Estate Planning Attorney in Daytona Beach

Personalized Estate Plans for Daytona Beach & Volusia County Families

Buckmaster & Ellzey is a Daytona Beach law firm with over four decades of combined experience handling estate planning, family law, and other legal matters for clients throughout Volusia County. We build customized plans around each client’s actual situation, not off-the-shelf document packages.

If you’re ready to put an estate plan in place, call (888) 785-6548 to schedule your free consultation with Buckmaster & Ellzey.

Why Daytona Beach Clients Work With Our Estate Planning Attorneys

Clients choose us for responsive communication and a genuinely personalized approach. You won’t piece together a plan from a checklist. We take time to understand your family structure, your assets, and your goals before recommending any document or strategy.

Two credentials on our team are especially relevant to family-centered estate planning. Attorney Jeremy Buckmaster has been a Florida Supreme Court Certified Family Mediator since 2015, giving him a practiced understanding of how families navigate difficult decisions together. Attorney David Ellzey has served as a Guardian Ad Litem volunteer attorney since 2015, working directly with courts on matters involving children’s welfare. When your estate plan involves guardian designations for minor children or decisions in a blended family, that background shapes the conversation in ways that pure document drafting doesn’t.

Estate Planning Documents We Help Clients Establish

We assist clients in drafting wills, trusts, and the surrounding documents that make an estate plan complete and enforceable. Here is what each core instrument does:

Last Will & Testament
A will directs how your remaining assets should be distributed after death. It takes legal effect only at death and must typically pass through Florida’s probate process before assets transfer to heirs.

Revocable Living Trust
A revocable living trust holds assets for named beneficiaries during your lifetime and after. Because assets held in the trust don’t pass through a will, they can allow certain assets to avoid probate, which can save time and keep those transfers private.

Durable Power of Attorney
A durable power of attorney designates someone to manage your financial and legal affairs if you become incapacitated. Without one, a court may need to appoint a guardian to handle those decisions for you.

Health Care Surrogate Designation & Living Will
A designation of health care surrogate names someone to make medical decisions on your behalf if you can’t communicate them yourself. A living will records your preferences for end-of-life treatment so your wishes can guide those decisions directly.

Guardian Designation for Minor Children
A guardian designation lets parents name who would care for their minor children if both parents became unable to do so. It’s one of the most consequential decisions in any parent’s estate plan, and our team’s Guardian Ad Litem experience brings real context to that conversation.

Florida Homestead Law & Probate Considerations for Volusia County Property Owners

Florida imposes constitutional limits on how homestead property can be transferred at death. Under Article X, Section 4(c) of the Florida Constitution, if you are survived by a spouse or a minor child, you generally cannot freely devise your homestead by will. The property may be devised to a surviving spouse only when no minor child survives you. For many Daytona Beach property owners, this restriction arrives as a surprise and can complicate otherwise straightforward plans.

For assets outside of homestead, Florida’s probate process is court-supervised, carries court costs, and creates a public record. Tools such as revocable living trusts and properly named beneficiary designations can allow certain assets to reach your heirs without going through probate. The Volusia County Clerk of the Circuit Court’s Probate & Guardianship division maintains records for estates, guardianships, wills, and trusts filed in this area, and understanding how that process works informs how we structure plans for our clients.

Start Your Estate Plan With a Free Consultation

Whether you’re in Daytona Beach, Port Orange, DeLand, or elsewhere in Volusia County, our estate planning lawyers can help you put a clear, workable plan in place. Call (888) 785-6548 or reach out online to schedule your free consultation with Buckmaster & Ellzey today.