What happens to your house when you go to prison?

The deed does not change because the owner is in custody. Unless a court orders otherwise, the house stays theirs. What changes is everything that keeps a house running: the mortgage payment, the property tax bill, the homeowner’s insurance, the power and water, the lawn.

Property tax is the bill with a sequence written into Florida law. A tax bill left unpaid leads to a tax certificate sale. Left longer, it can lead to a tax deed sale, and that is how a house is lost over an envelope nobody opened. The steps and their timing are in chapter 197 of the Florida Statutes. Ask the attorney how they apply to your bill.

A mortgage carries its own terms for missed payments, written into the loan documents. Insurance is the quieter risk. A policy can lapse, or can treat an empty house differently from one that is lived in, and the owner may not find out until a claim is filed. Read both with the attorney before the surrender date.

Someone has to be able to pay those bills and sign for the house. That person is usually an agent under a durable power of attorney, and the document has to give them the powers a lender, the tax collector and an insurer will ask about. How a power of attorney works for someone in a Florida facility covers the signing itself.

Whoever manages the house will be asked for paper. The recorded deed. The mortgage note and recent statements. The insurance declarations page, the latest tax bill, the survey and any title insurance policy. A refinance, a sale or a claim each calls for some of them, and nobody knows in advance which.

These papers tend to live in a kitchen drawer or a filing cabinet inside the house they describe. If the house is rented out, sold or left empty, the cabinet goes with it. Originals are worth keeping somewhere that does not depend on the house standing, or on it staying in the family’s hands. The same goes for the folder of receipts for the roof and the water heater, which a buyer’s inspector may ask about.

We keep deeds, titles and house papers in boxes rented in one person’s name, jointly, or in the name of a trust. The rental agreement decides who may enter. Whether we accept an agent acting under a durable power of attorney, and what we need to see, is TODO_FACT: does Florida Intervault accept a POA agent, and what must it see. Families holding papers for someone inside will find the rest on the families page. If the house itself may be part of the case, ask the attorney before any of its papers are moved.