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

Where the Citrus County Probate Court Actually Sits

Citrus County probate is heard in the Fifth Judicial Circuit, at the Citrus County Courthouse at 110 North Apopka Avenue in Inverness. Filings go through the Citrus County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, whose courthouse line is (352) 341-6424, where option 5 reaches civil matters. Crystal River, Homosassa and Beverly Hills estates are all filed in Inverness, because Citrus takes probate only at the county seat.

The Clerk keeps a second office much closer to the coast, and what it does is worth knowing before anyone drives to Inverness. The West Citrus Government Center at 1540 N Meadowcrest Blvd in Crystal River is open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and its published service list runs to passports, marriage licenses, recording, record searches, court payments and court packets. Probate filing is not on that list. A Crystal River family can record a document and buy a packet ten minutes from home, and the estate itself still has to be filed in Inverness.

The probate counter is at the Citrus County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller at the Citrus County Courthouse, 110 N. Apopka Avenue, Inverness, FL 34450, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., (352) 341-6424, where option 5 reaches civil matters. The Clerk publishes no room or floor for the probate counter, so call before you carry an original will in. Depositing a will costs nothing and the depositor gets back a receipt carrying the file number, the filing date and the Clerk’s seal, with certified copies at $1.00 a page plus $2.00 for the certification. Since October 2022 the Clerk no longer records eight probate documents automatically, so the filer starts the recording and pays $10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each page after it, and $1.00 per name after four. Recording is done in Inverness or at the West Citrus Government Center at 1540 N Meadowcrest Blvd in Crystal River. One figure on the Clerk’s own probate page is out of date, because the page still gives $75,000 as the ceiling for summary administration and the 2026 figure is $150,000.

• The clerk’s probate page for Citrus County
• Fifth Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Fifth 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 Citrus County, her estate is a Citrus 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 Crystal River, Inverness, Homosassa, Beverly Hills, Lecanto, and Hernando are all Citrus 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

Citrus publishes this, which is rare in the circuit. Parking is at the main courthouse lot on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, and a smaller lot directly in front of the courthouse carries the disabled spaces. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Citrus County?

Probate cases in Citrus 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.

• Edward C. Spaight, a county court judge holding every probate and guardianship case in Citrus County, adversarial probate and guardianship matters included, which is unusual in Florida, from the Citrus County Courthouse at 110 N. Apopka Avenue in Inverness with judicial assistant Joan Gaither at 352-341-6713, assigned June 22, 2026 (AO C-2025-45-D).

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 Citrus County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Citrus County are 1,154 probate filings, 119 guardianship filings and 5 trust filings, plus 146 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 1,109 probate cases in the same year. Spread across one judge, that is about 1,154 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 Citrus 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 Citrus 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.

Citrus assigns by what the case is rather than by where in the county the family lives. One judge holds all probate and all guardianship, adversarial matters included, under the assignment order signed on June 11, 2026 and effective on June 22, 2026, and he is a county court judge rather than a circuit judge, which is unusual in Florida. A general magistrate may take a probate matter on referral under the probate rules. The division of labour worth knowing is what leaves that courtroom. A Baker Act or Marchman Act petition for the same person goes to a circuit judge, an adult protective services case goes to that same circuit judge, and the county mental health docket sits with a second county judge, so one family can meet three judges in one building.

Are Citrus County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Citrus County can be held remotely on Zoom, and the division decides which matters must be in person. Every virtual hearing runs through one standing room, Meeting ID 924 559 1031, and the court sends no individual invitations. Each participant joins with a working camera, speaker and microphone, and the camera stays on for the whole hearing. Anyone who cannot keep a camera on is told to appear in person or by telephone instead, so that unobservable communication is not a concern. Nobody may record. Evidence for a virtual hearing is physically delivered to the court in advance. The court does not publish which matters it sets remotely, so the format arrives with the hearing time.

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. The custodian deposits the original with the Clerk in Inverness within 10 days of learning of the death, at no charge, and gets back a receipt carrying the file number, the filing date and the Clerk’s seal. Citrus changed one thing in October 2022 that helps. A death certificate is still required in a probate case, but the original is no longer required, and an electronic copy filed through the portal is enough. The Clerk publishes no room or floor for the probate counter at 110 North Apopka Avenue, so call (352) 341-6424 before you carry an original in.

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 Citrus 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. Citrus has no probate-specific administrative order at all, so what governs is the assigned judge’s published General Procedures, and they are enforced by rejection. Everything on a probate or guardianship matter goes through the e-filing portal except a proposed order ready for immediate entry, and a filing or an email sent straight to the judge or the judicial assistant is rejected unless it is a hearing request or something the court asked for. A proposed order goes through the portal under the label Submit Proposed Order(s) to Judiciary (Court) - Citrus, in Word format only, on the posted sample format, and an order that is not ready for immediate entry should not be sent at all. Hearing time is arranged by email to the judicial assistant with the case number, the county, the name of the motion and the total time requested, copying every other party, and the telephone is not an option. After the parties agree on a date the coordinating party gives the court a courtesy copy of the Notice of Hearing to finalize the slot. Evidence is delivered on paper and only for a virtual hearing, because the court will not print exhibits for the parties, and the marking convention is that the petitioner marks for identification with numbers while the respondent marks with letters. One more rule costs money rather than time. Since October 2022 the Clerk no longer records eight listed probate documents automatically, including the petition authorizing the sale of real property, the death certificate, and the personal representative release and certificate of distribution of real property, so the filer starts the recording and pays $10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each page after it, and $1.00 per name after four.

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 Citrus 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 Citrus County as of September 16, 2026.

• AO C-2025-45-D, Amended Administrative Order In Re Duty Judge Rotation and Judicial Assignments for the Calendar Year 2026 (signed June 11, 2026, effective 12:00 a.m. on June 22, 2026). Gives all probate and guardianship, adversarial matters included, to one county court judge, and sends three neighbouring dockets elsewhere. A Baker Act or Marchman Act petition goes to a circuit judge, an adult protective services case goes to the same circuit judge, and the county mental health docket sits with a second county judge. A general magistrate may take a probate matter on referral under the probate rules.
• AO C-2026-10, Administrative Order Rescinding, Vacating, Replacing, or Superseding Designated Administrative Orders (posted February 2026). Retires eighteen Citrus orders in one document, which is the housekeeping that makes an order found through a search result unreliable until you check it against the current index. The order says it does not eliminate procedural policies established by the orders it retires.
• AO A-2021-58, Administrative Order Adopting Ideals and Goals of Professionalism and Guidelines for Professional Conduct, Inclusive of Virtual Court Proceedings (December 2021). Section IX sets how a participant behaves in a remote proceeding across the circuit, and the Citrus judge’s own virtual hearing rules cite it by section. A hearing may be reset as an in-person hearing where it is not followed.
• AO A-2026-13-A, Amended Administrative Order In Re The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Court Filings and Proceedings and The Protection of Confidential Information (posted June 2026). Sets the circuit-wide rule for filings prepared with artificial intelligence and for protecting confidential information inside them, and it applies in every Fifth Circuit county.
• AO A-2026-28, Administrative Order Regarding Weekend and Holiday Duty 2027 (uploaded September 15, 2026). Sets weekend and holiday coverage for 2027 on a roster shared by Citrus, Hernando and Sumter, with weekend duty starting at 5:00 p.m. Friday. The roster is what matters when an emergency guardianship pleading needs a signature on a day the probate judge is not sitting.

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

• Citrus has no probate-specific administrative order, so the assigned judge’s published General Procedures are the local rulebook, and they are enforced by rejection.
• Everything on a probate or guardianship matter goes through the e-filing portal, except a proposed order that is ready for immediate entry. A filing or an email sent straight to the judge or the judicial assistant is rejected, other than a hearing request or something the court asked for.
• Proposed orders go through the portal under the label Submit Proposed Order(s) to Judiciary (Court) - Citrus, in Word format only, on the posted sample format. Do not send one that is not ready for immediate entry, because the wrong format means rejection and delay. An agreed motion should carry its proposed order with it.
• Hearing time comes by email to [email protected], never by telephone, with the case number, the county, the name of the motion and the total time requested, copying every other party. The court sends available dates, the parties agree, and the coordinating party then gives the court a courtesy copy of the Notice of Hearing to finalize the slot. Times are first come, first served, and where the parties cannot agree the movant files a motion naming the dates proposed and the court picks one.
• Evidence is delivered on paper, and only for a virtual hearing, because the court will not print exhibits for the parties. The marking convention is specific. The petitioner marks for identification with numbers and an admitted exhibit takes a letter, and the respondent marks with letters and an admitted exhibit takes a number. Case law and memoranda go to the judicial assistant by email at least ten days ahead, and a physical binder at least a week ahead.
• Cross-noticing onto an existing hearing needs the court’s permission. Email the judicial assistant with opposing counsel copied, naming the motion, the existing hearing date and time and opposing counsel’s position, and the court answers by email.
• A motion to continue states specific grounds and opposing counsel’s position and arrives with a courtesy copy and a proposed order. The court may still refuse a continuance the parties have agreed to between themselves.

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 Citrus 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 Citrus 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 Citrus County adds on top, because that is what a rejection is usually about. The filing fee is $399 to $401.
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 Citrus County

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

Posted August 2026. The Citrus Clerk posts $231.00 for a disposition of personal property without administration and no formal or summary administration figure that could be read on September 16, 2026, on the fee schedule page, the fee and calculation guide, the probate page or the probate FAQs. The ranges above run from the statutory base charge plus the $4 statutory add-on to the highest total any Florida clerk posts, and neighbouring counties in the Fifth Circuit post $400, $345 and $235. Confirm by phone at (352) 341-6424 before you file. 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 $399 to $401, 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 Citrus County estate, our probate attorney page for Crystal River 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 Citrus County Probate Court This Year

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

• June 11, 2026. AO C-2025-45-D was signed and took effect on June 22, keeping all probate and guardianship, adversarial matters included, with one county court judge for calendar 2026. Source.
• February 2026. AO C-2026-10 rescinded or superseded eighteen Citrus administrative orders in one review, so an older order found through a search result is worth checking against the current index before you rely on it. Source.
• March 9, 2026. The circuit’s Judicial Moves newsletter announced three new judges, in Marion, Lake and Hernando. None of them was in Citrus, so the Inverness bench is the one it was. Source.
• September 15, 2026. The circuit posted A-2026-28, weekend and holiday duty for 2027, on a roster shared by Citrus, Hernando and Sumter, with weekend coverage starting at 5:00 p.m. Friday. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The estate that was told the wrong number. An Inverness family read the Clerk’s own probate page, saw $75,000 given as the ceiling for summary administration, and opened a formal administration for their mother’s estate because it was worth more than that. The 2026 figure is $150,000, and the estate qualified for the shorter path all along. The Clerk’s page is the natural place to look and it is out of date, which is the kind of mistake that costs an estate months rather than dollars.

The document nobody recorded. A personal representative got the court’s authority to sell his father’s house and assumed the Clerk would send the paperwork into the county land records the way it used to. Since October 2022 Citrus records eight probate documents only when the filer starts the recording and pays for it, and the petition authorizing the sale of real property is one of the eight. Nothing had gone wrong in the case. The document was simply sitting in the court file and nowhere else.

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 Citrus 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.
• Citrus County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · AO C-2025-45-D · AO C-2026-10 · AO A-2021-58 · AO A-2026-13-A · AO A-2026-28. 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/citrus-county.md.
• Citrus County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Fifth 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 Crystal River residents wherever you are, and this is not a Citrus County office.