Married couples setting up a revocable trust often assume the choice is mostly stylistic: one trust for convenience or two for a cleaner paper trail. Florida law does not require either structure, and both can avoid probate and manage incapacity when properly drafted and funded. The right answer usually comes down to how the couple’s assets are owned and what happens to them after the first death.
For a trust funded by both spouses, Florida Statutes § 736.0602 generally lets each spouse revoke or amend only the portion attributable to that spouse’s own contribution, for anything other than community property.
Creditor exposure follows the same logic: Florida Statutes § 736.0505 generally limits a creditor’s recovery from a joint trust to the debtor spouse’s own contributed share, not the entire account. That means a joint trust does not automatically make everything equally owned, and separate trusts offer little protection if the underlying assets stay jointly titled outside them.
A surviving spouse can claim 30 percent of the elective estate under Florida Statutes § 732.2065, and splitting assets into separate trusts does not let one spouse eliminate that right.
Homestead raises a similar limit. In Thayer v. Hawthorn, the court held that dividing a home between two separate revocable trusts did not clearly waive the surviving spouse’s homestead rights, since the deed itself did not address that waiver.
Tenancy-by-the-entireties property deserves its own look, too, since moving jointly owned assets into either kind of trust can change the ownership characteristics that protection depends on.
Build a list showing how each asset is titled, who contributed it, and whether it is held jointly, individually, or as tenants by the entirety, before deciding between one trust or two. At Schnauss Naugle Law, we help Jacksonville couples trace contributed assets, coordinate beneficiary designations that pass outside the trust, and structure the plan around blended families or uneven creditor exposure where those concerns apply. Call us at 904-643-6342 or reach out to us via our contact form to start mapping your assets against both options.
