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

Where the Wakulla County Probate Court Actually Sits

Wakulla County probate is heard in the Second Judicial Circuit, at the Wakulla County Courthouse at 3056 Crawfordville Highway in Crawfordville. Filings go through the Wakulla County Clerk of Circuit Court and Comptroller, whose guardianship and probate desk answers at (850) 926-0301, with the main line at 850-926-0300. One building holds all of it, the counter and the county’s own circuit judge alike, and there is no branch office anywhere in the county.

Here is the Wakulla detail worth setting an alarm for. The Clerk’s Courts Department, which is the counter that takes a probate filing, runs Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., while the Official Records Department stays open until 5 p.m., so the counter that takes an estate shuts an hour before the counter that records a deed. The Clerk attributes the shorter day to a reduction in funding and publishes a grace rule alongside it. Anyone with a filing or payment deadline who reaches the courthouse between 4 and 5 p.m. will not be treated as late if they file or pay the next day before closing. Almost no Florida clerk writes that down.

The probate counter is at the Clerk’s Courts Department at the Wakulla County Courthouse, 3056 Crawfordville Highway, Crawfordville, FL 32327, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., (850) 926-0301 for the guardianship and probate desk, with the main line at 850-926-0300. The Courts Department closes an hour before the Official Records Department next door, which runs to 5 p.m., and the Clerk attributes the shorter day to a reduction in funding. Alongside it the Clerk publishes a grace rule that almost no Florida clerk offers, namely that anyone with a filing or payment deadline who reaches the courthouse between 4 and 5 p.m. will not be treated as late if they file or pay the next day before closing. Depositing a will costs nothing. The same deputy carries circuit civil and foreclosures, which is what a 160-filing county looks like from the inside, and there is no branch office anywhere in the county. The Clerk publishes no room number for the counter and no probate case-number prefix. For guardianship the office runs a fraud hotline at 850-926-0356 and says plainly that it cannot give legal advice or help complete the reports.

• The clerk’s probate page for Wakulla County
• Second Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Second 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 Wakulla County, her estate is a Wakulla 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 Crawfordville, Panacea, Sopchoppy, St. Marks, Medart, Shell Point, and Wakulla Station are all Wakulla 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

Wakulla publishes free courthouse parking at four named places, which almost no Florida clerk does, Leon County included. The lots are west of the courthouse at 3056 Crawfordville Highway, west and south of the Tax Collector’s Office at 202 Ochlockonee Street, east of the Old Jail and Historical Society at 24 High Drive, and west of the Old Courthouse and Chamber of Commerce at 23 High Drive. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Wakulla County?

Probate cases in Wakulla 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.

• J. Layne Smith, every Wakulla County circuit case, criminal, civil, family, probate and guardianship alike, from the Wakulla County Courthouse at 3056 Crawfordville Highway, with judicial assistant Deanna Gravius at 850-926-0308, assigned at least December 8, 2025, the effective date of the previous assignment order, and restated on July 1, 2026 (AO 2026-02).

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 Wakulla County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Wakulla County are 160 probate filings, 19 guardianship filings and 3 trust filings, plus 33 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 157 probate cases in the same year. Spread across one judge, that is about 160 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.

How a Case Gets Filed in Wakulla 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 Wakulla 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.

Wakulla is the one county in this corner of the state whose circuit judge carries a single county. One circuit judge holds every Wakulla circuit case, criminal, civil, family, probate and guardianship alike, and a county judge holds the county court docket and weekday first appearances. The assignment has now survived four successive orders in ten months, most recently the order signed on May 20, 2026 and effective on July 1, 2026 and its two August amendments, which moved Leon County guardianship to a third judge and left Wakulla untouched. There is no second courthouse, no section to draw and no filer address test. Every Wakulla probate case goes in front of the same judge, and what he requires is what the rules require.

Are Wakulla County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Wakulla County can be held remotely on Zoom, and the division decides which matters must be in person. Nothing Wakulla-specific is published. The judge’s one page procedures document is silent on remote appearance, the circuit publishes calendars for five of its judges and none for him, and no standing probate meeting identifier exists. For contrast, the Franklin judge prints three recurring meeting identifiers on the face of his own calendars and the Jefferson judge sets a written remote appearance rule, so the silence here is a real gap rather than a search failure. Ask the judicial assistant, Deanna Gravius at GraviusD@leoncountyfl.gov or 850-926-0308, when the hearing is set, and read the credentials off the notice of hearing.

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 custodian deposits the original with the Clerk in Crawfordville within 10 days of learning of the death, at no charge, and Wakulla asks for one thing more than the statute does. A death certificate is filed with the original will. The depositor gets back a Receipt for Deposit of Will carrying the case number, the filing date and the seal, plus one courtesy certified copy of the will, and further certified copies run $1.00 a page plus a $2.00 certification charge. The Clerk publishes no room number for the counter, and the counter closes at 4 p.m., so a late afternoon errand with an original will is a wasted drive.

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 Wakulla 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. Wakulla is the rare county where the most useful local fact is an absence. The judge who hears every Wakulla circuit case publishes a procedures document one page long, and what it says is that he has no individual practices and procedures and that filers should follow the rules of procedure and the court’s orders. So no judge-specific checklist waits to bounce a petition, no judge-specific rule governs how a proposed order travels, and no judge-specific exhibit deadline applies. What governs is the Florida Probate Rules, the circuit’s four approved forms and whatever a particular order in the case says. The circuit posts those four as Word documents, an Affidavit of Heirs that carries a Second Circuit caption and is a local circuit form rather than a Florida Probate Rules form, a Formal Administration Opening Checklist, a Formal Administration Closing Checklist and a Summary Administration Checklist. The opening checklist, last revised in 2012, carries an attorney certification that the checklist was personally reviewed, and its header asks that every order given to the court show who it is copied to and arrive with self-addressed stamped envelopes bearing no return address. The Clerk then adds requirements no statute carries. A death certificate goes in with a deposited will. And a disposition of personal property without administration is handled across the counter rather than on paper you prepare alone, with the office asking for the original will if one exists, an original or certified death certificate rather than a copy, the funeral home statement showing who paid, signed and notarized consents from every heir, the asset documentation and an Affidavit of Heirs, after which a deputy clerk fills the petition out with you in person and presents it to the probate judge.

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 Wakulla 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 Wakulla County as of September 16, 2026.

• AO 2026-02, Circuit and County Judge Assignments (signed May 20, 2026, effective July 1, 2026). Section VI gives one circuit judge every Wakulla circuit case, probate and guardianship included, and a county judge the county court cases and weekday first appearances. Section VIII defines an emergency narrowly and requires the request in writing to the assigned judge, and section VII.B.2 says the Leon County duty judge is not responsible for emergencies in Wakulla, so a Wakulla emergency goes to the local county judge or the assigned circuit judge.
• AO 2026-02, Second Amendment, Circuit and County Judge Assignments (signed August 21, 2026, effective immediately). The operative version. Both August amendments moved Leon County guardianship to a third judge and restated the Wakulla section unchanged, so Wakulla guardianship stayed with the same judge. The circuit’s order index marks every order active and vacates nothing, so the newest order governs.
• AO 2024-04, Sixth Amendment, Circuit and County Judge Assignments (effective December 8, 2025). Superseded, and the proof that the Wakulla assignment predates July 2026. Across four successive orders in ten months the Wakulla section has not changed, which is the opposite of what happened in Gadsden and Franklin.

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

• The judge who hears Wakulla probate publishes a procedures document one page long, and what it says is that he has no individual practices and procedures and that filers should follow the rules of procedure and the court’s orders. Read plainly, that is good news. No judge-specific checklist is waiting to bounce a petition, no judge-specific rule governs how a proposed order travels, and no judge-specific exhibit deadline applies.
• What governs instead is the Florida Probate Rules, the circuit’s four approved probate forms, and whatever a particular order in the case says.
• The circuit posts those four as Word documents, an Affidavit of Heirs that carries a Second Circuit caption and is a local circuit form rather than a Florida Probate Rules form, a Formal Administration Opening Checklist, a Formal Administration Closing Checklist and a Summary Administration Checklist.
• The opening checklist, last revised in 2012, carries an attorney certification that the checklist was personally reviewed, and its header asks that every order given to the court show who it is copied to and arrive with self-addressed stamped envelopes bearing no return address.
• The Clerk adds requirements the statute does not carry. A death certificate is filed with a deposited original will, the depositor gets back a Receipt for Deposit of Will plus one courtesy certified copy, and further certified copies run $1.00 a page plus a $2.00 certification charge.
• For a disposition of personal property without administration the office asks for the original will if one exists, an original or certified death certificate rather than a copy, the funeral home statement showing who paid, signed and notarized consents from every heir, the asset documentation and an Affidavit of Heirs. A deputy clerk then fills the petition out with you in person at the Probate Division and presents it to the probate judge, and the filing fee is due when the petition is filed.

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 Wakulla 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 Wakulla 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 Wakulla 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 Wakulla County

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

Posted August 2026. The Wakulla schedule is marked revised July 1, 2023 and was read on September 16, 2026. Two charges most Florida clerks leave off the page appear on this one, a $50.00 fee to reopen a closed estate and a separate $231.00 petition for homestead property only, which is the filing a family makes when the house is the whole of the problem. Depositing a will costs nothing, a caveat or a notice of trust is $41.00, and a petition to determine incompetency is $231.00. 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 Wakulla County estate, our probate attorney page for Crawfordville 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 Wakulla County Probate Court This Year

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

• September 14, 2026. The state attorney asked the county for $57,000 in court technology funding, a $15,000 increase, and the Clerk offered to move $15,000 out of his own office budget to keep a cloud evidence software upgrade going. Source.
• August 13, 2026. The Clerk announced that the office would close to the public on Monday, September 21, 2026 for its annual staff in-service day. Source.
• July 1, 2026. The current assignment order restated the Wakulla section unchanged. Across four successive orders in ten months the county has kept the same circuit judge and the same county judge. Source.
• March 13, 2026. A bill that would have raised the clerk charge for opening a probate estate from $230 to $275 on July 1, 2026 died in Senate Rules. So the Wakulla schedule marked revised July 1, 2023 is current law rather than a stale page. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The four o’clock counter. A son left work in Tallahassee and drove down to Crawfordville with his mother’s original will, reaching the courthouse at 4:20 in the afternoon. Official Records was still open and could not take it, because the Courts Department that handles probate had closed at 4. He filed the next morning, inside the ten day window, and the Clerk’s published grace rule covers exactly that arrival. Knowing the two counters keep different hours would have saved him the trip.

The week spent hunting for a local rule. A family put off filing for a week while they looked for the Wakulla judge’s probate requirements, on the reasonable assumption that a judge who hears every case in a county must have some. The document exists and says he has none. The hour would have gone further on the circuit’s opening checklist, which is the only local paper the case actually needs, and on the death certificate the Clerk wants alongside the will.

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 Wakulla 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.
• Wakulla County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · AO 2026-02 · AO 2026-02, Second Amendment · AO 2024-04, Sixth Amendment. 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/wakulla-county.md.
• Wakulla County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Second 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 Crawfordville residents wherever you are, and this is not a Wakulla County office.