Comment les guides sont écrits

Where a guide starts

A guide starts with a question people ask — what a successor trustee must do after a death, how long a trustee has to distribute, whether a will avoids probate — and with the sections of the Florida Statutes that answer it. The writer reads the section in the official text on the Florida Legislature's site, not in a summary of it, and reads the sections around it, because the Trust Code answers most questions in two places: the section that names the duty and the section that defines the words.

The first paragraph of every guide is the answer, with its statute, in sixty words or fewer. A reader who stops there has the answer; a reader who continues gets the reasons, the sequence and the edges.

How a plain-language sentence is written

The rule is that a plain sentence must be true of the statute, not merely simpler than it. "The trustee sends the notice within 60 days" is plain and true of §736.0813; "the trustee sends the notice right away" is plainer and false. Where the statute's own words carry a meaning a paraphrase would lose — reasonably informed, expeditiously, adequately disclosed — the guide keeps the words and explains them. Where the statute gives no day-count, the guide says so rather than inventing one.

Guides speak as the statute speaks: the section provides, the trustee gives notice, the code lets the trustee hold a reserve. They do not tell a reader what to do about a particular trust. The words must, should and recommend are reserved for what the statute itself requires, and a guide never concludes anything about the reader's own instrument, which it has not seen.

Citation and linking

Every statutory statement cites its section in the form the Florida Statutes use — §736.0813(1)(a) — and every section cited in a table or a map links to the official text on the Florida Legislature's site, so a reader can check the words. Federal tax points cite the form or the Internal Revenue Code section. Where a point rests on a court decision rather than a statute, the guide says so; where a point is practice rather than law — what a bank usually asks for, what most trustees do — the guide says that too, and does not dress practice as a requirement.

Review, dates, and what changes them

Each guide carries two dates: the day it first published, and the day its copy or metadata last changed. The second is set by hand in the same change that alters the page, never by a build or a request, so that the date a search engine or an answer engine reads is the date something actually changed. Guides that explain a section of the statutes are reviewed against the current Florida Statutes after each regular session of the Legislature; the deadline table, the Chapter 736 map and the glossary carry the date of their last review on the page.

A change in the law re-dates the guide that explains it. A correction re-dates it too. A change to the site's design does not.

Translation

The site serves seven languages. Titles, summaries, chrome and short pages are translated by the team and checked for length and meaning; the long-form guides are English on every language's page, and each translated page says so and says that the statute summaries and the English remain the source of record. A translated summary is never allowed to promise something the English guide does not.

What the guides will not do

They will not give legal advice, review a reader's trust, say what a reader should decide, or arrange review by an attorney for a reader. They will not describe the product as making anyone compliant, protected or ready. They will not name a competitor. They will not carry an advertisement. Where a guide's subject reaches the point at which the general rules run out, it says that a licensed Florida attorney of the reader's own choosing is the right next call, and it names the questions that belong there.

Corrections

A reported error is compared with the official text within days, and a guide that was wrong is corrected, re-dated, and — where the error could have misled a reader about a deadline or a duty — noted at the foot of the guide for a season. Reports come through the site's contact page; a report that names the section and the sentence is the fastest to act on.