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

Where the Hardee County Probate Court Actually Sits

Hardee County probate is heard in the Tenth Judicial Circuit, at the Hardee County Courthouse at 417 West Main Street in Wauchula. Filings go through the Hardee County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, which takes guardianship and probate in Suite 202 on (863) 773-4174 and keeps its own probate address at [email protected].

One street address runs the whole building, and the suite number is what routes anything you send. Probate and guardianship are in Suite 202, records, passports and marriage licenses in Suite 214, the circuit judge in Suite 327 and the county judge in Suite 335. The counter closes at 4 in the afternoon while the building stays open until 5, which is the shortest counter day of any county in this circuit. Jury duty happens somewhere else entirely, at the county commission boardroom at 412 West Orange Street, so a summons and a filing errand are two different addresses.

The probate counter is at the Hardee County Courthouse, 417 West Main Street, Wauchula, FL 33873, Suite 202, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., (863) 773-4174. One street address runs the whole courthouse and the Clerk publishes which suite takes what, so a package needs the suite number on it. Guardianship and probate are in Suite 202, records, passports and marriage licenses in Suite 214, the circuit judge in Suite 327 and the county judge in Suite 335. Probate keeps its own address at [email protected]. The counter day is the shortest in the circuit, because the building is open from 8 to 5 while the Clerk closes at 4. Two lines on the Clerk’s probate page are out of date and both matter, since it still lists a family administration with a $60,000 ceiling, a proceeding Florida repealed, and gives $25,000 as the ceiling for summary administration where the 2026 statute says $150,000. No officeholder is named anywhere on the Clerk’s site, so the office name is the right one to use. And jury duty does not happen in the building, because summoned jurors report to the county commission boardroom at 412 West Orange Street.

• The clerk’s probate page for Hardee County
• Tenth Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Tenth 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 Hardee County, her estate is a Hardee 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 Wauchula, Bowling Green, Zolfo Springs, Ona, Limestone, Gardner, and Wauchula Hills are all Hardee 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 provided in the lot surrounding the Hardee County Courthouse, and it gives the Jury Division at (863) 773-4174 extension 7221 for a question about it. The building is the county’s 1927 courthouse, designed by a local architect, H. G. Little, and built by the Robertson Construction Company. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Hardee County?

Probate cases in Hardee 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.

• Susan L. Barber, Circuit Judge in Section 03 and the Hardee County Administrative Judge, holding every Hardee case type including all of the county’s probate, from 417 West Main Street, Suite 327, with judicial assistant Kyndal Witt at (863) 773-6547, and a judicial officer in this circuit since 2004 as a general magistrate, then a county judge, and a circuit judge since 2022, assigned July 6, 2026 (AO 1-1.69).

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 Hardee County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Hardee County are 74 probate filings, 7 guardianship filings and 0 trust filings, plus 29 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 90 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 Hardee 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 Hardee 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.

Hardee assigns by section and by ratio, and the ratio says something true about the county. Under the assignment order signed on June 2, 2026 the Clerks of Hardee, Highlands and Polk assign new filings to sections by the order’s own exhibit, and the Hardee exhibit is a single line. Section 03 takes all of the county’s civil, felony, juvenile, family, mental health and probate, so there is no split, no rotation and no case-number division to work out. The same exhibit weighs Hardee probate at 0.125 of a unit against six units of that judge’s other work, which is the honest picture of a county that files 74 estates a year and has no dedicated probate division. Five general magistrates may take a probate or guardianship referral across the three counties. Emergencies are the one exception to the single-judge answer, because when the assigned judge is unavailable the circuit duty judge sits at the Polk County Courthouse in Bartow rather than in Wauchula.

Are Hardee County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Hardee County can be held remotely on Microsoft Teams, and the division decides which matters must be in person. Hardee publishes three virtual courtrooms and names the division on one of them, which is more than most small counties manage. Hardee Virtual Courtroom B, labelled Circuit Court Hearings, carries conference ID 873 679 72# on the dial-in +1 863 225 4022, and the judge links that room from her own page, so it is the room for a probate hearing. A non-evidentiary hearing scheduled for less than thirty minutes may be held on Teams, and anything longer, along with any evidentiary hearing, is scheduled in person unless the court grants a special request. A motion to appear virtually has to state that every attorney of record was consulted and has no objection, and the procedures say that failure to provide that information will result in the motion being denied. Incapacity hearings are named first in the division’s list of evidentiary hearings, which is the one that matters for a guardianship. Camera and microphone are both required, a telephone appearance without a camera is not permitted, and the link is live only where virtual appearances were authorized.

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 Suite 202, and the Clerk restates the ten-day rule on its own probate page and adds that an attorney is not necessary to file a will. Hardee prices that deposit expressly at $0.00, which is worth knowing on a schedule that prices nearly everything else, and it charges $3.50 for signing the oath of a witness to a will, a line most clerks do not publish. The counter closes at 4 in the afternoon, so an errand with an original is a morning errand.

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 Hardee 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. Start with what Hardee does not have, because it explains everything else. The one practice document the county posts is titled for circuit civil and carries no probate section, and the words estate, will and homestead appear nowhere in it as subject matter, so a Hardee estate runs on the circuit’s probate orders plus that document applied to the case in front of you. Hearings sit in Courtroom B unless Courtroom A is arranged in advance, and they are set by email to the judicial assistant with every party copied, giving the matters to be heard, the time needed, the case number and the party names. Allow three to five days for the Clerk’s image to reach the judge, because a hearing can be set only once the motion or petition has been filed and the procedures warn that the document often takes that long to become visible to the court, which is when a courtesy copy by email earns its keep. Coordinate the time with the other parties first and keep the court out of that traffic, then email the agreed time and wait for the electronic confirmation before the notice goes out, and do not book fifteen minutes for a thirty minute matter, which the procedures say in capitals. A non-emergency matter takes ten calendar days of notice, the notice uses the court’s own template, and it carries instructions for appearing in person even where a virtual appearance has been authorized, because the court sounds the halls at the courthouse for anyone who elects to come. Then comes the part that gets orders refused. Proposed orders are electronic only, hard copies are no longer accepted and are not to be mailed, each order goes in once, and the signature block reads ORDERED in Wauchula, Hardee County, Florida, with the copies list at the bottom naming every party and an email or mailing address. A rejected order comes back from the judge rather than from the judicial assistant, who the document says rarely knows why it was rejected, so do not call her about it and resubmit with a cover letter that says more. One circuit order shapes the calendar rather than the paper, because the court will not enter an order determining homestead in a formal administration until the creditor claim period has run, absent a motion on good cause and a hearing.

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 Hardee 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 Hardee County as of September 16, 2026.

• AO 1-1.69, Assignment of Judges, July 6, 2026 through January 3, 2027 (signed at Bartow on June 2, 2026, superseding AO 1-1.68 on July 6, 2026). Tells the Hardee, Highlands and Polk Clerks to assign new cases to sections by the order’s own exhibit, and that exhibit gives Hardee one line. Section 03 takes all of the county’s civil, felony, juvenile, family, mental health and probate, so there is no split, no rotation and no case-number division to work out.
• AOSC26-18, Emergency Request to Extend Time Periods Under All Florida Rules of Procedure for Hardee County (Supreme Court of Florida, June 26, 2026). An order written for this county alone. A sewer gas leak closed the Hardee courts on Thursday, June 18, 2026, and the order extends every time limit set by rule, court order or statute in Hardee County matters from the close of business on Wednesday, June 17 to the close of business on Friday, June 19, 2026, applying where the last day of a period falls inside that window. The order suspends speedy trial for the same days and keeps a case-by-case remedy open where a deadline still could not be met.
• AO 4-16.0, Orders for the Determination of Homestead Property in Formal Administrations (June 14, 2016). The court will not enter a homestead determination in a formal administration until the creditor claim period has run, unless a party moves for it on good cause and sets a hearing. The order binds Hardee, Highlands and Polk alike, and it decides when the house can be dealt with. The circuit posts it as an image scan with no text layer, so its terms have to be read on paper.
• AO 1-61.1, Uniform Procedures and Requirements for Electronically Submitting Proposed Orders Through CAPS (April 14, 2023). Sets how a proposed order reaches the judge through the e-filing portal and the court’s CAPS system, down to the closing line and the shape of the signature block. The Hardee procedures point at it, and a document that does not comply can be rejected.
• AO 4-3.2, Guardianship Procedures in the Tenth Circuit (March 5, 2025, vacating and superseding AO 4-3.1 of December 30, 2016). A twenty-six section guardianship code covering the application under penalty of perjury, emergency temporary guardianship, examining committees, initial and annual reports keyed to the anniversary month, guardian and attorney fees, what happens on the death of a ward, and decorum.
• AO 1-15.4, Duty Judge Assignment and Responsibilities (August 21, 2026). Puts the circuit duty judge at the Polk County Courthouse in Bartow from 8:30 to 5:00 each workday, with cover from 5:00 p.m. on the last workday until 8:30 a.m. on the next, and excludes an urgent matter in a case already assigned to a division where the assigned judge or the alternate is in the courthouse. An emergency guardianship signature for a Hardee ward, when the assigned judge is away, is a Bartow errand.

The division also publishes its own procedures, last revised January 23, 2026, and the points a filer most needs are these.

• Read the one practice document Hardee has for what it is. The document is titled for circuit civil and carries no probate section, so a Hardee estate runs on the circuit’s probate orders plus this document applied by analogy, and the words estate, will and homestead appear nowhere in it as subject matter.
• Hearings sit in Courtroom B unless Courtroom A is arranged in advance, and they are set by email to the judicial assistant with every party copied, giving the matters to be heard, the time needed, the case number and the party names.
• Allow three to five days for the Clerk’s image to reach the judge. A hearing can be set only once the motion or petition has been filed, and the procedures warn that there is often a three to five day gap between e-filing and the document becoming visible to the court, so a courtesy copy by email is sometimes what moves it.
• Coordinate the time with the other parties first and keep the court out of that traffic, then email the agreed time and wait for the court’s electronic confirmation before the notice goes out. Do not book fifteen minutes for a thirty minute matter, which the procedures say in capitals.
• A non-emergency matter takes ten calendar days of notice, the notice uses the court’s own template, and it carries instructions for appearing in person even where a virtual appearance has also been authorized, because the court sounds the halls at the courthouse for anyone who elects to come.
• Proposed orders are electronic only and go in once. Hard copies are no longer accepted and are not to be mailed, anything missing goes into a fuller cover letter with the resubmission, and the signature block reads ORDERED in Wauchula, Hardee County, Florida, with the copies list at the bottom naming every party and an email or mailing address.
• A rejected order comes back from the judge rather than from the judicial assistant, who the document says rarely knows why it was rejected. Do not call her about it. Resubmit with a cover letter that says more.
• An interpreter is arranged through the circuit’s interpreters office at 863-534-7700 as soon as the hearing is scheduled, and an emergency hearing is set only after the judge has read the emergency motion and directed it, with an ordinary setting still available if the emergency label is refused.

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 Hardee 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 Hardee 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 Hardee 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 Hardee County

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

Posted August 2026. Two lines on the Hardee schedule are worth reading off it. The Clerk prices depositing a will expressly at $0.00 and charges $3.50 for signing the oath of a witness to a will, which most Florida clerks do not publish at all, and it posts a petition to determine homestead at $231.00. The schedule is an HTML table on the Clerk’s site with no revision date on its face, so confirm the figure at (863) 773-4174 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 $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 Hardee County estate, our probate attorney page for Wauchula 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 Hardee County Probate Court This Year

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

• June 26, 2026. The Supreme Court of Florida entered AOSC26-18 after a sewer gas leak closed the Hardee courts on June 18, extending every time limit in Hardee County matters from the close of business on June 17 to the close of business on June 19, 2026, and suspending speedy trial for the same window. A deadline whose last day fell inside those three days moved. Source.
• January 23, 2026. The judge’s Hardee procedures were revised. That document carries the hearing, notice and proposed-order rules a probate filer is held to, even though it is titled for circuit civil. Source.
• June 2, 2026. AO 1-1.69 set the assignments running from July 6, 2026 to January 3, 2027 and kept every Hardee case type, probate included, in Section 03. The same order left the Highlands county court seat to be determined while the Hardee county seat stayed filled. Source.
• August 21, 2026. AO 1-15.4 rewrote duty judge assignment across the circuit, putting the duty judge at the Polk County Courthouse in Bartow with after-hours cover, so an emergency signature for a Hardee ward is obtained in Bartow rather than in Wauchula. Source.
• November 21, 2025. AO 4-13.5 re-appointed the five general magistrates who may take probate, guardianship, mental health and public health proceedings across Hardee, Highlands and Polk, adding one of them with effect from October 1, 2025. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The order that came back with no explanation. A proposed order admitting a will in Wauchula was submitted twice and rejected twice, and the calls to the judicial assistant went nowhere, because the procedures say she rarely knows why an order was rejected and ask filers not to call her about it. The division wants the signature block to read ORDERED in Wauchula, Hardee County, Florida, in that form. The order was right on the law and wrong on the page, and a fuller cover letter with the third submission is what fixed it.

The incapacity hearing nobody could attend by video. A family in Bowling Green assumed the hearing on their mother’s capacity would run on Teams, because a short non-evidentiary hearing in the same case had. The division names incapacity hearings first in its list of evidentiary hearings, and an evidentiary hearing is scheduled in person, with a motion to appear virtually denied outright unless it states that every attorney of record was consulted and has no objection. The family found the rule four days out and drove in.

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 Hardee 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.
• Hardee County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · AO 1-1.69 · AOSC26-18 · AO 4-16.0 · AO 1-61.1 · AO 4-3.2 · AO 1-15.4. 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/hardee-county.md.
• Hardee County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Tenth 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 Wauchula residents wherever you are, and this is not a Hardee County office.