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

Where the DeSoto County Probate Court Actually Sits

DeSoto County probate is heard in the Twelfth Judicial Circuit, at the DeSoto County Courthouse at 115 East Oak Street in Arcadia. Filings go through the DeSoto County Clerk of the Circuit Court, whose counter is Room 101 on (863) 993-4876, open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and closed from noon to one. That lunch hour is the detail that costs a visiting filer half an afternoon.

Court Administration sits in the same building in Suite 201 on (863) 993-4644, which is also the judicial assistants’ number, and it stays open until 5 after the Clerk’s counter has closed. The building is the county’s third courthouse, a redbrick Classical Revival design finished in 1913, and everything a DeSoto estate needs happens inside it.

The probate counter is at the DeSoto County Courthouse, 115 East Oak Street, Arcadia, FL 34266, Room 101, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., closed from noon to 1 p.m., (863) 993-4876. Depositing a will costs nothing here and produces a document, because the probate clerk prepares a receipt for the will and hands the depositor a copy, and filing a declaration of pre-need guardian is free as well. Court Administration sits in the same building in Suite 201 on (863) 993-4644, which is also the judicial assistants’ number, and it stays open until 5 while the Clerk’s counter closes at 4:30 and shuts for the lunch hour. The circuit lists the Clerk on a different number, (863) 993-4878, so use the Clerk’s own figure. Unusually for a county this size, the Clerk hosts the judge’s requirements page on its own site as well.

• The clerk’s probate page for DeSoto County
• Twelfth Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Twelfth 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 DeSoto County, her estate is a DeSoto 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 Arcadia, Nocatee, Fort Ogden, Brownville, Hull, and Pine Level are all DeSoto County cases filed with the same clerk. Which division or section then hears the case is a separate question, and the next section answers it.

Parking and Coffee on the Way to the Courthouse

The circuit says parking is free on the streets and in the lots around the DeSoto County Courthouse, with no time limit, which is more generous than the two-hour downtown limits in the bigger county seats. The courthouse itself is the county’s third, a redbrick Classical Revival building finished in 1913. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

If you are dropping off an original will or sitting through a morning calendar, coffee within a short walk is the Florida Farmhouse at 103 West Oak Street, Arcadia, about a three to four minute walk west along Oak Street from the public entrance. Arcadia splits east from west at Polk Avenue, so the cafe is the first block west of the divide and the courthouse the first block east, which is about a block apart on the same street. The distance is read off the street numbering rather than measured, and the OpenStreetMap record shows the cafe closed on Sunday and Monday and open from 7 a.m. midweek, with no 2026 source confirming the hours, so call before you count on it.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in DeSoto County?

Probate cases in DeSoto 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.

• Don T. Hall, Circuit Judge and DeSoto County Administrative Judge, holding probate and guardianship along with circuit civil, circuit criminal, unified family and juvenile for the whole county, with judicial assistant Anita Collins at (863) 993-4644, assigned September 3, 2026 (AO 2026-05b.4).

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 DeSoto County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for DeSoto County are 109 probate filings, 20 guardianship filings and 0 trust filings, plus 16 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 292 probate cases in the same year.

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 DeSoto County Courthouse Is Closed

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

DeSoto sits outside the circuit’s Probate and Guardianship Division, which covers Manatee and Sarasota only. One circuit judge holds DeSoto probate and guardianship along with circuit civil, circuit criminal, unified family and juvenile, and he is the county’s administrative judge, under the fourth amended assignment order signed on August 31, 2026 and effective September 3, 2026. Two practical points follow from that. The circuit’s probate page still shows the DeSoto probate judge as to be determined, so the order is the source to trust and the page is the one to distrust. And two judges named Hall now sit in this courthouse, a circuit judge who hears probate and guardianship and a county judge who took the county civil and criminal docket on September 28, 2026, so read the first name on anything you are handed. One more order matters if the estate turns into a fight, because an adversary probate proceeding needing more than half a day of trial moves to the civil division in Manatee and Sarasota and stays in probate here.

Are DeSoto County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in DeSoto County can be held remotely on Zoom, and the division decides which matters must be in person. DeSoto has no standing probate room, and the link reaches you by email. The Clerk’s own page says the invitation with the Zoom link comes from the judge’s judicial assistant before the hearing, and it asks every filer to register an email address with the Clerk, because without one the notice goes by mail to the last known address. A non-evidentiary hearing of less than thirty minutes may be noticed as a Zoom hearing with no prior authorization, as long as the notice carries the meeting ID, the password and the access instructions. An evidentiary hearing is live in the courtroom unless the court orders otherwise, the notice has to say the hearing is live rather than remote, and a party who objects to a motion to appear by video has ten days to say so. Anyone giving sworn testimony appears by video or has a notary present to administer the oath. Those appearing live are heard before those appearing by Zoom, attorneys are asked to put Esq. or Attorney in the display name so their cases can be called early, and the Clerk publishes instructions for leaving a breakout room without dropping the call.

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 original goes to the Clerk in Room 101, and DeSoto does something with it that most counties do not. Depositing a will costs nothing, the probate clerk prepares a receipt for the will, and the depositor is handed a copy, so you leave with proof of what you gave over and when. Filing a declaration of pre-need guardian is free here as well. No floor is published beyond Room 101 and no case-number prefix is published at all, and the counter shuts for the lunch hour, so time the trip.

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 DeSoto 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. DeSoto keeps one requirements page for the whole county, running sections A through K and covering civil, criminal, small claims, family and probate together, because one judge hears all of it. The Clerk mirrors that document on its own site, which is worth knowing on a day when the circuit’s site will not load. Hearings are booked in JACS, the circuit’s online calendar, and sixty minutes is the ceiling there, with anything longer going through the judicial assistant and every motion filed before the time is reserved. Two rules on that page are enforced by cancellation rather than by correction. A motion for rehearing, reconsideration or a new trial is never set for hearing, because a hearing set without the court’s prior approval will be cancelled, and those motions are filed and then sent to the judicial assistant so the judge can decide whether a hearing is warranted. And cross-noticing another motion onto a reserved slot takes the agreement of every party and of the court, with the exact name of the motion typed into the additional information field where JACS makes you pick unlisted motion. Every notice of hearing names the exact title of the document to be heard and the date it was filed, and a notice for a remote appearance carries the meeting ID, the password and the access instructions. A proposed order travels one way and not two, with the portal encouraged for the quickest turnaround and a hard copy to the judicial assistant accepted, and sending the same order both ways is the thing the page tells you not to do. Courtesy copies are usually unwanted because the court reads from the electronic file, though for a long hearing text-searchable copies of the notice, the motions, the supporting material and any case law arrive no later than three days before. An order taken under advisement carries a thirty-day courtesy clock, and the movant may call the judicial assistant after that to say the ruling is outstanding. One trap on the circuit’s own DeSoto tab is worth naming, because the calendars posted there are civil calendars carrying civil hearings, case management and felony dockets, with no probate docket on them.

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 DeSoto 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 DeSoto County as of September 16, 2026.

• AO 2026-05b.4, Fourth Amended Judicial Assignments 2026 (signed at Bradenton on August 31, 2026, effective September 3, 2026). Names the circuit judge who holds DeSoto probate and guardianship along with every other circuit case type in the county, makes him the county’s administrative judge, and puts a newly appointed county judge on the DeSoto county court docket from September 28, 2026. The circuit’s own probate page still shows the DeSoto probate judge as to be determined, so read the order instead of the page.
• AO 2019-04.5, Assignment of Adversary Probate Proceedings (February 22, 2019, effective immediately). Carves DeSoto out of the circuit’s transfer rule, and for a contested estate it is the most valuable order in the file. In Manatee and Sarasota outside South County Division H, an adversary probate proceeding that needs more than half a day of trial moves to the civil division once it is ready for trial. A DeSoto adversary proceeding stays in probate and is tried by the same judge.
• AO 2026-06.4, Appointment of Circuit Judges as Acting County Judges, County Judges as Acting Circuit Judges, and County Judges as Acting County Judges in Another County (2026). The coverage mechanism that puts a Manatee or Sarasota judge on a DeSoto docket for a day, which is how a county with one circuit judge keeps working when that judge is somewhere else. The county calendars for September 2026 record three such coverage days in one week.

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

• DeSoto has one requirements page for the whole county, running sections A through K and covering civil, criminal, small claims, family and probate together, because one judge hears all of it. The Clerk mirrors the same document on its own site, which is worth knowing when the circuit’s site will not load.
• Hearings are booked in JACS, the circuit’s online calendar, and sixty minutes is the ceiling there. Anything longer goes through the judicial assistant, every motion is filed before the time is reserved, and a hearing is held to the time reserved.
• Do not set a motion for rehearing, reconsideration or a new trial for hearing. The page says in bold that a hearing set without the court’s prior approval will be cancelled. Those motions are filed and sent to the judicial assistant, and the judge decides whether a hearing is warranted at all.
• Cross-noticing another motion onto a reserved slot takes the agreement of every party and of the court, and where JACS makes you pick unlisted motion, the exact name of the motion goes in the additional information field.
• Every notice of hearing names the exact title of the document to be heard and the date it was filed, and a notice for a remote appearance carries the meeting ID, the password and the access instructions.
• A proposed order travels one way and not two. The portal is encouraged and turns around fastest, a hard copy to the judicial assistant is accepted, and sending the same order both ways is what the page tells you not to do. Submit it when the parties agree on the form, and where they do not, send it with a short statement of the disagreement and the steps taken, while the other side may send its own version through the portal at the same time.
• Courtesy copies are usually unwanted, because the court reads from the electronic file. For a hearing that runs to many pages, text-searchable copies of the notice, the motions, the supporting material and any case law that matters arrive no later than three days before.
• An order taken under advisement carries a thirty-day courtesy clock. Do not call for a status inside it, and after thirty days from the last post-hearing submission the movant may call the judicial assistant to say the ruling is outstanding.

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 DeSoto 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 DeSoto 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 DeSoto 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 DeSoto 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.

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 DeSoto County estate, our probate attorney page for Arcadia 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 DeSoto County Probate Court This Year

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

• July 7, 2026. The air conditioning failed and the courthouse closed. The Clerk announced that court for the afternoon of July 7 and all court on July 8 would be rescheduled, and the circuit reset the July 7 afternoon hearings the same day. Source.
• July 17, 2026. The circuit reported that the mechanical failure had been resolved and that the courthouse reopened and resumed business on July 13, so the building was shut from the afternoon of July 7 through July 10. The circuit also said the Supreme Court had issued an order extending time periods because of the closure, and cites it as AOSC26-37. That order could not be read on September 16, 2026, so ask the division what it extends before you rely on a tolled deadline. Source.
• August 31, 2026. AO 2026-05b.4 was signed, effective September 3, 2026, confirming one circuit judge on DeSoto probate and guardianship and on every other circuit case type in the county. Source.
• September 11, 2026. The Governor appointed a DeSoto County Court judge from Arcadia, and the assignment order rather than the press release sets the start date, which is September 28, 2026. He takes county civil and criminal and does not hear probate, and he shares a surname with the circuit judge who does, so read the first name on anything you are given. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The family who believed the court’s own page. A daughter in Arcadia read the circuit’s probate page, saw the DeSoto probate judge listed as to be determined, and waited a month for someone to be named before filing her father’s estate. The assignment order effective September 3, 2026 names the judge and gives him probate along with every other circuit case in the county. The page was out of date. The month was gone.

The Zoom link that never arrived. An out-of-state son expected a video link for a short hearing and watched his inbox for it. DeSoto has no standing probate room, and the invitation comes from the judge’s judicial assistant by email before the hearing, which is why the Clerk asks every filer to register an email address. He had none on file, so his notice went by mail to an address he had left two years earlier.

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 DeSoto 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.
• DeSoto County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · AO 2026-05b.4 · AO 2019-04.5 · AO 2026-06.4. 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/desoto-county.md.
• DeSoto County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Twelfth 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 Arcadia residents wherever you are, and this is not a DeSoto County office.