A Home Away from Home

Florida Sunset

This blog should have been posted Friday, but it's late because we are in Florida establishing residency. However, that doesn't mean we plan to live here.

That calls for an explanation:

Since we live full-time in our RV and may be anywhere at any given time, we need a mailing address in order to receive mail. Also, because of various legal issues, we need a fixed residential address. Theoretically, setting up residency. or domicile, can be done in just about any state, but most states make it difficult. To keep Georgia as our legal domicile, for example, we would have to spend 180 days in the state each year. Much as we love Georgia (we've lived in the state for 46 years), we want to travel more than that.

Fortunately, some states are much less restrictive in their residency requirements. Florida, Texas, and South Dakota are the most favorable to full-time RVers.

There is a number of organizations that can provide full-time RVers both legal addresses and mail-forwarding addresses. We chose the Escapees RV Club, based in Sumter County, Florida and Livingston, Texas. With the information they provided, we filled out a Declaration of Domicile form and came to Bushnell, Florida, the county seat of Sumter County, where we got new driver's licenses, Florida plates for our truck and trailer, and registered as Florida voters. (The people in the County Clerk's office were extremely friendly and helpful.) And since our auto insurance company can only write policies in Georgia, we switched to one that can write Florida policies.

We are now legal residents of Florida.

Florida does not have a requirement that we spend any minimum number of days in the state, but if all goes as we hope we will spend our winters here, fall in North Georgia/East Tennessee, and the rest of the year wherever the wind takes us.

Photograph and text copyright 2021, David B.Jenkins

I post each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone