary to sign at every sale or refinance, exactly the paralysis the deed was supposed to prevent. The internet forms and the downloaded deeds get this wrong constantly, and a family with a disabled heir is the last one that can afford a defective deed in the chain of title.

This is the shape of the issue, not drafting advice for a specific file. The homestead facts and the funding source, third-party or first-party with a payback clause, turn on specifics an attorney has to weigh.

If a family comes to you needing an estate attorney who does special needs work right, call me at (305) 401-6224. I keep a short list of the ones I trust, and I'm glad to point them to the right lawyer. And if a family needs the real estate side handled by someone who lives this work, that's mine to handle, reply anytime.

Victor Antunez, 305.401.6224

Real Estate Professional 🔑 Autism Dadvocate

PS. If buying or selling a home is on your mind, and you want to talk it through, text or call me at (305) 401-6224

PSS. Nothing means more than a real estate referral. If someone comes to mind, please send them my way.

🖇️ FREE BOOK DOWNLOADS​​

1. ​Future-Proofing Your Special Needs Child: Essential Legal, Financial, and Life Strategies for Florida Families​
2. ​Miami-Dade Special Needs Resource Directory​
3. ​The Ultimate Home Buying Guide: For Families with Special Needs​

📝 Disability News Headlines

1. ​13-year-old boy spent his whole summer 3D printing a custom wheelchair for a baby in need
2. ​Assistive IoT smart control system for people with severe mobility disabilities
3. ​Augmental’s Mouthpad: A Touchpad for Your Tongue
4. ​Autism Is Not a Crutch: The danger of mistaking autistic strengths for an absence of disability
5. ​Autism Therapy Spending Quintuples, Prompting Federal Push For State Oversight
6. ​Disability Isn’t Someone Else’s Story: Miami-Dade ADA Coordinator Heidi Johnson
7. ​Early and late autism diagnoses may not describe the same condition
8. ​Every Program Left Your Special Needs Teen Out. The Children’s Trust Won’t
9. ​Miami Children’s Museum Becomes a Certified Autism Center™
10. ​Mom gets keyboard tattooed on her arm so autistic son can always ‘talk’ to her
11. ​Robbie Williams is trivializing autism: “it is my get out of jail free card.” Op-ed
12. ​Two early-life findings stood out in children who later screened positive for autism risk
13. ​Sailing Doesn’t Care If You Can Walk: Shake-A-Leg Miami’s Harry Horgan
14. ​Wearable Robotics Brands: Human, Amplified
15. ​When AI Functions as an Autism Support
16. ​When an autism diagnosis changes everything, 'The Healing Way' shows parents a new path forward

🎧 NEW PODCAST EPISODE 🎧

How to Become a Foster Parent, What Every Parent Needs to Know

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