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

Where the Pinellas County Probate Court Actually Sits

Pinellas County probate is heard in the Sixth Judicial Circuit, and the county runs two probate sections. Both currently keep chambers at the St. Petersburg Judicial Building at 545 First Avenue North. The Clerk staffs probate counters at both ends of the county, and the Clearwater counter is at the Pinellas County Courthouse, 315 Court Street, Room 106.

So the county is one probate operation with two front doors. Which counter you use is a convenience question. Which section hears the case is not.

The probate counter is at the Clearwater Courthouse, 315 Court Street, Clearwater, FL 33756, Room 106, (727) 464-3321. The Clerk also takes probate records at the St. Petersburg Branch, 545 First Avenue North, and at the North County Customer Information and Service Center, 3165 McMullen Booth Road, both answering at (727) 464-7000. The Clerk’s Self Help Center cannot assist with probate, and a self-represented party has to designate an email address for service.

• The clerk’s probate page for Pinellas County
• Sixth Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Sixth 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 Pinellas County, her estate is a Pinellas 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 St. Petersburg, Gulfport, St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island, Pinellas Park, Madeira Beach, Kenneth City, Clearwater, Largo, Dunedin, Palm Harbor, Tarpon Springs, Safety Harbor, Oldsmar, and Seminole are all Pinellas 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

If you are dropping off an original will or sitting through a morning calendar, coffee within a short walk is Craft Kafe Downtown at 200 Central Avenue, St. Petersburg, about a 7-minute walk from the public entrance. Walk east on 1st Avenue North to 2nd Street and one block south to Central; it opens at 7 a.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. on weekends. Nothing independent sits within a quarter mile of the St. Petersburg building, and if you are using the Clearwater counter at 315 Court Street, plan separately.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Pinellas County?

Probate cases in Pinellas 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.

• Cynthia J. Newton, Probate Court Section 3, chambers at the St. Petersburg Judicial Building, Room 402, assigned since at least May 8, 2025 (AO 2025-019, restated by AO 2026-017 effective May 18, 2026).
• Pamela A.M. Campbell, Probate Court Section 4, chambers at the St. Petersburg Judicial Building, Room 300, assigned since at least July 1, 2023 (AO 2023-018, restated by AO 2026-017 effective May 18, 2026).

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 Pinellas County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Pinellas County are 3,934 probate filings, 404 guardianship filings and 67 trust filings, plus 2,730 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 3,998 probate cases in the same year. Spread across 2 judges, that is about 1,967 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 Pinellas County Courthouse Is Closed

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

Here is the rule that surprises people. Under administrative order 2025-035, effective December 8, 2025, a new Pinellas probate case is assigned to one of the two probate sections by the ZIP code of the attorney who files it, or of the unrepresented petitioner. The section follows the filer, not the decedent. A family in Clearwater filing through a St. Petersburg attorney can land in the section they did not expect, and there is nothing to fix, because that is how the order is written.

Are Pinellas County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Pinellas County can be held remotely on a telephone conference line, or Zoom when there is evidence, and the division decides which matters must be in person. In Section 3 every non-evidentiary hearing is held by telephone on the court’s conference line, 727-582-2255 with PIN 143060, and a hearing with witnesses or evidence is held by Zoom instead, which you say when you request the time. Section 4 publishes no standing Zoom room, and its judicial assistant emails the connection instructions with the hearing date. Time in either section is requested by email to the section mailbox, Section3@jud6.org or Section4@jud6.org, with the case number and name in the subject line, and there is no online scheduler.

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. Pinellas gives you two counters to do this at, in St. Petersburg and in Clearwater, which is genuinely convenient in a county this long. Call the one you plan to use before you travel with an original, because a will is not a document to hand over on an assumption.

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 Pinellas 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 Sixth Circuit routes everything through the portal. Under administrative order 2023-038 all pleadings, proposed orders included, are submitted through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal rather than emailed to chambers, and each section publishes detailed practice preferences on top of that, so read the preferences for the section your ZIP code sends you to. The Clerk is also unusually generous with self-represented filers, publishing full packets for summary administration, testate and intestate, and for disposition of personal property, each with its own checklist and instructions.

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 Pinellas 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 Pinellas County as of September 15, 2026.

• AO 2025-035 PI-CIR, Assignment of Probate Cases in Pinellas County (signed September 24, 2025, effective December 8, 2025). A new probate case goes to Section 3 or Section 4 by the ZIP code of the petitioner’s attorney or of the unrepresented petitioner, unlisted ZIP codes are balanced between the sections, and the tables are reviewed at least twice a year.
• AO 2023-038 PI-CIR, Electronic Filing in Pinellas County (2023). Every pleading, proposed orders included, is submitted through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, and both probate sections cite this order as controlling in their practice preferences.
• AO 2026-017 PI-CIR, Pinellas Circuit Court Judicial Assignments (signed May 15, 2026, effective May 18, 2026). Restates every circuit assignment in Pinellas with the two probate sections unchanged, and rescinds the January 2026 order.

The division also publishes its own procedures, last revised July 7, 2026, and the points a filer most needs are these.

• Hearing time is requested by email to the section mailbox, Section3@jud6.org or Section4@jud6.org, with the case number and name in the subject line, only after the petition or motion is e-filed and on the docket, and the judge is never emailed directly.
• The proposed order travels with the petition or motion and a cover letter that acts as the roadmap, and the Clerk routes it, so an order uploaded to JAWS never reaches the probate division, because JAWS does not talk to the Clerk’s Odyssey system.
• An order checklist from the court gets a written, e-filed response rather than a phone call.
• In Section 3 the evidence and case law for a hearing arrive no sooner than the week before and no later than the Thursday of the week before, and a request for priority has to state a real urgency, because a real estate closing alone is not enough.
• Originals go to the Clerk and never to the judge, the original will and any codicils included, and Section 4’s own preferences document, with edits as of January 21, 2025, is the one to read for that section.

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 Pinellas 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 Pinellas 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 Pinellas 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 Pinellas 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 Pinellas County estate, our probate attorney page for St. Petersburg 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 Pinellas County Probate Court This Year

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

• July 7, 2026. Section 3 re-issued its 12-page practice preferences, which put every non-evidentiary hearing on the telephone conference line and every hearing with evidence on Zoom. Source.
• May 15, 2026. Assignment order 2026-017 restated every Pinellas circuit assignment effective May 18, 2026 and left both probate sections where they were. Source.
• December 8, 2025. Assignment order 2025-035 took effect, and since then a new probate case is assigned to Section 3 or Section 4 by the ZIP code of the filer rather than the decedent’s address. Source.
• October 2025. The Clerk re-issued its fee schedule as revision 10-25, and the four probate charges it posts are $400, $345, $235 and $231. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The Clearwater estate heard by the other section. A Clearwater family expected the north-county section and got the other one. Under the order effective December 8, 2025 the section is assigned by the ZIP code of the attorney who files, or of the unrepresented petitioner, so the filer’s address decided it. Nothing had gone wrong. The published preferences they needed to follow were simply the other set.

The proposed order sent by email. A petitioner emailed a proposed order to chambers because that is how a friend in another county had done it. The Sixth Circuit sends all pleadings, proposed orders included, through the e-filing portal. The email was not a filing, so as far as the docket was concerned the order had never been submitted at all.

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 Pinellas 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.
• Pinellas County local court layer, retrieved September 15, 2026, from the judicial directory · AO 2025-035 PI-CIR · AO 2023-038 PI-CIR · AO 2026-017 PI-CIR. 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/pinellas-county.md.
• Pinellas County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Sixth 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 St. Petersburg residents wherever you are, and this is not a Pinellas County office.