PLA4607 is the wills, estates and trusts course for paralegal students. The Statewide Course Numbering System titles it Wills, Estates and Trusts and lists its content precisely: "covers the need for estate planning, drafting and execution of basic wills, the laws of intestate succession, the purposes of trusts, formal and informal probate administration and the tax consequences of wills and trusts." There is no statewide prerequisite.
Three Florida public institutions carry it, all at 3 credits:
| Institution | Its title | What the title signals |
|---|---|---|
| University of West Florida | Wills, Estates and Trusts | ✅ matches the statewide title exactly |
| University of Central Florida | Estates and Trusts | ⚠ drops wills from the title |
| St. Petersburg College | Estate Planning and Administration | ⚠ a planning and practice framing rather than a doctrinal one |
⚠ These are three framings of one subject rather than three subjects, and the statewide description contains all three — planning, drafting, and administration. ⚠⚠ But the emphasis differs, and the difference is practical: a doctrinal course teaches you the law of succession, while a planning-and-administration course teaches you the documents and the probate process you will actually handle. See *Offering Notes*.
⚠⚠⚠ Florida is an unusually consequential place to study this subject, and that is the most useful thing about this guide. The state has the largest proportion of residents over 65 of any large state, it draws retirees from across the country, and it has no state income tax and no state estate tax — which makes it a domicile of choice for people with assets to protect. ⚠ Florida also has some of the most distinctive succession law in the United States, principally because of its constitutional homestead protection, which does things no other state's law does. A paralegal working in a Florida probate or estate-planning practice meets these rules every day.
⚠⚠ And one warning belongs before the content: drafting wills is the single most dangerous area in Florida for a non-lawyer. The unauthorised practice of law is not an abstraction here — it is a line the Florida Bar has litigated specifically about will preparation. See *Special Information*.
⚠⚠ If a student takes one thing from this course, it should be this. Florida's homestead protection is constitutional, not statutory — Article X, section 4 of the Florida Constitution — and it does two separate things that surprise almost everyone, including lawyers from other states.
1. Creditor protection. ⚠ The homestead is protected from forced sale by most creditors, without a dollar cap on value (subject to acreage limits — broadly half an acre within a municipality, 160 acres outside). That is unusually strong protection and it is a principal reason people establish Florida domicile. Exceptions exist — mortgages, taxes, mechanics' liens, and obligations for the purchase or improvement of the property itself.
2. ⚠⚠⚠ Restrictions on DEVISE — and this is the part that breaks estate plans. If the owner is survived by a spouse or a minor child, the homestead CANNOT be freely devised by will. ⚠ A will that purports to leave the homestead to someone else is, as to the homestead, ineffective — and the property passes instead under the constitutional and statutory default (broadly, a life estate to the spouse with a remainder to the descendants, or a fee simple if the spouse elects it, where there is no minor child).
⚠⚠ Why this matters more than any other single rule in this course:
⚠ Read the constitutional provision itself. It is a paragraph, and it is the single highest-value page in this course.
⚠⚠ Estate work is the most dangerous UPL territory for a non-lawyer in Florida, and the Bar has litigated it specifically about will preparation. The leading Florida authority concerns a non-lawyer who prepared wills and related documents for the public; ⚠ the line drawn is between TYPING what a client dictates and ADVISING a client on what their documents should say — and the second is the practice of law.
A paralegal in a supervised setting may: interview a client and gather factual information; prepare drafts on the attorney's instructions; assemble and organise documents; arrange and attend the execution ceremony; prepare probate filings for attorney review; communicate factual and procedural information; and manage the file and the deadlines.
A paralegal may NOT: ⚠⚠ advise a client on whether they need a will or a trust; recommend how assets should be left; explain the legal effect of a clause; select the documents; ⚠ answer the question "what should I do about the house?"; or supervise an execution without attorney involvement where the firm's procedure requires it.
⚠⚠⚠ The trap is sympathetic and it will happen to you. An elderly client sitting across the table, frightened and confused, will ask a friendly paralegal what they ought to do. Answering is the unauthorised practice of law. "I can't advise you on that — let me get the attorney" is the entire required response. ⚠ Learn the sentence and use it without embarrassment: it protects the client first, then the firm, then you.
⚠ Note also that "I'm not a lawyer, but…" does not cure it. The disclaimer does not convert legal advice into permissible conversation.
| Institution | Its title | Credits | Contact hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Central Florida | Estates and Trusts | 3 | not published |
| St. Petersburg College | Estate Planning and Administration | 3 | not published |
| University of West Florida | Wills, Estates and Trusts | 3 | not published |
⚠ One Florida College System institution and two State University System institutions — ✅ all three at 3 credits, no credit divergence, and the same subject at all three. The divergence is one of framing, and the statewide description contains all three framings.
| Framing | What to expect more of |
|---|---|
| Wills, Estates and Trusts (UWF, statewide) | the balanced doctrinal treatment: succession law, will validity, trust law, then administration |
| Estates and Trusts (UCF) | ⚠ dropping "wills" from the title may signal more weight on trusts and administration and less on will drafting — worth confirming, because drafting is the skill an employer tests |
| Estate Planning and Administration (SPC) | ⚠⚠ the practice framing — client intake, document assembly, the probate process, forms and filings. Arguably the most immediately employable version, and consistent with an A.S. paralegal programme's purpose |
⚠⚠ The syllabus test: does the course require you to DRAFT a will, and does it require you to complete real probate FORMS? ⚠ A course with both is the practice version; a course with neither is the doctrinal version. Both are legitimate — but the drafting exercise is the one that teaches the precision the work demands.
⚠ And note the FCS/SUS mix, which is the transfer case Florida's numbering exists to serve: a student completing this at St. Petersburg College within an A.S. and continuing to a bachelor's at UWF or UCF has the straightforward path. ⚠ Since all three titles differ, keep the syllabus — it is what a receiving programme will read.
⚠ The 45 contact hours at the top of this guide are derived — the Florida convention for a 3-credit lecture course. No institution publishes an hour figure. ⚠ Expect the drafting and forms work to consume more out-of-class time than the reading, because a document either works or it does not and getting it right takes iterations.
No statewide prerequisite is listed — ⚠ unusual for a 4000-level applied law course, and a contrast with `PLA3240` Alternative Dispute Resolution, which has a three-course statewide gate. Institutions normally expect an introduction to the paralegal profession and legal research or civil litigation, and often business law; check your own catalog.
⚠⚠ Take the ethics and UPL course first if your programme has one. Given how sharp the UPL line is in estate work, arriving without that grounding is the wrong order.
A 4000-level course, taken late in an A.S. or within a bachelor's paralegal or legal-studies programme. ⚠ Ask whether your programme holds ABA approval — it is not required to work as a paralegal in Florida, and some employers prefer it. ⚠ Ask separately about the Florida Registered Paralegal designation, a voluntary Florida Bar credential with its own education and experience requirements that is a genuine differentiator in hiring.
Budget seven to nine hours a week.
⚠⚠⚠ This is the failure mode specific to estate work, and it has a quality no other course's does: the client cannot clarify.
A settlement agreement that is ambiguous can be renegotiated. ⚠ A will that is ambiguous is construed by a court after the testator has died, by people who never met them, using rules of construction that may produce the opposite of what was intended. "I leave my jewellery to my daughters" — which daughters, which jewellery, in what shares, and what if one predeceases?
⚠ So the discipline the course builds is precision under the assumption of hostility: draft as though the document will be read by someone who wants it to fail. Name people unambiguously. Say what happens if a beneficiary predeceases. Identify property so that a stranger could find it. Put a residuary clause in — an estate with no residuary clause partially intestate is a classic and avoidable disaster.
⚠⚠ The second failure is missing the non-probate assets. Students draft a beautiful will and never ask about the joint account, the beneficiary designation on the retirement plan, the payable-on-death certificate, or the property already in a trust. ⚠⚠⚠ A will does not control any of those, and an estate plan that ignores them can produce exactly the distribution the client was trying to avoid. The asset inventory is not administrative preliminary — it is the substance.
⚠⚠ Two facts do the most work for a Florida practice. Florida imposes NO state estate tax and no inheritance tax — a substantial part of why people establish domicile here. And the federal estate tax exclusion is high enough that the great majority of estates owe nothing, which means ⚠ most estate planning in practice is about probate avoidance, incapacity, blended families and asset protection rather than tax.
⚠⚠ But the exclusion amount is indexed and is scheduled to change materially, so any figure in a textbook — or in this guide — is unreliable by the time you read it. Learn the structure and look up the number on the IRS site every time.
⚠ The concept most worth understanding properly is stepped-up basis — that inherited appreciated property generally takes a new basis at the date-of-death value, eliminating the capital gain. It is frequently more valuable to a family than any estate-tax planning, and it is the reason "gift it now" is often the wrong advice.
⚠ This practice area's clients are bereaved, elderly, frightened, or all three, and the paralegal is frequently the person they speak to most.
⚠⚠ Three things worth saying. Capacity and undue influence are live issues, not textbook categories — a paralegal who notices that an elderly client is being answered for by the relative who drove them there has spotted something material and should tell the attorney. ⚠ Florida's elder-abuse reporting obligations are real (Chapter 415, and the abuse hotline is 1-800-96-ABUSE), and financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult is reportable. And ⚠ the emotional weight of the work is genuine — probate files are families at their worst moments, and it is reasonable to find that difficult.
Genuinely useful: explaining a doctrine or a procedure a second way; summarising long statutory chapters to find the provision you need; explaining what a form is for; drafting a first pass at a clause, a client letter or a probate checklist for you to correct; building a chronology or an asset inventory template; generating scenarios to practise the intestacy rules; and explaining tax concepts like basis step-up and portability.
⚠ One legitimately good use: rehearsing the UPL refusal. Practising how to decline to advise a distressed client, in words that are kind and firm, is exactly the kind of rehearsal these tools suit — and it is a conversation students are reluctant to practise with a person.
⚠⚠ Where it fails, and the first three are professional-liability matters:
⚠ The professional framing: the supervising attorney signs, the firm carries the liability, and the client is dead by the time the document is tested. Use these tools for structure and summarisation; read every statute yourself; keep every confidence; and route every judgement to the person licensed to make it.
Academic integrity: read your syllabus, and expect a legal-studies programme's policy to be strict — ⚠ the coursework prepares for a profession with disciplinary machinery, and drafting is the graded skill. A will you did not draft teaches you nothing, and drafting is precisely what an employer will test at interview.
Generated September 12, 2026 · Updated September 12, 2026