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

Where the Gulf County Probate Court Actually Sits

Gulf County probate is heard in the Fourteenth Judicial Circuit, at the Gulf County Courthouse at 1000 Cecil G. Costin, Sr. Boulevard in Port St. Joe, where the Clerk’s counter is Room 148 and is open Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. Filings go through the Gulf County Clerk of Court and Comptroller, probate has an extension of its own behind the main line, 2306 on (850) 229-6112, and mail goes to the same Room 148 address.

The second counter is the one that decides your week. The Clerk keeps an annex at 153 N 3rd Street in Wewahitchka, open Fridays only from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Central time, and the Clerk’s own page says the annex has no mail receptacle, so nothing should be posted there. Wewahitchka sits on the western side of the federal time zone line and Port St. Joe on the eastern side, which is why the two counters keep their hours on two different clocks, and Gulf County’s own government site posts its Wewahitchka facility hours in Central while the Clerk posts the courthouse in Eastern. The probate judge says the same thing in his procedures document, telling counsel that Bay County is in the Central time zone and Gulf County is in the Eastern, and his motion calendar starts at 9:30 a.m. or 1:00 p.m. because those two start times coincide with each zone. So a Gulf hearing time always belongs to a zone, and the zone is the court’s rather than the one on your kitchen wall. One smaller conflict is worth carrying with you. The Clerk’s contact page and its forms page both give Room 148 and the footer on every page of the same site gives Room 149, which is three sources to one for 148.

The probate counter is at the Gulf County Courthouse, 1000 Cecil G. Costin, Sr. Boulevard, Port St. Joe, FL 32456, Room 148, which is also the mailing address, Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern time, (850) 229-6112 or (850) 639-5068, where extension 2306 reaches probate. The Clerk runs a second counter on the other clock. The annex at 153 N 3rd Street in Wewahitchka opens Fridays only, from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Central time, on (850) 639-2175, and the Clerk’s own page says the annex has no mail receptacle, so nothing should be posted there. Whether the annex takes a probate filing at all, or only recording and payments, is not stated anywhere. One room number is in dispute on the Clerk’s own site, because the contact page and the forms page both say Room 148 while the footer on every page says Room 149, and three sources to one favour 148. Depositing an original will here is free and the Clerk issues a Receipt for Deposit of Will carrying the file number, the date of filing and its seal, and the office asks for a death certificate with the will, which is the office’s own requirement rather than the statute’s. A certified copy of a will is $1.00 a page plus $2.00 to certify. Beyond the disposition of personal property walkthrough, the Clerk posts no probate fee figure at all.

• The clerk’s probate page for Gulf County
• Fourteenth Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Fourteenth 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 Gulf County, her estate is a Gulf 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 Port St. Joe, Wewahitchka, St. Joe Beach, Highland View, White City, Overstreet, and Cape San Blas are all Gulf 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.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Gulf County?

Probate cases in Gulf 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.

• Jarred H. Patterson, all Gulf County circuit proceedings, which is where probate sits, plus a quarter of Bay County’s domestic relations docket, with the assignment plan listing the Bay County Courthouse first as his headquarters and the Gulf County Courthouse second, assigned July 1, 2026 under the current assignment plan, which runs to January 1, 2029; his judge page carries no biography at all, so neither his appointment date nor the day he first took Gulf is available from the court’s own site (Administrative Order 2026-00-03).

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 Gulf County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Gulf County are 86 probate filings, 11 guardianship filings and 2 trust filings, plus 7 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 74 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.

How a Case Gets Filed in Gulf 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 Gulf 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.

A Gulf County estate is filed once and goes to Circuit Judge Jarred H. Patterson, who holds 100 percent of Gulf County circuit proceedings under the assignment plan effective July 1, 2026. Probate is not named in his assignment line, which reads as a catch-all for circuit proceedings, and Jackson is the only outer county in this circuit whose probate is written as its own line. Probate is circuit jurisdiction in Florida and no other judge is assigned any Gulf circuit work, so the probate docket is his by that catch-all. The same order gives him a quarter of Bay County’s domestic relations cases and lists the Bay County Courthouse first as his headquarters, which is why a Gulf matter can be heard from either building and why the time zone gets stated on the face of a notice. County court matters go to Judge Timothy J. McFarland, and a decedent estate is never his.

Are Gulf County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Gulf County can be held remotely on Zoom, and the division decides which matters must be in person. Judge Jarred Patterson publishes a standing room, so a Gulf hearing has a permanent address. Video runs at https://zoom.us/j/5239087066, Meeting ID 523 908 7066, with dial-in on (312) 626-6799, and the Zoom instructions go into any notice of hearing where they apply. Neither remote nor in person is the default, because a hearing may be held either way depending on the nature of the case, the court’s calendar and the length of the hearing, and appearance by Zoom or in person is confirmed with the judicial assistant when the date is set. Counsel are asked to appear by video unless video is impossible, to dress as if appearing in person, to log in at least five minutes early and stay in the waiting room without disconnecting, and to set the Zoom screen name to a real name or a firm name so the judge can tell who belongs to which hearing. One practical point belongs to Gulf alone. The same link may be joined from Port St. Joe on Eastern time, from Wewahitchka on Central time and from Panama City on Central time, with the judge sitting in either courthouse, so write down which zone the notice states before you set an alarm.

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. Gulf documents this better than any of its neighbours, and the first thing to know is that it costs nothing. The Clerk states that there is no charge and no filing fee to deposit a will, and the depositor gets back a Receipt for Deposit of Will carrying the file number, the date of filing and the seal of the Gulf County Clerk of the Circuit Court, which the Clerk suggests keeping with the decedent’s other important papers. Gulf then adds a requirement of its own, because the office asks for a death certificate to be filed with the original will, where Florida law asks the custodian only for the will and the date of death or the Social Security number. The deposit goes to Room 148 at 1000 Cecil G. Costin, Sr. Boulevard in Port St. Joe, and not to the Wewahitchka annex, which takes no mail at all.

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 Gulf 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. The Fourteenth Judicial Circuit has no probate-specific administrative order, so the local layer in Gulf is a judge’s document, a set of circuit checklists and one unusually helpful page from the Clerk. The judge’s eleven-page administrative procedures, revised January 29, 2026, carry two certifications that appear nowhere else in this circuit. Most motions other than truly dispositive ones have to certify a good-faith attempt to resolve the issue first, the document says that requirement is broader than the rule, one or two unanswered emails do not satisfy it because the movant has to telephone the other side’s office at least twice, and the judicial assistant may decline to offer hearing time on a motion that carries no certification. Counsel in most cases also have to file a signed certification that they have read and will abide by the standing civil case management order and these procedures, in a form the document prints, with sanctions listed from fees and costs to striking pleadings or contempt. The mechanics around them are just as specific. Hearing time is requested by email rather than by telephone, with the case number and style in the subject line and the motion attached, the judicial assistant offers up to three dates, and counsel who cannot agree on one risk the court setting the matter unilaterally or ruling without a hearing. The courthouse has no room numbers, so the location line on a notice of hearing reads Judge Jarred Patterson’s Chambers. Anything the court is to read goes to a OneDrive drop box requested at least two business days out and completed one business day before the hearing, case law goes up as separate PDFs, the court cannot open zip files, and hearing documents are never emailed to the judicial assistant. Proposed orders go through the portal in Word with a PDF cover letter, only the cover letter and the order may be uploaded, and one that does not comply will not be entered. Two honest limits belong with all of that. The document is organised as Civil and never uses the word probate, so an estate reaches it because a probate matter is a circuit civil proceeding before him, and the circuit’s own Judicial Practice and Procedures index leaves this judge off it, so his documents are reachable only from his judge page. Alongside them sit the circuit’s attorney-certified probate checklists, on a forms page captioned as serving all six counties, each ending with the filing attorney certifying personally that it was reviewed and is accurate, several of them footered for the Bay County probate judge. And the Clerk’s own estates page walks a disposition of personal property without administration through at the counter, listing the five things to bring, namely the original will if one exists, the death certificate, a copy of the funeral home statement showing who paid the bill, signed and notarised consents from any heirs, and a copy of the bank statement, stock certificates, insurance checks or policy value forms for the assets in question. Staff then supply the petition and present it to the presiding probate judge, and the form cannot be used where real property is involved.

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 Gulf 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 Gulf County as of September 16, 2026.

• Administrative Order 2026-00-03, Judge Assignment Plan, July 1, 2026 to January 1, 2029 (created June 11, 2026, effective July 1, 2026, rescinding Administrative Order 2025-00-13 on the face of the document). Gives Judge Jarred Patterson 100 percent of Gulf County circuit proceedings and a quarter of Bay County domestic relations. Probate is not named in his line, which reads as a catch-all, and probate is circuit jurisdiction in Florida with no other judge holding any Gulf circuit work, so the probate docket is his by that catch-all rather than by a stated probate assignment. The court posts the order as a scanned image with no text layer, and the circuit’s order index describes it as rescinding a different order than the one the document itself names.
• Administrative Order 2026-00-04, Administrative Plan for the Fourteenth Judicial Circuit, July 1, 2026 to January 1, 2029 (effective July 1, 2026, rescinding Administrative Order 2025-00-10). Sets the circuit’s administrative structure and gives the administrative probate and guardianship judge, who sits in Bay County, oversight of the probate and guardianship divisions across all six counties, Gulf included, and responsibility for monitoring the probate and guardianship time standards the rules set.
• Chief judge memorandum of December 15, 2020, Submission of Proposed Orders to Judiciary (December 15, 2020). Sets the placeholder format every proposed order in the circuit has to use, with a companion instruction sheet naming what causes a submission to be rejected, namely a space before the signature codes, a page or section break, and any memo, note or comment left in the file. The format comes from a chief judge’s memorandum rather than from an administrative order, which is why it never appears on the order index. The Gulf Clerk links the circuit’s order index straight from its own Courts menu.

The division also publishes its own procedures, last revised January 29, 2026, the printed revision date on the eleven-page civil edition, and the points a filer most needs are these.

• Do not telephone chambers for hearing time. Email the judicial assistant with opposing counsel copied, put the Bay or Gulf case number and the style of the case in the subject line, and attach the motion. The document also tells counsel to be accurate about the time needed, because reserving too little may end in the motion being denied or the hearing continued.
• The time zone is stated by the judge in one sentence for both of his counties. Counsel are told to be aware that Bay County is in the Central time zone and Gulf County is in the Eastern time zone.
• The judicial assistant offers up to three dates and times, and there is a real consequence for not agreeing on one. The court may set the matter unilaterally or rule on it without a hearing, a hearing the court set unilaterally cannot be cancelled without a court order, and the document tells counsel to get a colleague to cover rather than lose the date or the hearing.
• Most motions other than truly dispositive ones have to carry a good-faith certification, and the document says the requirement is broader than the rule. One or two unanswered emails do not satisfy it. The movant telephones the other side’s office at least twice after an unanswered email or call before certifying, and the judicial assistant may refuse to offer hearing time on a motion that carries no certification.
• The courthouse has no room numbers, so the location line on a notice of hearing reads Judge Jarred Patterson’s Chambers, at 1000 Cecil G. Costin Sr. Blvd. in Port St. Joe.
• Hearings of fifteen minutes or less go on a motion calendar docket that can usually be set on one or two weeks’ notice, first come first confirmed, with limited slots. Everything on it is noticed to start at 9:30 a.m. or 1:00 p.m., and the document says those times are chosen to coincide with each time zone. Cases are called in the order set, and abuse of the calendar may cost a firm access to it.
• Hearing materials go to a OneDrive drop box on layered deadlines. Anything the court is to read goes in at least two business days before, the drop box is requested from the judicial assistant at least two business days out with every party’s email address, and the uploads have to be complete one business day before the hearing. Case law goes up as separate PDFs, the court cannot open zip files, hard copies and binders are not wanted unless the judicial assistant asks for them, hearing documents are never emailed to the judicial assistant, and counsel are responsible for redacting confidential information in anything to be offered into evidence.
• All proposed orders go through the portal in Word, in the circuit’s placeholder format, with a PDF cover letter saying whether the other side agrees. Only the cover letter and the order may be uploaded, and copies of motions, responses, exhibits or case law must not be attached, with one exception for the witness and exhibit lists that go with a pretrial stipulated order. A proposed order that does not comply will not be entered, and the judge’s office will not mail out copies of any orders.
• Counsel in most cases have to file a signed certification that they have read and agree to abide by the standing civil case management order and these administrative procedures, in a form the document prints, acknowledging that failure to comply may draw sanctions running from fees and costs to striking pleadings, dismissing claims or contempt. No other judge in this circuit publishes that requirement.
• Two honest limits. The document is organised as Civil and never uses the word probate, so a probate matter reaches it as a circuit civil proceeding rather than under a probate-specific rule. And the circuit’s own Judicial Practice and Procedures index leaves this judge off it, so a filer who starts there will conclude the Gulf judge publishes nothing. Start at his judge page instead.

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 Gulf 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 Gulf 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 Gulf 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 Gulf County

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

Posted August 2026. Gulf posts no probate filing fee schedule, which is a finding rather than a gap in the research. The Clerk’s Fees and Costs page was opened on September 16, 2026 and the only document on it is a 123-page statewide distribution schedule prepared for the Florida Clerks of Court Operations Corporation, which explains how filing fees are apportioned among trust funds and prices nothing at a counter. The Clerk’s Forms page carries no probate form, and the site’s own page sitemap has no probate fee page on it. What the Clerk does state is that depositing an original will is free, that a certified copy of a will is $1.00 a page plus $2.00 to certify, and that the filing fee for a disposition of personal property is due when the petition is filed. The ranges above run from the statutory base charge plus the $4 statutory add-on to the highest total any Florida clerk posts. Call (850) 229-6112 and ask for extension 2306 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 $230 to $232 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 Gulf County estate, our probate attorney page for Port St. Joe 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 Gulf County Probate Court This Year

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

• December 2025. The circuit appointed a Clerk Ad Interim for Gulf County under section 28.09 of the Florida Statutes, on the retirement of the sitting Clerk effective December 31, 2025, to serve until the Governor designates an interim clerk, a clerk is appointed, a clerk is duly elected, or the court orders otherwise. Source.
• January 29, 2026. The Gulf judge’s civil administrative procedures were revised, and the eleven-page document carries that printed revision date. What governs a Gulf hearing is this document, and it is reachable only from his judge page. Source.
• June 2026. The circuit reissued its judge assignment plan for July 1, 2026 to January 1, 2029 and kept Judge Jarred Patterson on 100 percent of Gulf County circuit proceedings, which is where probate sits. Source.
• July 1, 2026. A new administrative plan for the circuit took effect, keeping circuit-wide oversight of the probate and guardianship divisions with the administrative probate judge in Bay County. Source.
• July 2026. A second Gulf County order named a new Clerk of Court to the county canvassing board as its chair for the August 18, 2026 primary, so the office has changed hands twice inside twelve months. How the current Clerk took office is an open question, because the intervening step, an appointment or an election, is not in the circuit’s order index and was not found anywhere else. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The hearing that had already been called. A family in Wewahitchka read 9:30 a.m. on the notice of hearing and set the alarm by the clock on the kitchen wall, which runs on Central time. The courthouse in Port St. Joe runs on Eastern, an hour ahead, and the matter had been called and passed by the time they joined the Zoom. Nothing on the notice was wrong. The time zone line runs between the two towns, and the hour on a notice belongs to the court’s zone.

The envelope posted to the annex. A son in Panama City mailed the death certificate and a consent to the Clerk’s Wewahitchka office, because it was the nearer of the two addresses on the website. The Clerk’s own page says the annex has no mail receptacle. The envelope went nowhere useful, and everything meant for the Clerk goes to Room 148 at 1000 Cecil G. Costin, Sr. Boulevard in Port St. Joe instead.

The motion that could not get a hearing date. A lawyer emailed the judicial assistant for a date on a motion to compel an accounting and got no offer back. Most motions before this judge have to certify a good-faith attempt to resolve the issue first, and the document is explicit that one or two unanswered emails do not count, because the movant has to telephone the other side’s office at least twice. The motion was well drafted. It was also missing the paragraph that gets it heard.

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 Gulf 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.
• Gulf County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · Administrative Order 2026-00-03 · Administrative Order 2026-00-04 · Chief judge memorandum of December 15, 2020. 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/gulf-county.md.
• Gulf County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Fourteenth 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 Port St. Joe residents wherever you are, and this is not a Gulf County office.