FAQ’s

Statewide Florida Probate – Every Florida County – FAQs

Summary Adminstration from $800 and Formal Administration from $1,600

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Please call Attorney Walter Sowa, III for any questions you may have at (941) 840-0820.

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Overview: The term “probate” generally refers to the process in which a decedent’s assets, or estate, are administered. Whether or not an estate is required to go through Probate depends on the assets that the decedent owned at the time of his or her death. For instance, if a decedent solely owned any real property at the time of his or her death, the estate would be required to go through Probate in order to transfer title of that real property to the decedent’s heirs or beneficiaries. In this type of a situation, the beneficiaries or heirs would need to seek the assistance of an attorney. Sowa Legal offers statewide Florida Probate Administration with Summary Administration starting at only $800 plus filing fees and Formal Administration from $1500 plus 1.5% plus filing fees.

Florida has 3 basic types of probate, or administration, and an additional variant.

The most common type is “Full Administration” which involves the naming of an “personal representative” (which is what Florida calls an executor), the petitioning of the court for administration, which assigns a case number and opens a file, notification of all beneficiaries and known creditors, publication in a local newspaper of a notice of administration to let unknown creditors know of the probate, filing an inventory listing all property involved in the estate, the payment to creditors of money owed, the distribution of the estate to the heirs, and closing the estate.

The second most common type is “Summary Administration” which involves either estates with a value of less than $75,000, or where the decedent has been dead for more than 2 years.

A third type of administration is called “Disposition without administration“, and is used for very small estates, and is typically done without a lawyer. Florida Statute 735.301 provides that “(n)o administration shall be required or formal proceedings instituted upon the estate of a decedent leaving only personal property exempt under the provisions of s. 732.402, personal property exempt from the claims of creditors under the Constitution of Florida, and nonexempt personal property the value of which does not exceed the sum of the amount of preferred funeral expenses and reasonable and necessary medical and hospital expenses of the last 60 days of the last illness.” So for small estates, administration is simple.

The normal required forms and documentation for a Disposition without administration are as follows:

• Original Last Will and Testament of the decedent, if one exists
• Death Certificate
• Copy of the statement from funeral home showing by whom the bill was paid
• Signed and notarized consents from all heirs, if any
• Copy of the bank statement, stock certificates, insurance checks, policy value information forms, or any related information regarding the assets that you are attempting to transfer with this procedure.

A fourth type of administration is called Ancillary Administration. Sometimes a person will die a resident of a state other than Florida, and their will is probated in that state. Nonetheless, they died owning Florida Property, usually real estate, and the court in the other state will not have jurisdiction over the real property in Florida. In this case, a court file must be opened in Florida, and the will must be offered for Ancillary Administration. Essentially, this means that a copy of the will, along with probate paperwork from the other state, must be filed with the court, and a Florida court must enter orders regarding who gets the Florida property.

Finally, regarding the cost of probate, it really depends on the nature of the estate. Generally speaking, the more creditors, the more beneficiaries, and the more assets in the estate will cost more to probate. Nonetheless, an estate consisting of a few relatively valuable assets, and no outstanding bills, may cost less to probate than an estate involving less valuable assets but with a lot of outstanding bills. Also, depending upon the estate, there may be some work that needs to be done that is not technically “probate’ in the sense that it goes before a probate judge, but still must be done to clear the estate- such as filing a Federal Estate Tax Return, if the estate is taxable. In addition, Florida has a law that sets out what is a presumptively reasonable fee Florida Statute 733.6171 based upon the value of the estate, but keep in mind that the law specifically provides that the attorney’s fee may be negotiated.