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

Where the Hendry County Probate Court Actually Sits

Hendry County probate is heard in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit, at the Hendry County Courthouse at 25 East Hickpochee Avenue in LaBelle. Filings go through the Hendry County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, which keeps no probate line at all, because probate and guardianship sit with Civil on the second floor of the Judicial Center at (863) 675-5204. One circuit judge keeps chambers in that courthouse and carries every circuit case in the county.

Glades County has no page of its own here, and the reason is that almost everything about its court is Hendry’s. A Glades estate is filed with the Glades County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller at 500 Avenue J, Suite 102, in Moore Haven, on (863) 946-6010, and the same circuit judge signs the orders from chambers at the Hendry County Courthouse in LaBelle. Three things in Glades are genuinely its own, and all three belong to the Clerk. That office requires a death certificate to be filed with the original will, which Florida law does not, so a will that arrives alone can be turned away. Depositing the will is free and produces a receipt carrying the case number, the filing date and the Clerk’s seal, together with one courtesy certified copy of the will, which no neighbouring clerk offers. And on a disposition of personal property without administration a clerk completes the petition with the filer and presents it to the presiding probate judge, once the death certificate, the funeral home statement, notarized consents from every heir, the paperwork for the asset being transferred and an affidavit of heirs are in hand. Glades publishes no probate fee schedule either, so a Glades filer is in the same position as a Hendry one and should ask the Clerk for the charge before filing.

The probate counter is at the Hendry County Courthouse, 25 E. Hickpochee Avenue, LaBelle, FL 33935, the Civil counter on the second floor of the Judicial Center, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., (863) 675-5204. Three things about this counter catch people. There is no probate line in the Clerk’s directory, because probate and guardianship sit with Civil, and the Clerk’s own contact page routes guardianship and probate mail to the Hickpochee Avenue address. The Clerk runs a second office in Clewiston, at 1100 S. Olympia Street, Suite 502, on (863) 983-1464, which keeps the same hours but closes for lunch from 1 to 2, and no court sits there. And the physical zip and the mailing zip are different, because the counter is in 33935 while mail goes to P.O. Box 1760, LaBelle, FL 33975, which is also the box zip the judge’s chambers use. One line on the Clerk’s probate page needs correcting before you rely on it, because it still gives $75,000 as the ceiling for summary administration and Florida moved that ceiling to $150,000 on July 1, 2026.

• The clerk’s probate page for Hendry County
• Twentieth Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Twentieth Judicial Circuit

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 Hendry County, her estate is a Hendry 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 LaBelle, Clewiston, Harlem, Felda, Montura, and Pioneer are all Hendry 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 at the Hendry County Courthouse is free on the side of the building. Treat that as the circuit’s standard answer rather than a Hendry fact, because the Glades page carries the same sentence word for word. The same page lists what security will take off you, and the list runs well past the usual, covering scissors, screwdrivers, nail files, wrenches, large pliers, razor blades, corkscrews, metal hair picks, metal forks and rolled coin. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Hendry County?

Probate cases in Hendry 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.

• Darrell R. Hill, Circuit Judge and Administrative Judge, carrying every circuit docket in Hendry and in Glades at 100 percent, from chambers at the Hendry County Courthouse in LaBelle, with judicial assistant Lori Savinsky at (863) 675-5225, assigned January 2, 2025 (the Hendry Circuit Court Division Assignment Order, which the circuit has not re-issued for 2026).

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 Hendry County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Hendry County are 111 probate filings, 31 guardianship filings and 4 trust filings, plus 39 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 116 probate cases in the same year.

Statewide the probate column was 73,282 filings against 141,166 for the whole division in FY 2024-25, so more than a third of what a Florida probate judge signs has nothing to do with an estate. The figures come from the Office of the State Courts Administrator's Statistical Reference Guide, chapter 6, and the next fiscal year's edition usually appears the following autumn.

When the Hendry County Courthouse Is Closed

Florida sets nine paid state holidays by statute, and a circuit may close on more. The Hendry County courthouse follows the Twentieth Judicial Circuit calendar, which adds Good Friday, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve to the statutory nine. The practical point is simple. E-filing accepts a document at any hour, but nothing is reviewed, docketed or signed on a day the courthouse is dark, so a petition filed the night before a closure sits until the next business day, and a deadline counted in days runs on regardless.

There is one caution about counting. A Florida deadline stated in days does not pause for a holiday in the middle of it, and only the last day matters. When the final day of a period falls on a Saturday, a Sunday or a legal holiday, the period runs to the end of the next day that is none of those. The circuit posts the calendar on its court holidays page, read on September 17, 2026, and it publishes the following year well in advance.

How a Case Gets Filed in Hendry 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 Hendry 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.

One circuit judge carries every circuit docket in Hendry, and the same judge carries every circuit docket in Glades, from chambers in LaBelle. There is no division to draw and no second courthouse, because the Clewiston office is a clerk sub-office where no court sits. Two things about the paperwork deserve a straight answer rather than a confident one. The assignment order for this county is dated January 2, 2025 and the circuit has not re-issued it for 2026, where Lee, Charlotte and Collier each carry a 2026 order. And that order lists five categories, names guardianship, and never names probate at all, while the Glades order signed the same week names probate and guardianship together. Probate is plainly this judge’s work, and the Hendry paperwork records it under the guardianship label, so confirm the assignment with the judicial assistant before a hearing rather than assuming the posted order is current.

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 LaBelle, 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. Two addressing details matter more here than they would elsewhere. Probate and guardianship mail goes to the Hickpochee Avenue courthouse rather than to the Clewiston sub-office, where no court sits. And the street zip and the mailing zip are different, because the counter is in 33935 while the post office box is in 33975, which is also the box zip the judge’s chambers use. The Clerk states no fee for the deposit.

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 Hendry 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. Hendry is the county where the local layer is mostly an absence, and knowing that saves a filer from following the wrong rules. The circuit’s treatment of this county is one sentence, that no case management is provided, followed by a link to the Clerk. So the mandatory checklists sitting on that same circuit page, the ones whose omission gets a proposed order deleted, are Lee County requirements and do not apply to a Hendry estate. What does apply is the assigned judge’s posted rules, and they carry a clock on both ends. A proposed order goes through the e-filing portal no more than ten days after the hearing and no later than three business days before an upcoming court appearance or other court-ordered event, and an order that arrives outside that window will not be considered. Before you send one, check the Clerk’s website and confirm that every supporting document is viewable in the electronic court file, because the judge asks for that in capitals and there is no probate case manager in this county to chase an image for you. Each case carries a complete certificate of service naming every party with the email address in the portal’s party list, and a full physical address with the zip code for anyone who has no email, and each submission carries the case style and number and says whether it is a cover letter, an order or a judgment. One question has no published answer at all. Nothing on the circuit or Clerk site says whether a Hendry probate hearing is held remotely or in person, the only Zoom credentials published for this county are labelled for first appearance hearings, and the judge’s own scheduling sheet is a 2021 image scan with no text in it, so the hearing question goes to the judicial assistant at (863) 675-5225. One line on the Clerk’s probate page also needs correcting before you rely on it, because it still gives $75,000 as the ceiling for summary administration and Florida moved that ceiling to $150,000 on July 1, 2026.

The Administrative Orders That Govern Probate in Hendry 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 Hendry County as of September 16, 2026.

• Hendry Circuit Court Division Assignment Order, effective January 2, 2025 (recorded in the county records on December 10, 2024). Puts all five of its categories with one circuit judge at 100 percent. Read the categories closely, because the order names guardianship and never names probate, while the Glades order signed the same week names probate and guardianship together. Probate is plainly this judge’s, and the Hendry paperwork records it under the guardianship label. The January 2025 order is also the newest one the circuit posts for Hendry, where Lee, Charlotte and Collier each have one from 2026.
• AO 5.1, Guardianship Financial Returns (February 14, 1995). The first of the three orders in the circuit’s probate series, on a guardian’s financial returns. The series holds three orders and the newest of them was signed in 2003, which is the reason nothing current governs how a Hendry probate case is filed.
• AO 2.40, Introduction and Management of Evidence in Remote Hearings in Civil and Family Law Cases (May 18, 2020). Governs how exhibits are introduced and handled when an evidentiary hearing is held by video, and it is still carried on the circuit’s order index.

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

• The circuit provides no probate case management in Hendry, and says so in one sentence on its own probate page before sending the reader to the Clerk. The mandatory checklists on that page belong to Lee County, so nothing on it is a Hendry requirement.
• Proposed orders go through the e-filing portal at myflcourtaccess.com, no more than ten days after the hearing and no later than three business days before an upcoming court appearance or other court-ordered event. An order that arrives outside that window will not be considered.
• Check the Clerk’s website before sending a proposed order that needs the judge to read the papers behind it. Every supporting document has to be viewable in the electronic court file first, and in a county with no probate case manager nobody chases the images for you.
• Each case carries a complete certificate of service naming every party with the email address in the portal’s party list, and a full physical address with the zip code for anyone who has no email. Each submission carries the case style and number and says whether it is a cover letter, an order or a judgment.
• One honest gap is worth planning around. The only scheduling document the circuit posts for this judge is a one-page image scan from March 2021 with no text layer, so nothing published says how a Hendry probate hearing is booked. The working route is the judicial assistant at (863) 675-5225 or [email protected].

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 Hendry 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 Hendry 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 Hendry 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 Hendry County

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

Posted August 2026. The Hendry Clerk publishes no probate fee schedule online at all, and its probate page ends by saying that for current filing fees you should refer to the Schedule of Service Charges, available in the Clerk’s Office, which is an instruction to come in person. The ranges above run from the statutory base charge plus the $4 statutory add-on to the highest total any Florida clerk posts. The figures are deliberately not a neighbour’s numbers, because Lee posts $231.00 for a disposition without administration where Charlotte posts $235.00 and Collier posts $235.75. Ask the Civil counter at (863) 675-5204 for the figure before you file. Fee schedules move, so confirm the current charge with the clerk before you file. The reason the number looks the same everywhere is that it is the same number. Florida law sets the base charge for opening a formal administration and adds a small statutory service charge on top, so the entire statewide spread across the ten largest counties is one dollar. Our county-by-county filing fee study has all ten posted schedules.

And then there is the number that dwarfs every line above. Florida publishes an attorney fee schedule that is presumed reasonable and scales with the size of the estate, and it is a ceiling the estate may agree to rather than a mandate. On a $100,000 estate the schedule calls $3,000 reasonable. That, not the clerk’s $399 to $401, is what probate costs a family. You can run your own numbers in the Florida probate cost calculator.

When the Estate Does Not Need All of This

Before you open a formal administration, rule out the three lighter paths, in this order.

• No probate at all. Only assets in the deceased person’s sole name with no other instruction go through probate. Life insurance and retirement accounts with a named beneficiary, pay-on-death bank accounts, jointly held property with survivorship, property in a funded trust, and a home that passed under a lady bird deed all move without a court case. Sometimes the whole estate turns out to be in that category. Our page on whether you need probate in Florida walks the test.
• Disposition without administration. For the smallest estates, with no real property and not much more than the final bills, whoever paid those bills can ask the clerk to release what is left. It is a request rather than a case, and it costs $231 to $236 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 Hendry County estate, our probate attorney page for LaBelle 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 Hendry County Probate Court This Year

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

• August 29, 2025. The Clerk published an order entered in a Hendry estate that sealed the attachments to a petition to approve a contract, namely the fee contract, the statement of client’s rights and the ex parte application for approval of the fee, while leaving the party’s name and the docket public and limiting viewing to the personal representative and counsel. Source.
• September 16, 2026. The circuit’s division assignment page still showed the order effective January 2, 2025 as the newest one for Hendry, while Lee, Charlotte and Collier each carried a 2026 order, so the Hendry bench is running on assignment paperwork that was not refreshed this year. Source.
• September 21, 2026. The circuit closed its courts on Monday, September 21, 2026 for Yom Kippur and resumed on Tuesday, September 22, which moves any hearing or deadline that lands on the Monday. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The order that sat because the images had not caught up. A LaBelle family’s attorney e-filed the petition on a Monday and uploaded the proposed order the same afternoon. The judge’s posted rule asks a filer to check the Clerk’s website first and confirm that the supporting documents are viewable in the electronic court file, and in a county with no probate case manager nobody is chasing the images on your behalf. The petition was fine. The order waited on paperwork nobody could see yet.

The trip to Clewiston. A daughter in Clewiston took her father’s original will to the Clerk’s sub-office on South Olympia Street at a quarter past one and found it closed for lunch until two. The office keeps the same hours as LaBelle apart from that closure, and probate is handled at the Civil counter in LaBelle in any event. She made the drive twice in one day, which the Clerk’s own hours page would have prevented.

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 Hendry 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.
• Hendry County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · Hendry Circuit Court Division Assignment Order · AO 5.1 · AO 2.40. 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/hendry-county.md.
• Hendry County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Twentieth Judicial Circuit administrative orders · judges directory.

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 LaBelle residents wherever you are, and this is not a Hendry County office.