Florida Small Estate Affidavit: What Florida Has Instead

Does Florida Have a Small Estate Affidavit?

No. And because the internet is full of forms that say otherwise, here is how we checked. On August 19, 2026 we pulled the full text of the Florida Probate Code, chapters 731 through 735, from the Legislature’s own site and searched it word by word. The phrase “small estate affidavit” does not appear once. We then went through the Florida Probate Rules and the probate forms actually used here, and no rule and no form carries that name either.

The words “small estates” do turn up, and we would rather flag that than let you find it later and wonder what we skipped. The words title the chapter holding Florida’s small-estate rules, and they head one section inside it, a route for someone who died without a will more than a year ago. That section does run on an affidavit. The difference is where it goes. The Florida affidavit asks a judge for permission and gets served on the other heirs and the creditors. A real small estate affidavit works the opposite way, handed straight to whoever is holding the money.

So if a bank asked you to send the small estate affidavit, or a form site sold you a Florida version, you are holding a document Florida does not treat as a way to collect an estate. What Florida has instead are two simplified paths through the probate court, plus a short list of narrow affidavits that each release one kind of asset. Which one you need turns on how things were titled and whether there is a house.

Why So Many People Search for a Florida One

The phrase is real. The instrument is simply not Florida’s. Several states wrote this instrument into their law, and the strong versions do everything people hope for. Texas has a whole chapter of its estates code named Small Estate Affidavit, reaching estates up to $75,000 outside the homestead and exempt property, usable 30 days after the death, with a judge signing off. Arizona lets a successor collect personal property worth up to $200,000 on an affidavit after 30 days, and even transfer real property worth up to $300,000 on one after six months. California needs no judge at all, letting a successor collect property on a sworn declaration once 40 days have passed.

The vocabulary travels. A daughter who closed out her father’s estate in Arizona on a single page assumes Florida works the same way. A national bank runs one checklist across fifty states and asks every grieving family for the same document. Form sites sell a Florida Small Estate Affidavit template because the searches are there, not because a Florida clerk will act on one. Florida’s answer is usually faster and cheaper than the panic that brought you here. Florida’s answer just goes by a different name, and there are two of them.

Summary Administration, the Florida Small Estate Probate

Summary administration is the one most people searching for a small estate affidavit actually need. Summary administration is a shortened probate. Nobody is appointed to run the estate for months, there is no inventory and no accounting, and the case ends with a single court order assigning the property to the people entitled to it. Banks and anyone else holding assets are then authorized to hand them over on the strength of that order.

An estate qualifies through either of two doors. The first is size. The estate subject to administration in Florida, after the property protected from creditors comes out, has to be $150,000 or less. The figure was $75,000 until July 1, 2026, when a new Florida law raised it, so much of what you will read elsewhere is out of date. Because protected property comes out of the count, the homestead does not push a family over the line, which is how an estate with a valuable house and a modest bank account still qualifies for the cheap version. The second door is time, and it carries no dollar limit at all. If the person died more than two years ago, summary administration is available no matter how large the estate is, and that route gets its own section below.

Who may file is narrower than people expect. A beneficiary can petition, and so can whoever is nominated as personal representative in a will offered for probate. The surviving spouse and the beneficiaries sign and verify the petition, and a beneficiary who does not sign gets formal notice. Before the judge signs anything, the petitioner has to search diligently for creditors, serve them with the petition, and provide for paying them from whatever assets exist. The creditor step matters, because the people who receive property under the order stay personally responsible for valid claims, up to the value of what they got. Our summary administration guide has a 60-second qualifier.

Disposition Without Administration, for a Small Account or a Last Paycheck

Disposition without administration is the closest Florida comes to what other states mean, and it is genuinely light. No court case, no personal representative, and in the ordinary matter no hearing and no lawyer. Any interested party applies informally, by affidavit or even by letter, and if the court is satisfied the estate qualifies, it answers with a writing under the court’s seal authorizing the bank or the employer to release the property. Whoever pays out under that authorization is discharged from liability, which is what makes an institution willing to act on a single page from the clerk.

The qualifying test is not a flat dollar amount, and that trips up almost everyone. The person has to have left only personal property, and the part of it not protected from creditors cannot be worth more than the funeral bill plus the medical and hospital expenses of the last 60 days of the final illness. So disposition is the reimbursement path. Picture a daughter who paid a $9,000 funeral from her own account and then found a $7,000 balance in her father’s name. She is being repaid, not inheriting.

A second version covers a person who died without a will, and it does carry a real figure. Unprotected personal property of up to $20,000, on top of those same funeral and last-illness bills, qualifies when the death was more than a year ago and no probate is pending. The ceiling was $10,000 before July 1, 2026. An heir applies by affidavit, and it gets served on any heir who did not join, on the known creditors, and, when the person was over 55 at death, on the state agency that handles Medicaid recovery. The Medicaid notice is the one families never see coming. For either version, the full walkthrough is here. And both stop at the same wall.

What Form Does Florida Use Instead of a Small Estate Affidavit?

People ask me which form Florida uses instead of a small estate affidavit, and the honest answer is that Florida uses two documents, and neither one is handed to the bank. For a small account or a last paycheck, the document is a verified statement for disposition of personal property without administration, filed with the clerk of the circuit court in the county where the person lived, with a certified death certificate attached and the funeral bill it is reimbursing. For everything larger, the document is a petition for summary administration under Florida Probate Rule 5.530, signed and verified by the spouse and the beneficiaries, which the judge answers with an order. The one true affidavit is the bank affidavit for a sole-name account of $2,000 or less, and the statute prints its wording word for word.

Families also ask whether the small estate form is the same throughout Florida, and the answer is yes for the law and no for the desk. Chapter 735 is one statewide statute, the probate rules are the same in every circuit, and the practitioner forms most lawyers file, the P series, read the same in Miami as in Pensacola. What changes from county to county is the clerk’s own packet, the filing fee, the cover sheet, and how much the clerk’s staff will do for a family that walks in without a lawyer. The clerk’s page for the county where the person lived is the first stop, and the fees for the ten largest counties are on our cost study.

Can Any of This Transfer a House?

Summary administration can. The affidavit routes cannot, and it is not a close question. Both disposition statutes open by describing a person who died leaving only personal property. A house is not personal property. So one piece of Florida real estate in the sole name closes those doors completely, and a half interest in a vacant lot does it as surely as a waterfront condo. The bank affidavit below is narrower still and reaches nothing but money in an account.

Summary administration measures the entire estate subject to administration, real property included, and the order the judge signs assigns specific pieces to specific people. The order, not the petition, is what moves title. A certified copy gets recorded in the county’s official records, and that recorded order is the document a buyer’s title company looks for before it insures the sale. If the house was the person’s Florida homestead, it normally needs its own finding in the same case, and leaving that out is a common way a family learns about a title problem years later at a closing. We cover the sale side in selling a house in probate and the inheritance side in inheriting a house in Florida. A house that passes by a lady bird deed, a funded trust, or survivorship never touches any of this.

The Narrow Affidavits Florida Does Have

Florida did not write a general small estate affidavit, but it did write several small ones. Each opens a single door, and knowing they exist can save a family a filing.

• A small bank account. A bank may pay a family member the money in a deceased customer’s sole-name accounts, with no court proceeding, when the combined total at that institution is $2,000 or less and six months have passed since the death. The family member brings a certified death certificate and a sworn affidavit in the form Florida prints inside the statute itself, and the statute fixes who may sign, starting with the surviving spouse. The ceiling was $1,000 until July 1, 2026.
• A federal tax refund. An overpayment of $5,000 or less can go straight to a surviving spouse on a verified application, or to a designated child if there is no spouse, provided no probate has been started or is planned. That figure was $2,500 before July 1, 2026.
• Unclaimed property held by the state. Almost nobody knows this one. When Florida is holding a deceased person’s unclaimed money and the total is $20,000 or less, the beneficiaries can claim it with an affidavit they all sign, saying they have agreed how to divide it and that the funeral, last-illness, and other lawful claims are paid. No probate order is required. Search the state database for any parent who died here, because old payroll and insurance money lands there routinely.
• A car. When someone dies without a will, an heir applying for a Florida title does not need a probate order, so long as the heir files an affidavit stating the estate is not indebted and that the surviving spouse and heirs have amicably agreed on how to divide it. The state title application has a section built for this.
• A final paycheck. An employer may pay wages or travel expenses owed to a worker who died to the surviving spouse, and if there is none, to the children over 18, and if there are none, to a parent. No dollar limit at all on this one.

One caution about banks, said plainly because most pages guess here. Florida law lets a bank pay out under that small affidavit, but does not order it to, and it expressly relieves the institution of any duty to check whether the affidavit is truthful. Past that narrow rule we could not find a single Florida statute, court rule, or regulator publication telling a bank what it must accept for a deceased customer’s account, so what a given branch does is policy rather than law. If a bank refuses, the answer is one of the two court paths, and a court order is not something it gets to decline.

None of these collects an estate. Each releases one kind of asset, and that is the whole difference between what Florida has and what a small estate affidavit does elsewhere.

What to Do When Neither Path Fits

Families in this spot have two answers, and one of them is free. Start with the possibility that there is nothing to file. Accounts with a pay-on-death beneficiary, retirement accounts and life insurance with a named beneficiary, property held jointly with survivorship, a home that passed by a lady bird deed, and anything titled in a funded trust all pass without probate of any kind. Families do open cases for estates that never needed one, and ten minutes spent on titling is what prevents it. Our does this estate need probate checker runs the same questions.

If assets really are stuck in a sole name and the estate is too large or the death too recent, the answer is formal administration. A personal representative is appointed and holds real authority, creditors get formal notice, and the case runs its course. Formal administration costs more and takes longer, and it also handles a contested will, an heir nobody can locate, a business inside the estate, or claims that have to be fought rather than paid. Our Florida probate guide covers it, and what to do when a parent dies covers the first two weeks.

How Long Each One Takes and What It Costs

The clerk’s filing fee is the small part, and it barely moves across the state. In Florida’s ten largest counties the posted fee is $231 or $232 for a disposition without administration, $345 or $346 for a summary administration of an estate worth at least $1,000, and $400 or $401 for a formal administration. We read all ten schedules at the source in August 2026, and the whole statewide spread is about a dollar. The county-by-county numbers are posted with their sources.

Time separates the paths more than money does. A disposition can be finished in days to a few weeks. A summary administration usually takes a few weeks and can stretch to about two or three months. A formal administration usually runs 6 to 12 months, because a creditor period has to run before the estate can close. The timeline by probate type breaks that down.

Our fees are flat and quoted before you commit. Disposition without administration starts at $1,500, summary administration at $2,500, and a routine formal administration at $3,500. Government costs such as filing, recording, publication, and certified copies are additional and passed through at cost. To see how Florida’s statutory fee schedule prices a larger estate, our probate cost calculator runs the math.

The Two-Year Route for an Old Estate

Two years after a death, Florida law says the estate, the personal representative, and the beneficiaries are no longer liable for claims against the person who died. The exceptions are narrow. A creditor who actually filed inside those two years keeps the claim, and a recorded mortgage or lien is untouched. Everything else is barred.

Once that happens the dollar cap stops mattering, because creditor exposure is exactly what it was rationing. So summary administration is available for any estate where the death was more than two years ago, at any size. The two-year route is the quiet fix for the most common version of this whole problem. Someone finds a deed in a parent’s name years after the funeral, usually because a buyer has appeared for a house nobody ever probated. Nobody can sign, and a full formal administration feels like absurd machinery for property nobody is fighting over. The two-year route often ends a few weeks after filing, with a recorded order and a family that can finally sell.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The bank that asked for a form Florida never wrote. A son in Georgia calls his mother’s Florida bank about a $34,000 account in her sole name and is told to send the small estate affidavit. He spends two weeks hunting for one. There is no such form here, and at $34,000 the account is well inside the summary administration ceiling anyway. A petition, a creditor search, and a court order release it, and the bank pays on the order without argument.

The daughter who paid the funeral. A daughter covers a $9,000 funeral herself, and her father’s only remaining asset is a $7,000 account with no beneficiary named. Because he left no real estate and what remains is less than the funeral bill, the clerk authorizes the bank to reimburse her. No probate case is opened, and she is repaid within weeks.

The house nobody probated. A mother died six years ago and her homestead was never put through probate. A buyer appears, the deed is still in her name, and none of the three children can sign. Because the death is more than two years old, the dollar cap does not apply, and summary administration clears it regardless of what the house is worth. The recorded order becomes the title document, and the closing goes ahead.

Sources of Law

• Our search for the instrument itself. Conducted August 19, 2026. We retrieved the full text of Fla. Stat. chs. 731 to 735 (the Florida Probate Code) from flsenate.gov and searched the text directly, rather than relying on the Online Sunshine search box, which does not support exact-phrase queries and returns hundreds of unrelated results for the three words separately. The phrase “small estate affidavit” occurs zero times in the Florida Probate Code. The words “small estates” occur twice, both in headings and never in an operative provision, namely the title of ch. 735 (“PROBATE CODE” / “SMALL ESTATES”) and the heading of §735.304 (“Disposition without administration of intestate property in small estates”). Outside the probate code, Fla. Stat. §717.1243 is headed “Small estate accounts.” On the rules and forms side, Fla. Prob. R. 5.420 (disposition of personal property without administration), R. 5.425 (disposition without administration of intestate personal property in small estates), and R. 5.530 (summary administration, which already carries the $150,000 figure). Part V of the Probate Rules contains no probate-administration forms, and the rules state the forms there are provided for convenience and are not part of the rules. The probate forms in general use, the “P” series published by Florida Lawyers Support Services, include P-2.0100 (“Disposition of Personal Property without Administration (verified statement)”) and P-2.0850 (“Affidavit Under Section 735.303 … to Obtain Bank Property of Deceased Account Holder”). Reading note: those P forms are prepared by practitioners and published commercially, not approved by the Florida Supreme Court, and none of them is named a small estate affidavit. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
• The comparison states, for the contrast only. Texas Estates Code ch. 205 is titled “Small Estate Affidavit”; §205.001 sets a $75,000 ceiling excluding homestead and exempt property, requires 30 days to have passed since the death, and has the affidavit filed with the clerk and approved by the judge (statutes.capitol.texas.gov). Ariz. Rev. Stat. §14-3971 allows collection of personal property by affidavit at up to $200,000 after 30 days and succession to real property by affidavit at up to $300,000 no sooner than six months (azleg.gov). Cal. Prob. Code §13100 allows a successor to collect property 40 days after the death “without procuring letters of administration or awaiting probate of the will” (leginfo.legislature.ca.gov). Reading note: other states adjust these ceilings periodically, so treat any figure here as of the retrieval date and confirm with counsel in that state. We publish them only to show that the instrument exists elsewhere. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
• Summary administration, Fla. Stat. ch. 735 part I. §735.201(2) (“That the value of the entire estate subject to administration in this state, less the value of property exempt from the claims of creditors, does not exceed $75,000 or that the decedent has been dead for more than 2 years”; the $75,000 figure in the republished text is superseded, see the next entry). §735.203(1) (a petition “may be filed by any beneficiary or person nominated as personal representative in the decedent’s will offered for probate,” signed and verified by the surviving spouse and the beneficiaries, with formal notice to a beneficiary who does not join). §735.206(2) (“Prior to entry of the order of summary administration, the petitioner shall make a diligent search and reasonable inquiry for any known or reasonably ascertainable creditors, serve a copy of the petition on those creditors, and make provision for payment for those creditors to the extent that assets are available”), (3) (the court “may enter an order of summary administration allowing immediate distribution of the assets to the persons entitled to them”), (4) (“Those to whom specified parts of the decedent’s estate, including exempt property, are assigned by the order shall be entitled to receive and collect the parts and to have the parts transferred to them”; debtors and holders of property “are authorized and empowered to comply with the order”), (4)(e) (“The recipients of the decedent’s property under the order of summary administration shall be personally liable for a pro rata share of all lawful claims against the estate of the decedent, but only to the extent of the value of the estate of the decedent actually received by each recipient”), (4)(f) (after 2 years, neither the estate nor those to whom it is assigned is liable for a claim absent enforcement proceedings). §735.2063 (notice to creditors after the order is optional; if proof of publication is filed, unknown creditors are barred after 3 months). Retrieved 2026-08-19.
• The 2026 dollar changes. Laws of Fla. ch. 2026-57 (CS/HB 1337), sections 7 to 10, raise the §735.201(2) summary-administration cap from $75,000 to $150,000, the §735.302(1) tax-refund figure from $2,500 to $5,000, the §735.303 bank-payment ceiling from $1,000 to $2,000, and the §735.304(1) intestate disposition cap from $10,000 to $20,000. Approved by the Governor April 29, 2026; effective July 1, 2026 (section 14 of the act). Session law: Laws of Florida ch. 2026-57; bill history at flsenate.gov, CS/HB 1337. Reading note: Florida republishes its statutes once a year, so the official §735.201 page still displayed $75,000 when we checked it on August 19, 2026. The session law controls. The act is silent on whether the new cap turns on the date of death or the date of filing; we apply it to petitions filed on or after July 1, 2026 and say so in the petition. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
• Disposition without administration. §735.301(1) (“No 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 State Constitution, 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”), (2) (“Upon informal application by affidavit, letter, or otherwise by any interested party, and if the court is satisfied that subsection (1) is applicable, the court, by letter or other writing under the seal of the court, may authorize the payment, transfer, or disposition of the personal property”), (3) (a payor under the authorization “shall be forever discharged from liability thereon”). Note there is no standalone dollar cap in this section; the ceiling is the funeral and last-60-day medical figure. §735.304(1) (intestate small estates; nonexempt personal property capped, decedent deceased more than 1 year, no administration pending), (2) (“Any heir at law of the decedent entitled to a share of the intestate estate pursuant to s. 732.102 or s. 732.103 may by affidavit request distribution”; diligent search and reasonable inquiry for creditors; “The affidavit must be served in the manner of formal notice upon all heirs at law who have not joined in the affidavit; upon all known or reasonably ascertainable creditors of the decedent; and, if the decedent at the time of death was over the age of 55 years of age, upon the Agency for Health Care Administration”). Exempt property under §732.402. Retrieved 2026-08-19.
• The narrow affidavits. §735.303(1) (“family member” defined in order of priority; “qualified account” means “a depository account or certificate of deposit held by a financial institution in the sole name of the decedent without a pay-on-death or any other survivor designation”), (2) (payment without court proceeding, aggregate ceiling, and “The financial institution may not make such payment earlier than 6 months after the date of the decedent’s death”), (3) to (4) (certified death certificate, sworn affidavit, and the statutory affidavit form). §735.302(1) (federal income-tax overpayment refunded to the surviving spouse on verified application, or to a designated child if none, on a showing that no administration including summary administration has been initiated or is planned). §717.1243 (“Small estate accounts”; a beneficiary’s claim to unclaimed property need not be accompanied by a probate order where all beneficiaries sign an affidavit stating they have agreed on the division and that funeral, last-illness, and other lawful claims are paid, and applying only where the department holds an aggregate of $20,000 or less for the owner). §319.28(1) (motor-vehicle title; “When the application for a certificate of title is made by an heir of a previous owner who died intestate, it shall not be necessary to accompany the application with an order of a probate court if the applicant files with the department an affidavit that the estate is not indebted and the surviving spouse, if any, and the heirs, if any, have amicably agreed among themselves upon a division of the estate”; the state title application, form HSMV 82040, carries a release-of-heirs section for this). Reading note: ch. 2024-272 added a new provision to §319.28(1) and re-lettered part of the subsection, and at least one agency procedure manual still cites the older lettering, so confirm the current subsection letters before citing them in a filing. §222.15(1) (an employer may pay “any wages or travel expenses that may be due such employee at the time of his or her death” to the surviving spouse, then to children over 18, then to the father or mother; no dollar cap appears in the section), (2) (the same for reemployment assistance). Retrieved 2026-08-19.
• What a bank must accept. Not verifiable from a primary source beyond §735.303 itself, and we say so on the page rather than guess. That section permits a financial institution to pay (“may pay”), does not compel it, and §735.303(5) provides that the institution “is not required to determine whether the contents of the sworn affidavit are truthful.” We found no Florida statute, court rule, or financial-regulator publication setting general requirements for releasing a deceased customer’s account. Searched 2026-08-19.
• The two-year rule. §733.710(1) (“Notwithstanding any other provision of the code, 2 years after the death of a person, neither the decedent’s estate, the personal representative, if any, nor the beneficiaries shall be liable for any claim or cause of action against the decedent, whether or not letters of administration have been issued, except as provided in this section”), (2) (a creditor who filed under §733.702 within 2 years and whose claim is unpaid is unaffected), (3) (recorded mortgages and security interests, possessory liens, and the right to foreclose are unaffected). Retrieved 2026-08-19.
• The cases in the closing section. Clifton v. Clifton, 553 So. 2d 192 (Fla. 5th DCA 1989) (a 1978 summary administration whose petition recited that the estate held no property; the order distributed nothing; the widow’s fee under the residuary clause was affirmed eleven years later and no estoppel arose from her joining the petition). The Recovery Agents, LLC v. Tutko, No. 2D2024-0476 (Fla. 2d DCA Jan. 22, 2025) (an heir’s assignment of a $100,000 surplus-funds estate to a recovery company that then petitioned for summary administration; the order voiding the assignment for the heir’s child-support creditor was reversed for want of an evidentiary hearing). Both read in full from the opinion text; nothing is quoted. Retrieved 2026-09-03.
• Fees. Clerk filing fees are the posted 2026 schedules of Florida’s 10 largest counties, read at each clerk source and detailed with citations on our Florida probate cost by county study (verified August 2026). Firm fees are the flat fees on our pricing page. Advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the update date above. Government costs, meaning filing fees, recording, publication, and certified copies, are additional and passed through at cost. Florida’s statutory attorney-fee schedule for formal administration is presumed reasonable, not mandatory.

What Two Florida Cases Show About Summary Administration

Most people are told this avoids probate. In the situations I litigate, it often did not. A summary administration is a probate, a short one, and the order at the end of it is the only page from the file that a title company or a bank will ever read. What I have not seen an affidavit do is transfer a Florida house, and I have not seen an order of summary administration transfer one either when the petition under it said the estate held no property.

The case I would show a family first was decided in 1989 and began in 1978. A man died that year owning several acres of waterfront where he and his family lived. His will, signed in 1973, left everything he owned to his wife Dorothy and never mentioned the house. That November, Dorothy and their two grown sons signed a petition for summary administration. The petition recited every fact the statute asks for, and it stated that the estate consisted of no property, because all three of them believed what had been Florida law for generations, that a homestead passes to the widow for life and then to the children (the law had changed two days before the will was signed, and nobody in the family caught it). The judge signed an order that distributed nothing. The order recited that the man had owned a homestead and that the three of them were his heirs, and the family went home believing the house was settled.

Nearly eight years later one son sold a half share of what he took to be his remainder to his own son for $104,000, with $4,000 down, a note for the rest, and a $200,000 title policy behind the deal. Dorothy found out, went to a lawyer for the first time, and learned that her husband’s will had given her the whole house in 1978. She sued to establish her title, and the trial court ruled that she could no longer claim the whole house. The appellate court reversed in 1989, because her mistake was one of law, the petition she had signed altered nothing, and the probate court had never entered an order giving the house to anyone. The son had sold an interest he never owned, to his own child, with a title insurer standing behind it, and it took a trial and an appeal eleven years after the death to say so, which is the part I would have spared them.

In reading that case and a 2025 decision beside it, I have a few take-home points.

The first is the order. An order of summary administration that recites facts and distributes nothing decides nothing, and in that case the petition said no property because the family believed the house passed outside the estate, which is true of a Florida homestead, and the order followed the petition. Practice pointer. When a house is involved, I ask the court for two things by name in the petition, a determination that the property was the homestead and an order stating who takes it under the will or the intestacy rules, and I record the certified order in the official records, because the recorded order is what a title company reads eight years later. Avoid a summary administration filed by a family that has already agreed among themselves who gets the house, because the order will follow the petition, and the petition will follow the agreement rather than the will.

Second, the law under the petition is the law on the date of death, read against the will, and it is rarely the law the family grew up with. Two sentences decided that case, a residuary clause and a constitutional amendment two days older than the will, and nobody read the one against the other before signing. A petition drafted in 1978 that named Dorothy as the person taking the homestead under the will, with the homestead finding and a recorded order, would have put the house in her name that November, and I charge a flat fee from $2,500 for a summary administration. What the family paid instead was a $104,000 sale that conveyed nothing, a $200,000 title claim, a trial and an appeal. Practice pointer. I read the will against the current homestead rules before anyone signs a petition, and I treat a house that everyone agrees about as the asset most likely to be wrong.

Third, the order is public, and the heirs’ own creditors read the file. The 2025 decision came out of Pinellas County. A father died leaving one heir, a son, and an estate of a little over $100,000, all of it surplus money from the foreclosure sale of the father’s home. The son owed his former wife $57,000 in child support under a 2019 judgment. In November 2023 he signed his inheritance over to a recovery company that agreed to run the summary administration for twelve percent of the money, and the company petitioned in January 2024. His former wife found the assignment, filed an emergency motion within days, and after a fifteen-minute hearing with no witnesses the trial court voided the assignment and sent the money to her. The appellate court reversed in January 2025 because the company was entitled to an evidentiary hearing, so the fight over that $100,000 went back to the trial court more than three years after the death. Practice pointer. Before any heir signs an assignment and before I file a petition, I ask who holds a judgment against each heir, because the order names the people who take and the amounts, and a judgment creditor reads it the week it is entered.

What neither decision can tell a family is how long its own summary administration will take or what a particular clerk will do with a thin petition, because appellate courts never see the cases that go smoothly. What both show is that the order is read years later by people who were not in the room, and a petition written for the people in the room is the mistake I see most.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. Each case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on September 3, 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. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Which path an estate qualifies for depends on its specific assets and how they are titled. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.