Flagler County Probate Court: Where to File and What to File

Where the Flagler County Probate Court Actually Sits

Flagler County probate is heard in the Seventh Judicial Circuit, at the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center at 1769 East Moody Boulevard in Bunnell, where Division 48 takes every probate, guardianship, incapacity, and trust case in the county. Filings go through the Flagler County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, whose probate counter sits on the second floor of the justice center and answers its own direct line at (386) 313-4497.

Nothing is filed in Palm Coast, where most of the county lives. The justice center sits on a 78 acre government campus on East Moody Boulevard, the Clerk’s counter runs Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the general clerk line is (386) 313-4400. The judge who hears all of it keeps chambers in DeLand, in Volusia County, where she holds a second probate division.

Flagler probate case numbers run in the form 2025 CP 000001, and guardianship in the form 2025 GA 000001. The standing order tells filers to use that format specifically, because the same judge’s other division numbers its Volusia cases a different way.

The probate counter is at the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Building 1, Bunnell, FL 32110, second floor, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., (386) 313-4497. Probate keeps its own direct line here, which is unusual in a county this size, and the general clerk line is (386) 313-4400. Depositing an original will costs nothing. A record search by mail runs $2.00 for each year searched and needs the full name, the date of death and a stamped self-addressed envelope. Statements of claim are filed in duplicate at no charge. Certified copies in a disposition without administration have to be approved by the judge, so the Clerk asks you to call for the current charge rather than posting one. The Clerk is moving its site from flaglerclerk.com to flaglerclerk.gov and still publishes its probate email at the old domain, so confirm the address before you send anything there. Nothing is filed in Palm Coast, where most of the county lives.

• The clerk’s probate page for Flagler County
• Seventh Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Seventh Judicial Circuit
• Local probate forms and checklists

One thing worth settling before you go any further. The case belongs in the county where the person was domiciled when they died, and Florida law fixes that rather than letting anyone choose it. If your mother lived in Flagler County, her estate is a Flagler County case, even if you live in another state and even if a different courthouse would be more convenient for everyone involved. It is the county that decides, not the town, so estates from Palm Coast, Bunnell, Flagler Beach, and Beverly Beach are all Flagler County cases filed with the same clerk. Which division or section then hears the case is a separate question, and the next section answers it.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Flagler County?

Probate cases in Flagler County are heard by the judges the chief judge assigns to the division, and the circuit publishes who they are. Knowing who has the division tells you whose procedures apply to your hearing, and how long a judge has had it tells you how settled those procedures are.

• Linda L. Gaustad, Division 48, probate and guardianship, heard at the Kim C. Hammond Justice Center in Bunnell, and she shares her weeks with Division 10 in DeLand, in Volusia County, where her chambers are, assigned September 29, 2025, when the current Flagler assignment order took effect, and the circuit publishes no earlier order to date the assignment from (G-2025-042-FG, read with the circuit division assignments in G-2026-025-SC (A)).

The circuit’s judicial directory is the source, read on September 16, 2026. Assignments rotate, usually at the start of a calendar year, so check it before a hearing.

How Busy the Flagler County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Flagler County are 500 probate filings, 108 guardianship filings and 3 trust filings, plus 96 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 628 probate cases in the same year.

Statewide the probate column was 73,282 filings against 141,166 for the whole division in FY 2024-25, so more than a third of what a Florida probate judge signs has nothing to do with an estate. The figures come from the Office of the State Courts Administrator's Statistical Reference Guide, chapter 6, and the next fiscal year's edition usually appears the following autumn.

When the Flagler County Courthouse Is Closed

Florida sets nine paid state holidays by statute, and a circuit may close on more. The Flagler County courthouse follows the Seventh Judicial Circuit calendar, which adds Presidents Day, Good Friday, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to the statutory nine. The practical point is simple. E-filing accepts a document at any hour, but nothing is reviewed, docketed or signed on a day the courthouse is dark, so a petition filed the night before a closure sits until the next business day, and a deadline counted in days runs on regardless.

There is one caution about counting. A Florida deadline stated in days does not pause for a holiday in the middle of it, and only the last day matters. When the final day of a period falls on a Saturday, a Sunday or a legal holiday, the period runs to the end of the next day that is none of those. The circuit posts the calendar on its court holidays page, read on September 17, 2026, and it publishes the following year well in advance.

How a Case Gets Filed in Flagler County Today

Florida runs one statewide electronic filing system, the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, and every circuit court in the state receives filings through it. Attorneys have no choice about it. The rule says attorneys must file through the portal, and no other method is permitted except in the narrow situations the rule itself lists.

A self-represented person is in a different position, and this is the part almost nobody is told. You may elect to register for the portal and file electronically, or you may hand or mail paper to the clerk, who converts it to electronic format for the official court file. Both routes are proper and both land in the same queue. One caution rides along with the choice. Once you elect to file electronically, you cannot go back to paper without the court’s permission.

Registering costs nothing and filing itself costs nothing. What you pay is the statutory filing fee for the case, plus a payment convenience fee that depends on whether you pay by card or by electronic check.

The practical consequence is that a Flagler County estate does not require anyone to be in Florida. An out-of-state family can open, run, and close a case from a kitchen table in another state, because the filings, the notices, and the proposed orders all move electronically. The exceptions are physical documents, and there are only a few of them.

Every Flagler probate, guardianship, incapacity, and trust case goes to Division 48, and the assignment order sends the vulnerable adult exploitation injunction to the same division, which keeps an exploitation case and the estate that often follows it in front of one judge. The rest of the protective work goes elsewhere. Adult Protective Services Act cases, Baker Act and Marchman Act matters, firearm-disability relief, and risk protection orders are assigned to the circuit civil division and then carried by a county judge on a temporary basis. What you actually plan around here is the hearing rather than the filing, because the length of the hearing decides whether you appear on video or in the room.

Are Flagler County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Flagler County are held remotely by default, on Zoom. A hearing scheduled for less than one hour is conducted by video, which the standing order states as a requirement rather than a choice, so a routine Flagler probate hearing is a video call whether or not anyone asked for one. Hearings of an hour or more, and every evidentiary hearing, are in person unless the court orders otherwise. The division publishes its room as Zoom meeting number 394 754 0782 with password 697044, which is the same room the judge uses for her Volusia division. Every notice of hearing identifies the platform and the hearing room or courtroom, with a courtesy copy emailed to csutton@circuit7.org. A Zoom hearing is a court proceeding like any other, so courtroom attire applies, recording is forbidden, participants keep the device still and find a quiet place, every participant is identified by name and hearing time rather than by a device label such as iPhone, and anyone who interrupts is disconnected. A court reporter appearing by video must meet the circuit’s 2023 order on reporter qualifications.

The division’s remote hearing instructions carry the current links and the dress and conduct rules, which judges enforce on camera exactly as they do in the room.

Where the Original Will Goes

Here is the rule that catches almost everyone, and it is stricter than families expect. Whoever is holding the original will has to deposit it with the clerk of the court that has venue over the estate, within 10 days of receiving information that the person has died. Read that trigger carefully. The clock does not start at the death, it starts when the custodian learns of the death, and the duty belongs to that custodian personally. It does not wait for a lawyer, it does not wait for the family to agree on anything, and it applies whether or not anybody intends to open a probate case. When the will goes in, the clerk also wants the date of death or the last four digits of the deceased person’s Social Security number.

The original itself travels on paper. Whatever a county does about an electronic copy, the physical document has to reach the clerk, and how it gets there is settled county by county rather than statewide. The original goes to the Clerk on paper within 10 days of learning of the death, at the probate counter on the second floor of the justice center, and depositing it costs nothing on the Clerk’s posted schedule. The Clerk states the rule the way the statute does, which is that the original goes to the clerk in the county where the person was a legal resident. Call the probate line at (386) 313-4497 before you travel with one, because the counter closes at 4:30 p.m. and the campus is a drive from Palm Coast.

Three things families routinely get wrong here are worth naming. Depositing the will is not probating it, so handing the original to the clerk does not open an estate, does not appoint anyone, and does not make you responsible for the debts. It is a filing, not a job. A copy is not a substitute either, because a court can admit a lost or destroyed will but proving one is a separate proceeding with a heavier burden, which is a poor trade for a document that could have been walked to a counter. And sitting on a will is a genuinely bad idea. A custodian can be compelled to produce it, and where the court finds there was no just or reasonable cause for holding it back, Florida awards costs, damages, and a reasonable attorney fee against that person personally.

Two small mercies. If the original goes in attached to the petition, Florida treats it as deposited, so it is not a second errand. And once the clerk has it, the original is kept in its original form for at least 20 years whether or not it is ever admitted to probate. Scanning a will does not replace it.

Which Forms You Actually Need

The honest answer surprises people, so here it is plainly. Florida has an official statewide form set for family law, approved by the Supreme Court and free for anyone to use. It has never built the same thing for probate. The state’s own self-help service says as much, telling visitors that it does not provide any forms related to the probate process and to ask a lawyer which form is needed.

So when you search for the Flagler County probate forms, you are looking for something that does not exist as one official packet, which is why the results are a scatter of clerk pages, circuit pages, and companies selling you a template. What actually controls comes from three layers, and you need all three.

• The Florida Probate Rules, which prescribe contents rather than forms. The rule on the petition for administration lists eleven things the petition must state, from the decedent’s domicile to whether the proposed personal representative has been convicted of a felony. A document that satisfies the rule is legally sufficient even if it looks nothing like anyone’s template. The rules do carry a small set of forms of their own, but they are almost entirely guardianship forms, and the rules say outright that those forms are not intended to be part of the rules and are provided for convenience only. The one decedent-estate form actually written into the probate rules is the oath of the personal representative.
• The practitioner form set. Most Florida probate documents you will ever see are built from a numbered probate form set published by a private nonprofit and sold commercially. Lawyers treat it as the standard. It is not court-approved, and nothing obliges a court to accept it.
• The local layer, which is the one that rejects you. Flagler is the checklist county in this circuit, and the checklists come from the judge rather than from the Clerk. Division 48 publishes one for formal administration testate, intestate, lost will, and ancillary, one for each of the summary administration paths, one for discharge of the personal representative, one for subsequent administration, one for a petition to determine homestead property, one for admitting a foreign will to record, and one for disposition of personal property without administration. The three summary administration checklists were revised in July 2026, so a copy saved earlier in the year is out of date. Routing is the other half. Proposed orders go by email in Microsoft Word to the Division 48 mailbox, with the words Proposed Order plus the case style and case number in the subject line, and they are not filed through the e-filing portal. An order on a matter all parties have agreed to may go straight to the judge, provided both the motion and the order say so, and after an evidentiary hearing the proposed order is shown to opposing counsel first and the email says whether they agree. Two more rules bite before a hearing happens. No hearing may be set on a motion that has not been filed, and a hearing set on an unfiled motion is stricken. Memoranda and case law are due three business days before the hearing or they are not considered. One order that a practitioner working both sides of the county line expects here does not apply. The clerk audit that pulls a quiet Volusia estate onto a show cause calendar was signed for Volusia only, by the same judge, and it does not reach a Flagler file.

So start at the bottom of that list rather than the top. The circuit and the clerk publish what they want on their own forms and checklists page, and half an hour there before you draft anything is the cheapest half hour in the case.

The Administrative Orders That Govern Probate in Flagler County

Each circuit adds its own layer on top of the Florida Probate Rules through administrative orders signed by the chief judge and the procedures each division publishes, and that layer is where a petition gets rejected. These are the orders that govern probate practice in Flagler County as of September 16, 2026.

• G-2025-042-FG, Assignment of Cases in Circuit Court, Flagler County (signed September 25, 2025, effective September 29, 2025). Section C(1) sends every probate, guardianship, incapacity and trust case to Division 48, and section C(2) sends the vulnerable adult exploitation injunction to the same division, which is the opposite of Putnam, where that injunction goes to another judge.
• G-2026-025-SC (A), Circuit Division Assignments (signed January 7, 2026, effective January 20, 2026). Names the judge in every circuit division across the four counties, and puts Judge Gaustad in Division 48 for Flagler and Division 10 for Volusia at the same time.
• PB-2009-022-SC, Adversary Case Style on Probate Pleadings (May 22, 2009). A pleading that the probate rules make adversary is returned unfiled by the Clerk if its caption does not carry the adversary case style. Judge Gaustad links this order from her own page under Adversary Cases.
• PB-2022-019-SC, Motions to Compel Discovery in Probate Actions (September 30, 2022). No motion to compel discovery in a probate or guardianship case unless written notice of the deficiencies was given, 10 days were allowed to cure, and the notice is attached to the motion.
• PB-2022-018-SC, Guardianship Examining Committees (September 30, 2022). Guardianship only. The court keeps a list of qualified examining-committee members, and the petitioner confirms that each proposed member is willing before submitting the committee.
• PB-2019-006-SC, Guardianship Education Requirements (February 25, 2019). Guardianship only. Names the approved guardian-education providers for family guardians, and does not reach professional guardians.

The division also publishes its own procedures, last revised November 2024, and the points a filer most needs are these.

• Hearings are scheduled through the judicial assistant by email to csutton@circuit7.org, and the email carries the words Flagler County, the case number in the Flagler format, the motions to be heard with their docket numbers, and the amount of time requested, after coordinating with all counsel. Related short matters that add up to more than an hour count as one long hearing.
• Proposed orders go by email in Microsoft Word to division48@circuit7.org, with the words Proposed Order plus the case style and case number in the subject line, and are not filed through the e-portal. An order on a matter all parties have agreed to may go straight to the judge, provided both the motion and the order say so, and after an evidentiary hearing the proposed order is shown to opposing counsel first and the email says whether they agree.
• Hearings of an hour or more, and all evidentiary hearings, are in person. Hearings scheduled for less than one hour are conducted by video, which the standing order states as a requirement rather than a choice.
• No hearing may be set on a motion that has not been filed, and a hearing set on an unfiled motion is stricken. A notice of hearing is filed as soon as the time is secured, identifies the platform and the hearing room or courtroom, and goes to the judicial assistant as a courtesy copy. Only the party that reserved the time may cancel it, and another party may not notice a different motion into someone else’s reserved slot without consent.
• Memoranda and case law are due three business days before the hearing or they are not considered. An emergency is requested in writing with the reason in the first paragraph and a courtesy copy to the judicial assistant carrying the word Emergency in the subject line.
• The division publishes a checklist for each kind of estate, testate, intestate, lost will and ancillary formal administration, all four summary administration paths, discharge of the personal representative, subsequent administration, a petition to determine homestead property, admission of a foreign will to record, and disposition of personal property without administration. The three summary administration checklists were revised in July 2026, so download them again rather than reusing last year’s copy.

The full procedures are on the court’s site, and they change more often than the statutes do.

The Checklist for Opening an Estate in Flagler County

This is the sequence for a formal administration, which is the full version. A smaller estate skips most of it, and the section after this one covers that. Each step below happens in this order for a reason, because the later ones depend on the earlier ones being done.

1. Order certified death certificates. The funeral home usually orders them and will ask how many you want. Ask for more than feels sensible, often five to ten, because the court, each bank, each insurer, and the property records all want their own certified copy, and reordering later is slow.
2. Find the original will and deposit it with the clerk. The 10-day clock runs from when the custodian learns of the death, not from when anyone files anything, and it is the one deadline that can already be running while the family is still planning a funeral. Where the original goes in Flagler County is above, and it is never just a matter of uploading it.
3. Decide which kind of administration the estate needs. Formal administration is the default. Summary administration and disposition without administration are lighter and cheaper, and they are worth ruling out before you file anything, because you cannot un-file a formal case cheaply.
4. Confirm the county. Venue follows the decedent’s domicile at death, or for someone who lived out of state, a county where they owned property. This is one of the few things in probate that is genuinely hard to fix later.
5. Prepare and e-file the petition for administration, with the local extras. The petition is verified, meaning signed under penalty of perjury, and it has to name every interested person, which is the line that most often comes back to bite an estate later. File it with whatever Flagler County adds on top, because that is what a rejection is usually about. The filing fee is $400.
6. File the oath, the address designation, and the designation of resident agent. All three are due before letters issue. The oath is a sworn promise to faithfully administer the estate, and the appointment rests on it. The address designation puts the representative’s street and mailing address on the record. The resident agent designation, signed by the agent accepting the job, is required unless the representative is a corporate fiduciary with a Florida office or a Florida Bar member who lives and keeps an office in Florida, which in practice means nearly every family representative files one and the attorney usually is the agent. These can be folded into the petition or the oath rather than filed separately.
7. Get the order and the letters of administration. Once the petition is in and the will is admitted, the court appoints the representative, sets or waives bond, and confirms the oath and resident agent papers are on file. Letters of administration then issue, and the letters are the thing that carries weight in the outside world. Order roughly ten certified copies at once, because banks, brokerages, and title companies each keep one and many will not accept letters more than 60 to 90 days old.
8. Get an estate tax identification number and open the estate account. This comes right after the letters and before anything else useful can happen, because no bank will open an account for the estate without both.
9. Serve the notice of administration. Florida says promptly rather than naming a day count. It goes to the surviving spouse, the beneficiaries, anyone who may be entitled to exempt property, and the trustee and qualified beneficiaries of certain trusts. Service starts a 3-month clock for the person served to challenge the validity of the will, the venue, or the court’s jurisdiction, and after that those objections are barred. That deadline is close to unextendable, because Florida allows an extension only for estoppel based on a misstatement by the personal representative about the deadline itself, and expressly not for failure to disclose information or for other misconduct. The clock also runs only against people who were actually served, so leaving someone off the list does not save time, it leaves the case open. The same notice starts a 4-month window to claim exempt property and a 6-month window for a surviving spouse to elect against the estate.
10. Publish the notice to creditors, serve the ones you know about, and document the search. The notice runs in a newspaper in the county once a week for two consecutive weeks. An unknown creditor then has 3 months from the first publication, and a creditor who had to be served gets the later of that or 30 days from service. The representative has to make a diligent search for reasonably ascertainable creditors, though Florida does not demand an impracticable one, and a verified statement about that search goes in within 4 months of the first publication, with proof of publication filed within 45 days. One item gets missed constantly. If the person who died was 55 or older, a copy of the notice and a death certificate go to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration within 3 months of the first publication. And a reasonably ascertainable creditor who was never served keeps a claim for up to two years from the death.
11. File the inventory within 60 days of the letters, then close the estate. The inventory lists each asset at its date-of-death value and is served on the residuary beneficiaries and the surviving spouse. After the creditor period runs and the claims are resolved, the estate distributes and the representative files a final accounting and a petition for discharge. Florida puts a real deadline on that too, generally within 12 months after the letters issued for an estate that files no federal estate tax return. A straightforward case runs 6 to 12 months from letters to discharge, and the creditor window is what sets the floor.

What It Costs to File in Flagler County

These are the charges the clerk posts, not anyone’s legal fee.

Posted August 2026. Fee schedules move, so confirm the current charge with the clerk before you file. The reason the number looks the same everywhere is that it is the same number. Florida law sets the base charge for opening a formal administration and adds a small statutory service charge on top, so the entire statewide spread across the ten largest counties is one dollar. Our county-by-county filing fee study has all ten posted schedules.

And then there is the number that dwarfs every line above. Florida publishes an attorney fee schedule that is presumed reasonable and scales with the size of the estate, and it is a ceiling the estate may agree to rather than a mandate. On a $100,000 estate the schedule calls $3,000 reasonable. That, not the clerk’s $400, is what probate costs a family. You can run your own numbers in the Florida probate cost calculator.

When the Estate Does Not Need All of This

Before you open a formal administration, rule out the three lighter paths, in this order.

• No probate at all. Only assets in the deceased person’s sole name with no other instruction go through probate. Life insurance and retirement accounts with a named beneficiary, pay-on-death bank accounts, jointly held property with survivorship, property in a funded trust, and a home that passed under a lady bird deed all move without a court case. Sometimes the whole estate turns out to be in that category. Our page on whether you need probate in Florida walks the test.
• Disposition without administration. For the smallest estates, with no real property and not much more than the final bills, whoever paid those bills can ask the clerk to release what is left. It is a request rather than a case, and it costs $231 here. See how disposition without administration works.
• Summary administration. Available when the probate estate is worth $150,000 or less after exempt property, a threshold raised from $75,000 on July 1, 2026, or when the person died more than two years ago. No personal representative is appointed, and the case can close in weeks rather than months. The summary administration guide has a short qualifier.

One warning about that last figure, because it will confuse you if you go looking. Florida publishes its statutes once a year, and the edition on the official statute site still shows the old $75,000 line. The increase to $150,000 is real, it came from a 2026 session law, and the probate rule on summary administration has already been amended to match. Check the rule rather than the posted statute until the new edition appears.

If none of the three fits, the estate needs a formal administration, and the checklist above is the map.

Doing It Yourself, and Where Families Stop

Florida does not require you to hire anyone to file a document. It does require something else, and this is where most families stop. Under the Florida Probate Rules, every personal representative has to be represented by an attorney admitted to practice in Florida unless the representative remains the sole interested person in the estate, or is a Florida-admitted lawyer appearing for himself or herself in that role. Those are the only exceptions. Read it as the practical test it is. One heir, nobody else with an interest, no creditors, and you may proceed alone. A second sibling, or a creditor, and the court expects counsel regardless of how well everyone is getting along.

The smaller paths are different. Disposition without administration is designed to be done without a lawyer, and clerks routinely help with it. Summary administration sits in between, simple on its face and easy to get wrong in ways that surface years later when someone tries to sell the house.

If you do want counsel for a Flagler County estate, our probate attorney page for Palm Coast covers what we charge and how the remote process works. And if you would rather do it yourself, nothing on this page is holding anything back. Everything above is the actual sequence.

What Changed at the Flagler County Probate Court This Year

Court practice changes without much announcement. These are the developments in the last year that affect a Flagler County probate filer, each with its source.

• September 29, 2025. The Flagler case assignment order was reissued as G-2025-042-FG, signed September 25, 2025, keeping probate in Division 48 and keeping the vulnerable adult exploitation injunction with the probate judge. Source.
• October 8, 2025. G-2025-013-FG, appointing the administrative judge for Flagler County, was posted, superseding the 2022 order, and no newer Flagler-specific administrative order has been posted since. Source.
• January 20, 2026. The circuit division assignments were reissued as G-2026-025-SC (A), keeping Judge Gaustad in Division 48 for Flagler and Division 10 for Volusia. Source.
• July 2026. The division’s three summary administration checklists were revised, per the dates in their own file names, so a copy saved earlier in the year is out of date. Source.
• September 21, 2026. Courthouses in all four counties of the circuit close Monday, September 21, for Yom Kippur and reopen Tuesday, September 22, and the circuit’s 2026 holiday list also carries Rosh Hashanah on September 11. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The order emailed to the wrong division. A paralegal handling estates in both Flagler and Volusia sent a Flagler proposed order to the Volusia division mailbox, in the Volusia case-number format, because the same judge signs both. The two divisions have separate mailboxes and separate case-number formats, and the standing order tells Flagler filers to use the Flagler form. The order was correct. The queue it had landed in belonged to the other county.

The evidentiary hearing that was not on Zoom. A son in Michigan had attended two short Flagler hearings from his office, because a hearing of under an hour here is conducted by video. The contested hearing on his sister’s objection was set for two hours with witnesses. Every evidentiary hearing, and every hearing of an hour or more, is in person unless the court orders otherwise. The notice of hearing names the platform, which is how he found out, and he had nine days to book a flight.

Sources of Law

Statutes and rules retrieved August 19, 2026. Court, clerk, and filing-fee data retrieved on the dates noted. Local requirements change without much announcement, so confirm the current version at the links above before you file.

• Rules cited are the Florida Probate Rules, current through the opinion issued July 16, 2026, and the Florida Rules of General Practice and Judicial Administration, effective July 1, 2026.
• Filing. Fla. R. Gen. Prac. & Jud. Admin. 2.525(b)(1) (attorneys must file through the portal; no other method permitted except as the rule provides), 2.525(b)(2) (an unrepresented party may elect to file through the portal, and once made the election may not be withdrawn without leave of court), 2.525(c)(1)(A) (a paper document may be submitted to the clerk, who converts it, where filed by an unrepresented party who has not elected). Filings move through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, operated by the Florida Courts E-Filing Authority, which states there is no cost to register and no fee to file electronically, apart from the statutory filing fee and a convenience fee based on the payment method.
• The original will. Fla. Stat. §732.901(1) (custodian must deposit within 10 days after receiving information that the testator is dead, with the clerk having venue, supplying the date of death or the last four digits of the social security number), (2) (custodian may be compelled; costs, damages, and a reasonable attorney fee where there was no just or reasonable cause), (3) (an original submitted with a petition is deemed deposited), (4) (clerk preserves the original in original form for at least 20 years; digitizing does not eliminate the requirement). Fla. Prob. R. 5.043 (deposit of wills and codicils; retained in original form).
• Opening the estate. Venue, Fla. Stat. §733.101. Petition, §733.202 and Fla. Prob. R. 5.200 (the eleven required contents). Preference in appointment, §733.301. Nonresident personal representatives, §733.304. Oath before letters, Fla. Prob. R. 5.320 (which also carries the only decedent-estate form written into the rules). Address designation and designation of resident agent with acceptance, both before letters, with the corporate-fiduciary and Florida-Bar-member exceptions, Fla. Prob. R. 5.110. Issuance of letters and bond, Fla. Prob. R. 5.235 and §733.213.
• Notices and claims. Notice of administration served promptly, the persons served, the 3-month objection window for the validity of the will, venue, or jurisdiction, and the estoppel-only extension, Fla. Stat. §733.212 and Fla. Prob. R. 5.240 (exempt property 4 months, elective share 6 months). Notice to creditors published once a week for 2 consecutive weeks, the diligent search for reasonably ascertainable creditors, and notice to the Agency for Health Care Administration within 3 months where the decedent was 55 or older, Fla. Stat. §733.2121 and Fla. Prob. R. 5.241 (proof of publication within 45 days; verified statement of the search within 4 months). Claim deadlines, the later of 3 months from first publication or 30 days from service, §733.702. Two-year bar after death whether or not letters ever issued, §733.710.
• Running and closing. Inventory within 60 days after issuance of letters at date-of-death value, Fla. Stat. §733.604 and Fla. Prob. R. 5.340. Final accounting and petition for discharge within 12 months after issuance of letters for an estate filing no federal estate tax return, Fla. Prob. R. 5.400(c). Attorney required for the personal representative unless the representative remains the sole interested person or is a Florida-admitted attorney appearing in that role, Fla. Prob. R. 5.030(a). Presumed-reasonable attorney compensation, §733.6171.
• Smaller estates. Summary administration, Fla. Stat. §735.201 and Fla. Prob. R. 5.530(a)(7). Reading note. The statute as officially published still shows $75,000, because Florida publishes its statutes annually and the 2026 edition is not yet posted. The $150,000 figure comes from CS/HB 1337 (2026), ch. 2026-57, Laws of Florida, section 7, effective July 1, 2026, and Rule 5.530 has been amended to match. Disposition without administration, §735.301.
• Forms. The Florida Probate Rules place their forms in Part V and state that the forms are not intended to be part of the rules and are provided for convenience only; the Part V set is essentially guardianship forms. The Florida State Courts System’s self-help service states that Florida Courts Help does not provide any forms related to the probate process, in contrast with the Supreme Court-approved family law forms. The practitioner form set commonly used in Florida probate is published and sold by a private nonprofit and is not court-approved.
• Cost. Probate filing service charges, Fla. Stat. §28.2401. Posted Flagler County charges read from the clerk’s own schedule, retrieved 2026-08-09; all ten largest counties are documented in our probate cost by county study.
• Caseload. Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator, FY 2024-25 Statistical Reference Guide, Chapter 6, Circuit Probate, tables of filings and dispositions by circuit, county and category, retrieved September 15, 2026.
• Flagler County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · G-2025-042-FG · G-2026-025-SC (A) · PB-2009-022-SC · PB-2022-019-SC · PB-2022-018-SC · PB-2019-006-SC. Judge assignments come from the circuit’s assignment orders cited above. The parking and coffee notes are conveniences for visitors, not court information, and the research file with every source is reference/research/probate-court-pilot/flagler-county.md.
• Flagler County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Seventh Judicial Circuit administrative orders · judges directory · local forms and checklists.

Updated on September 16, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. This page is general information about Florida court procedure, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created by reading it. Court addresses, local checklists, and clerk charges change; confirm them at the official links before you file. We serve Palm Coast residents wherever you are, and this is not a Flagler County office.