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

Where the Hillsborough County Probate Court Actually Sits

Hillsborough County probate is heard in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, at the George Edgecomb Courthouse at 800 E. Twiggs Street in Tampa. Filings go through the Hillsborough County Clerk of Court and Comptroller, which offers probate service in person at three places, downtown Tampa, Plant City, and the Brandon service center, and asks that you make an appointment before coming to the Tampa location.

The Clerk’s Probate, Guardianship and Trust department does more than accept paper. It screens filings and audits guardianship accountings, which is why a defect here tends to surface at the counter rather than months later in front of a judge.

The probate counter is at the George E. Edgecomb Courthouse, 800 E. Twiggs Street, Tampa, FL 33602, Room 204, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., (813) 276-8100. The Clerk asks for an appointment before you come to the Tampa counter, and it wants the original will mailed to P.O. Box 3360, Tampa, FL 33601-3360 with an Acknowledgement of Venue form rather than carried in. A second counter sits at the Plant City Courthouse, 301 N. Michigan, Room 1071, and a Brandon service center is listed without details.

• The clerk’s probate page for Hillsborough County
• Thirteenth Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Thirteenth 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 Hillsborough County, her estate is a Hillsborough 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 Tampa, Brandon, Plant City, Riverview, Carrollwood, Temple Terrace, and Valrico are all Hillsborough 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.

Parking and Coffee on the Way to the Courthouse

The circuit publishes no parking guidance for the public. The closest garage the county itself points to is the City of Tampa Parking Garage at 901 E. Twiggs Street, immediately west of Nebraska Avenue, with a 6 foot 7 inch entrance height, which the Clerk names for jurors, and the free validation there applies to jurors only. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

If you are dropping off an original will or sitting through a morning calendar, coffee within a short walk is Cuban Eats, formerly Café Perera at 601 N. Morgan Street, Tampa, about a 4-minute walk from the public entrance. Walk two blocks west on Twiggs to Morgan and one block north; it opens at 7 a.m. on weekdays and closes at 2 p.m. Blind Tiger Coffee Roasters at 201 N. Franklin Street is a dedicated roaster about half a mile away, open weekdays from 7:30 a.m.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Hillsborough County?

Probate cases in Hillsborough 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.

• Catherine M. Catlin, Division A, Tampa, assigned since at least January 1, 2026 (AO A-2025-060, restated by AO A-2026-046, which gives Division A to Cheryl K. Thomas on January 5, 2027).
• Caroline Tesche Arkin, Division B, Tampa, administrative judge of the division, assigned since at least January 1, 2026 (AO A-2025-060, restated by AO A-2026-046, which gives Division B to Elizabeth G. Rice on January 5, 2027).
• Michael S. Williams, East Circuit Division O, Probate and Trust, Plant City, assigned since at least January 1, 2026 (AO A-2025-060, restated by AO A-2026-046).
• Cory L. Chandler, East Circuit Division U, Probate and Trust, Plant City, assigned since at least January 1, 2026 (AO A-2025-060, restated by AO A-2026-046).
• James S. Moody, III, East Circuit Division W, Probate and Trust, Plant City, administrative judge of the East Division, assigned since at least January 1, 2026 (AO A-2025-060, restated by AO A-2026-046).

The circuit’s judicial directory is the source, read on September 15, 2026. Assignments rotate, usually at the start of a calendar year, so check it before a hearing.

How Busy the Hillsborough County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Hillsborough County are 3,332 probate filings, 629 guardianship filings and 39 trust filings, plus 6,504 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 3,512 probate cases in the same year. Spread across 5 judges, that is about 666 new probate cases per judge a year, which is the number behind how long an uncontested order takes to get signed.

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 Hillsborough County Courthouse Is Closed

Florida sets nine paid state holidays by statute, and a circuit may close on more. The Hillsborough County courthouse follows the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit calendar, which adds Good Friday, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Christmas Eve 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 Hillsborough 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 Hillsborough 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.

This is the unusual part. Under administrative order S-2024-013, the Clerk assigns probate cases to two Tampa divisions on a 5 to 3 ratio, so which division you draw is partly arithmetic. If the decedent was domiciled inside the East Division boundaries, that overrides the ratio and sends the case to a Plant City division instead. So the decedent’s address, not the family’s, decides whether this is a Tampa case or a Plant City case.

Are Hillsborough County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Hillsborough County can be held remotely on Zoom, and the division decides which matters must be in person. Hearing time is set in the circuit’s JAWS scheduler and confirmed by email to the division, and each judge publishes a standing Zoom room, Meeting ID 942-0767-9503 for Division A, 290 295 2375 for Division B, and 810-6293-5489, 935-0735-6436 and 257-503-9244 for the Plant City Divisions O, U and W. Division B hears any matter of an hour or more in person, along with emergency temporary guardianship and vulnerable-adult petitions, and the notice of hearing has to say whether it is Zoom or in person. In Plant City a contested evidentiary matter of 30 minutes or more is heard in the courtroom, 45 minutes in Division O, and an uncontested matter of 15 minutes or less may be by Zoom.

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. Hillsborough is a mail county, and it adds a form of its own. The Clerk asks that the original will be mailed to its post office box in Tampa rather than carried to a counter, and an Acknowledgement of Venue form has to accompany any will filed. There is no fee to deposit a will, and the Clerk will not hold one for safekeeping while the maker is alive. Worth knowing alongside that, the Clerk does take some originals electronically, including death certificates and the oath and resident agent papers, and says plainly that you do not have to mail those in. The will is pointedly not on that list.

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 Hillsborough 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. The requirements here are about routing and preference rather than extra affidavits. Proposed orders go through the e-filing portal within 10 days of the ruling, and each probate judge posts individual procedures on the judges directory, so the practice that gets an order signed in one division is not automatically the practice in the next. The Clerk itself publishes only four probate forms, an acknowledgement of venue, a disposition of personal property form, a statement of claim, and a registry funds request, and sends everyone else to the judges’ published preferences. So in Hillsborough the real form question is which judge you drew.

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 Hillsborough 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 Hillsborough County as of September 15, 2026.

• AO S-2024-013, Probate Proceedings (entered January 22, 2024, effective March 1, 2024). The Clerk assigns Probate Code cases to Tampa Divisions A and B on a 5 to 3 ratio unless the decedent was domiciled inside the East Division boundaries, which sends the case to a Plant City division by random draw. The same order sends proposed orders through the portal within 10 days of the ruling with a cover letter, wants papers to be heard filed at least 5 days ahead, gives an emergency 48 hours of actual notice, and sets a case management conference within 60 days in an adversary proceeding.
• AO S-2024-017, Trust Administration Proceedings (entered January 22, 2024, effective March 1, 2024). Trust administration proceedings are assigned the same way, East Circuit Division O included, and an emergency application in the assigned judge’s absence goes to the Circuit Civil administrative judge or the duty judge.
• AO S-2022-020, General Magistrates in the Probate, Guardianship, Mental Health and Trust Division (effective October 3, 2022). Probate, guardianship, mental health and trust matters may be sent to a general magistrate by an order of referral, and a party has the right to object to the referral.
• AO S-2026-008, Guardianship Proceedings (entered February 12, 2026, effective March 2, 2026). A 17-page order that governs how guardianship cases are assigned and handled in the division, superseding the 2024 version.
• AO A-2026-046, Amended Judicial Assignments (entered August 19, 2026). Restates every current assignment through January 4, 2027 and sets the rotation that puts new judges in both Tampa probate divisions on January 5, 2027.

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

• Both Tampa divisions are paperless, so every order is uploaded through the portal as a PDF to the correct division, an order that follows a hearing states the hearing date in its first paragraph, and the timing is strict, with Division A rejecting an order uploaded more than 2 days before the hearing and Division B rejecting any order uploaded before the hearing at all.
• Case law for a contested hearing is due in advance, at least 5 business days before in Division A, hand delivered or mailed, and at least 3 days before in Division B, by email to the division.
• For an incapacity hearing, tell the division at least 3 business days ahead whether you are providing a court reporter, or the hearing is cancelled.
• Hearing time is set in JAWS, with Division A asking for an email to probatedivisiona@fljud13.org after you check JAWS and Division B asking for a courtesy copy of the e-filed notice to probatedivisionb@fljud13.org, and any Division B hearing of an hour or more is set with the judicial assistant and heard in person only, while in Plant City a hearing of 30 minutes or less goes on the judge’s civil docket in JAWS and a longer one is set by email to the judicial assistant.
• Competing orders go in one email to the judicial assistant with a cover letter describing the differences, the hearing date, and Word versions of both orders.

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 Hillsborough 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 Hillsborough 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 Hillsborough 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 Hillsborough 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.

One cost here is lower than in the other big counties. A qualifying weekly legal-notice paper covering this county posted a flat $105 rate for a notice to creditors in 2026, where the metro dailies commonly run $150 to $250 for the same two weeks. The paper is chosen when the case is filed, so it is worth asking about before the first notice runs.

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 Hillsborough County estate, our probate attorney page for Tampa 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 Hillsborough County Probate Court This Year

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

• August 19, 2026. Under amended assignment order A-2026-046, both Tampa probate divisions change judges on January 5, 2027, with Cheryl K. Thomas taking Division A and becoming administrative judge of the division and Elizabeth G. Rice taking Division B, so any preference tied to the current judges, the 2-day upload window and the 5-day case law rule among them, should be re-read in January 2027. Source.
• May 30, 2026. County and court leaders are weighing a replacement for the Courthouse Annex, with $155 million set aside from the Community Investment Tax and no design or timeline chosen, and the Edgecomb Courthouse, where probate sits, stays in use under most proposals. Source.
• February 12, 2026. The chief judge re-issued the division’s guardianship order as S-2026-008, effective March 2, 2026, superseding the 2024 version. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The Plant City estate nobody expected. A family in south Tampa opened an estate for a father who had lived out east near Plant City. They had assumed a downtown case. Domicile inside the East Division boundaries sends the case to a Plant City division regardless of the Clerk’s usual assignment ratio, so the hearings, the judge’s posted procedures, and the counter were all somewhere else.

The order held ten days too long. A proposed order sat on a paralegal’s desk after a hearing, waiting to be packaged with other filings. This circuit expects proposed orders through the portal within 10 days of the ruling, and each judge posts individual preferences on top of that. The estate did not lose the ruling, it lost the month, which on a creditor timeline is not free.

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 Hillsborough 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.
• Hillsborough County local court layer, retrieved September 15, 2026, from the judicial directory · AO S-2024-013 · AO S-2024-017 · AO S-2022-020 · AO S-2026-008 · AO A-2026-046. 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/hillsborough-county.md.
• Hillsborough County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Thirteenth Judicial Circuit administrative orders · judges directory · local forms and checklists.

Updated on September 15, 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 Tampa residents wherever you are, and this is not a Hillsborough County office.