Florida Notice of Administration and the 3-Month Clock

What Is a Notice of Administration?

It is the document a Florida personal representative serves early in a probate to tell the people with an interest in the estate that the administration has begun. It names the decedent, the file number and the court, says whether the estate is testate or intestate, identifies the personal representative and their attorney, and sets out the deadlines that now apply to you.

It is not a court order. It does not demand a response. Nothing on its face tells you that it is the single most time-sensitive piece of paper you will receive in the entire case, which is why it so often goes into a drawer.

Practice pointer. Write the date of service on the front of it in pen, the day it arrives. Every deadline in this page is measured from that date, and reconstructing it later from memory is how good claims get lost.

Who Has to Be Served

Fla. Stat. §733.212(1) requires the personal representative to promptly serve a copy on the following persons who are known to them, in the manner provided for service of formal notice.

• The decedent’s surviving spouse.
• Beneficiaries.
• The trustee of any trust described in Fla. Stat. §733.707(3), and each qualified beneficiary of that trust as defined in Fla. Stat. §736.0103, if each trustee is also a personal representative of the estate.
• Persons who may be entitled to exempt property.

The statute then gives the personal representative an option. They may similarly serve a copy on devisees under a known prior will, on heirs, or on others who claim or may claim an interest in the estate. That word may matters. If you were a beneficiary under an earlier will and are not one under this one, you are in the optional category, and whether you get served is a choice someone else makes.

Practice pointer. If you believe you were left out of a will and you have not been served, do not wait to be. Being outside the mandatory list is not a reason the court will give you more time later.

The Three-Month Objection Deadline

This is the core of the statute. Fla. Stat. §733.212(3) provides that any interested person on whom a copy of the notice is served must object to the validity of the will, the venue, or the jurisdiction of the court by filing a petition or other pleading requesting relief in accordance with the Florida Probate Rules, on or before the date three months after service on the objecting person, or those objections are forever barred.

There is also an outer boundary that catches the case where no notice was served or the dates are disputed. Unless sooner barred, all objections to the validity of a will, venue or jurisdiction must be filed no later than the earlier of the entry of an order of final discharge of the personal representative, or one year after service of the notice of administration.

Three months is short. It is shorter than it sounds when the person who died was a parent, the family is spread across states, and nobody has yet seen the will.

Why the Deadline Almost Never Gets Extended

Most limitation periods bend a little. This one is drafted specifically not to. The statute grants exactly one exception and then names the things that do not qualify.

“The 3-month time period may only be extended for estoppel based upon a misstatement by the personal representative regarding the time period within which an objection must be filed. The time period may not be extended for any other reason, including affirmative representation, failure to disclose information, or misconduct by the personal representative or any other person.” Fla. Stat. §733.212(3).

Read the second sentence again. A personal representative who conceals assets, who misrepresents the size of the estate, or who behaves badly in any other way does not extend your deadline. The only misstatement that helps you is a misstatement about the deadline itself.

That is a deliberate legislative choice in favour of finality, and it produces hard outcomes. It also means the practical answer to "should I look into this now or wait and see what happens" is always now.

Practice pointer. If a personal representative or their attorney tells you in writing when your objection is due, keep that writing. It is the one category of statement that can extend the period, and only if it was wrong.

Where Do I File My Objection, and By When?

Clients are often confused about where an objection goes, and ask me, "Do I write back to the personal representative?" No, and that mistake costs people the case. A letter to the lawyer who sent you the notice is not a filing. The statute requires a petition or other pleading filed with the court under the Florida Probate Rules, and I have seen a careful, timely letter do absolutely nothing because it never reached a docket.

The notice is the starting gun for the rest of the case. Once it is served, interested persons have three months to object to the will or the appointment, and the personal representative spends that window doing the work priced in the probate cost calculator while the clock in how long probate takes runs. If real property has to move before the estate closes, it usually moves by a personal representative's deed.

The Other Clocks the Same Notice Starts

Four different periods run from one service date, and they are all different lengths. This table is the reason people miss one while watching another.

Note the direction of each rule. The exempt property deadline takes the later of two dates, which is generous. The elective share takes the earlier, which is not. Reading one as if it worked like the other is a common and expensive error.

A separate trust clock may also be running alongside all of this. A contest to a revocable trust runs on its own six-month period under a different statute, explained on can a trust be contested in Florida. For the spousal claim see the Florida elective share, and for the will itself contesting a Florida will.

What the Notice Must Contain

Fla. Stat. §733.212(2) lists what the notice must state. Beyond the identifying details and the deadlines above, two disclosures are worth knowing about because they concern rights you can lose passively.

The notice must state that by failing to contest the will, under certain circumstances the recipient may be waiving the right to contest the validity of a trust or other writing incorporated by reference into the will. So the three-month deadline can reach further than the will itself.

It must also state that the personal representative or curator has no duty to discover whether property held at the decedent’s death by the decedent or the surviving spouse is property to which Florida’s Uniform Disposition of Community Property Rights at Death Act applies, unless a written demand is made by the surviving spouse or a beneficiary. If you moved to Florida from a community property state, that demand is yours to make and nobody will make it for you.

The notice must additionally state that the fiduciary lawyer-client privilege in Fla. Stat. §90.5021 applies as between the personal representative and any attorney they employ, which is the statute that governs what that lawyer must and must not tell you.

What to Do the Week You Receive One

1. Record the service date. On the document, in pen. Keep the envelope.
2. Read the deadline paragraphs, not the first page. The dates that matter are in the body, in the subsections tracking §733.212(2)(c) through (e).
3. Ask for the will and the inventory. You are entitled to see what you are being asked to accept, and the three months run whether or not you have seen it.
4. Get it reviewed inside the first month. Not the third. A contest is a filing, and filings take preparation.

Practice pointer. The most common call we get on this document arrives in month four. There is no version of that conversation that ends well, and the statute leaves almost nothing to argue with.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The drawer. A daughter in Ocala received the notice five weeks after her father’s funeral, recognised her brother’s name as personal representative, and put it with the death certificates. She called in month five, after the distributions did not match what she had been told. The grounds were not the problem. The calendar was.

The waiver signed to be helpful. A Sarasota family signed waivers of service early so the probate could move faster. Nobody explained that under §733.212(8) the filing of the waiver is itself the service date. Two of them were out of time before they understood a clock had started.

The prior-will beneficiary nobody served. A man named in a 2014 will was not named in the 2022 one. He was in the optional category, not the mandatory one, so no notice went to him. He learned of the probate from a cousin. Being outside the required list is not a reason a court will extend the period, and the outer one-year limit was already running.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §733.212(1) (who must be served, and who may be served at the personal representative’s option); (2)(a) to (g) (required contents); (2)(c) and (3) (the 3-month objection period, the single estoppel exception, and the outer limit of final discharge or 1 year); (2)(d) (exempt property under §732.402, the later of 4 months or 40 days); (2)(e) (elective share, the earlier of 6 months or 2 years, subject to §732.2135(2)); (2)(f) (failing to contest may waive a trust challenge); (2)(g) and §732.2211 (community property, written demand required); (4) (a successor personal representative does not renew the period); (5) and (6) (personal representative not individually liable); (7) (new notice if a will or codicil is later admitted); (8) (waived service is deemed to occur when the waiver is filed). History, s. 1, ch. 74-106 through s. 11, ch. 2024-238. Text retrieved 2026-09-14.
• Related: Fla. Stat. §733.2123 (adjudication before issuance of letters, an alternative route to barring objections); §733.707(3) and §736.0103 (annotated) (the trusts and qualified beneficiaries referenced in subsection (1)); §732.402 (exempt property); §732.2135 (elective share election and extension); §90.5021 (fiduciary lawyer-client privilege).
• ⚠ Deadlines here are driven by your specific service date and the posture of the estate. This page describes the statute; it does not calculate your dates. Confirm them before relying on anything above, because the statute forecloses almost every extension.
• Litigation is quoted case by case and is not offered at a flat fee. Fees are not a prediction of outcome.

What I See in These Files

In 14 years of law practice the notice of administration is the document I find families most reliably underestimate. It carries no signature line and asks for nothing, so it reads to them as an update rather than a deadline. Meanwhile it is doing more work than any other paper in the file, and I have watched it quietly end claims that deserved to be heard.

I also litigate probate matters after they fail, which enhances the practice of advising on them early. The cases I remember are the ones where the will was genuinely vulnerable and the three months had run, because the statute leaves a court almost nothing to work with and I have to say so out loud. So the first thing I ask for on these calls is the envelope, not the will. Avoid treating correspondence from a personal representative as informational until someone has checked it against the statute, and avoid signing a waiver of service without knowing that filing it starts your own clock.

Updated on September 14, 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. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Your deadlines depend on your service date and the facts of the estate, which we confirm at a free consult.