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

Where the Jefferson County Probate Court Actually Sits

Jefferson County probate is heard in the Second Judicial Circuit, at the Jefferson County Courthouse at 1 Courthouse Circle in Monticello. Filings go through the Jefferson County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, whose main line is (850) 342-0218, where extension 226 reaches the desk that carries Official Records, guardianship and probate together. The counter is open Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., a longer day than the neighbouring clerks keep.

The building is a 1909 Classic Revival courthouse, and the only offices left inside it are the Clerk of the Circuit Court and the county and circuit judges, so the counter and the judge sit under one roof. Money is now being spent on that roof. The county commission voted on August 6, 2026 to put $1.5 million of its Restore Act allocation into courthouse renovation, on top of more than $800,000 allocated in September 2025, with a further $500,000 state request filed in January 2026. Nobody has published a schedule for the work, and a building under renovation is the commonest reason a small county counter moves without an announcement, so call (850) 342-0218 before you drive to Monticello with anything.

The probate counter is at the Clerk’s counter at the Jefferson County Courthouse, 1 Courthouse Circle, Monticello, FL 32344, Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., (850) 342-0218, extension 226. Extension 226 is listed as Official Records, guardianship and probate together, so in an 88-filing county the same desk records deeds and opens estates. Depositing a will costs nothing and the Clerk will not take one while the person who made it is alive, and Jefferson asks for nothing beyond what Florida law asks for, unlike Wakulla next door. No room number and no probate case-number prefix are published. The Clerk hosts six probate forms of its own, all refreshed in April 2026, including both formal administration checklists, which no neighbouring clerk posts. The narrative on the Clerk’s probate page is shared boilerplate that also appears word for word on the Franklin Clerk’s site, so read it as general background rather than as Jefferson practice.

• The clerk’s probate page for Jefferson County
• Second Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Second 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 Jefferson County, her estate is a Jefferson 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 Monticello, Lloyd, Wacissa, Aucilla, Lamont, Waukeenah, and Capps are all Jefferson 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 Clerk publishes one sentence about parking and it is written for jurors, namely that juror parking is provided in the lot adjacent to the Jefferson County Courthouse. Read that as a description of where the lot is rather than as a promise of a space, and note that it is still more than the neighbouring clerks publish, which is nothing.

If you are dropping off an original will or sitting through a morning calendar, coffee within a short walk is CowHaus Coffee Company at 100 North Jefferson Street, Monticello, about 38 metres, under a one minute walk from the public entrance. An independent shop on the courthouse circle pouring organic and fair trade coffee and tea, closed Sundays and Mondays, (850) 242-6142. Tupelo’s Bakery & Cafe at 220 West Washington Street is 133 metres the other way and serves breakfast and lunch five days a week.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Jefferson County?

Probate cases in Jefferson 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.

• Jason L. Jones, every Jefferson County circuit case, probate and guardianship included, from 1 Courthouse Circle, Room 22 in Monticello, alongside half of all new probate cases in Leon County from Room 365-C in Tallahassee, with judicial assistant Beth Rissinger at 850-342-0247 for Jefferson, assigned at least December 8, 2025 for the Jefferson docket, restated on July 1, 2026, which is the date the Leon probate work was added (AO 2026-02).

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 Jefferson County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Jefferson County are 88 probate filings, 6 guardianship filings and 0 trust filings, plus 7 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 4 probate cases in the same year.

Jefferson returned 4 probate dispositions against 88 filings that year, and 6 across the whole division against 101. A gap that wide usually means a county reported its closures incompletely rather than that cases sat, so treat the filing count as the reliable figure and ask the clerk what a case actually takes here.

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 Jefferson 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 Jefferson 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.

Jefferson gives everything to one judge. One circuit judge holds every Jefferson circuit case, probate and guardianship included, and a county judge holds the county court docket, weekday first appearances and primary backup. What changed in 2026 was not the Jefferson half of that assignment, which has held since at least December 2025, but the rest of the judge’s week. From July 1, 2026 the same judge also carries half of all new probate cases in Leon County, where 965 probate cases were filed last year. So the judge reading a Jefferson petition is reading Leon petitions in the same week, and the requirements he publishes are written for both counties at once. There is no second courthouse and no section to draw.

Are Jefferson County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Jefferson County are held remotely by default, on Zoom. A hearing set for two hours or less is typically held on Zoom, which makes remote the default here rather than the exception. Where a hearing is scheduled in person and counsel wants to appear remotely, the judge’s written procedures require a motion and a proposed order emailed no fewer than 48 hours ahead, stating why remote appearance is necessary and the most recent date of personal contact with opposing counsel, and the document says such motions are frowned upon and are granted only on a showing of good cause. The same 48 hour motion applies to a party or a witness appearing remotely, and it has to state the opposing party’s position. No standing Jefferson probate meeting identifier is published anywhere, so there is no room to look up. The court supplies the Zoom information in the notice of hearing once the hearing is confirmed. Scheduling runs through the judicial assistant, Beth Rissinger at [email protected] or 850-342-0247.

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 custodian deposits the original with the Clerk in Monticello within 10 days of learning of the death. Depositing costs nothing, the Clerk will not take a will while the person who made it is alive, and Jefferson asks for nothing beyond what Florida law asks for, unlike Wakulla next door, which also wants a death certificate at that moment. The judge does want a death certificate, and he wants the original authenticated copy of it filed with the Clerk in every case, which is a separate requirement that travels with the petition rather than with the will.

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 Jefferson 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. Jefferson is one of the few small counties whose probate judge publishes written requirements, and his document names the county on its face. The document runs eleven pages, carries a February 4, 2026 date, is headed for his Leon and Jefferson assignments and gives a Jefferson telephone number of 850-342-0247. The probate section of it is short and it binds. The original authenticated copy of the death certificate is filed with the Clerk in every case. The Affidavit of Heirs is required in all cases, alongside the Summary Administration Checklist, the Formal Administration Opening Checklist and the Formal Administration Closing Checklist. And a petition to determine homestead status states the petitioner’s relation to the owner and whether the property sits inside or outside a municipality, because the constitutional cap is half an acre inside a municipality and 160 acres outside. Three working rules from the same document decide how an order actually gets signed. Hearing time is requested by email to the judicial assistant with every party copied, giving the case number, the motion or petition, whether it is evidentiary and the time needed, and the notice of hearing has to be filed within 48 hours, because the time is not reserved until the assistant has the filed notice. The Clerk will not accept or forward an e-filed order attached to a motion, so every proposed order goes to the judicial assistant by email in Word. And labelling a routine matter an emergency is prohibited, with a lack of diligence expressly not creating one. One trap sits inside the document itself. The forms pointer in it sends readers to the retired Leon Clerk site, which is doubly unhelpful in Jefferson, because the Jefferson Clerk hosts six probate forms of its own, refreshed in April 2026, and is the only clerk in this part of the state that posts both formal administration checklists as PDFs.

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 Jefferson 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 Jefferson County as of September 16, 2026.

• AO 2026-02, Circuit and County Judge Assignments (signed May 20, 2026, effective July 1, 2026). Section III gives one circuit judge every Jefferson circuit case and a county judge the county court cases, weekday first appearances and primary backup. Section IV.A.4 then gives that same circuit judge half of all Leon County probate cases. Section VIII defines an emergency narrowly and requires the request in writing to the assigned judge, and section VII.B.2 says the Leon County duty judge is not responsible for emergencies in Jefferson.
• AO 2026-02, First Amendment, Circuit and County Judge Assignments (signed August 17, 2026, nunc pro tunc to August 10, 2026). Moves Leon County guardianship and incapacity to a third judge and leaves the Jefferson section alone, so Jefferson guardianship stayed with the probate judge while Leon guardianship left him.
• AO 2026-02, Second Amendment, Circuit and County Judge Assignments (signed August 21, 2026, effective immediately). The operative version, with the Jefferson section unchanged. The circuit’s order index marks every order active and vacates nothing, so the newest order is the one that governs.

The division also publishes its own procedures, last revised February 4, 2026, and the points a filer most needs are these.

• The original authenticated copy of the death certificate is filed with the Clerk in every case.
• Four forms are required, the circuit’s own Affidavit of Heirs in all cases, the Summary Administration Checklist, the Formal Administration Opening Checklist and the Formal Administration Closing Checklist.
• A petition to determine homestead status states the petitioner’s relation to the owner and whether the property sits inside or outside a municipality, because the constitutional cap is half an acre inside a municipality and 160 acres outside.
• Hearing time is requested by email to the judicial assistant with every party copied, giving the case number, the motion or petition, whether it is evidentiary and the time needed. The notice of hearing has to be filed within 48 hours, and the time is not reserved until the assistant has the filed notice.
• The Clerk will not accept or forward an e-filed order attached to a motion, so every proposed order goes to the judicial assistant by email, in Word.
• Labelling a routine matter an emergency is prohibited, and a lack of diligence does not create one.
• Guardianship has its own Jefferson route. To get the next attorney or elisor on the rotation, the Jefferson address is [email protected] rather than the Leon guardianship address. The appointed attorney has to agree to see the alleged incapacitated person within five days and to meet that person before the examining committee arrives, each committee member’s availability has to be cleared, the member has to be told whether the case is private pay or indigent, and in a private pay case the order should give the guardian 30 days to pay the committee.

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 Jefferson 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 Jefferson 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 Jefferson 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 Jefferson County

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

Posted August 2026. The Jefferson Clerk posts no probate fee schedule anywhere a reader can reach, and the complete page sitemap, the probate and guardianship page and the recording fee page were all checked on September 16, 2026. The ranges above run from the statutory base charge plus the $4 statutory add-on to the highest total any Florida clerk posts. Neighbouring Gadsden and Wakulla each post $400, $345, $235 and $231, and their two schedules do not match line for line, so neither can stand in for this one. Confirm by phone at (850) 342-0218 extension 226 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 $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 Jefferson County estate, our probate attorney page for Monticello 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 Jefferson County Probate Court This Year

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

• August 18, 2026. The circuit judge who hears Jefferson probate held his seat at the primary, 45,970 votes to 43,265, which is 51.5 percent. The seat is the Jefferson County group, and everything distinctive about Jefferson probate practice comes from his published procedures. Source.
• August 6, 2026. The county commission voted to put $1.5 million of its Restore Act allocation into courthouse renovation, alongside $2.5 million for jail reconstruction. More than $800,000 had already been allocated to the building in September 2025, and a further $500,000 state request was filed in January 2026. No schedule for the work has been published. Source.
• August 5, 2026. The Clerk told the county commission that residents were getting calls from people posing as his staff or as sheriff’s deputies, telling them they had missed jury duty. Source.
• May 5, 2026. The Clerk warned that text messages claiming to notify residents of court dates or traffic appearances are fraudulent, and said the courthouse does not issue text message notifications at this time. Source.
• February 4, 2026. The judge revised the eleven page procedures document that sets Jefferson’s probate filing requirements and its remote hearing default. The header names Leon and Jefferson and gives a Jefferson telephone number of 850-342-0247. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The hearing time that was never reserved. An attorney emailed the judicial assistant for a half hour slot, got a date back, and filed the notice of hearing four days later. The judge’s procedures reserve nothing until the assistant has the filed notice, and the 48 hour window had gone. The estate did not lose the hearing, it lost its place in the queue for one, which on a creditor timeline is not free.

The homestead petition that came back thin. A family petitioned to determine homestead on a house outside Monticello and described the property by its address. The judge asks a homestead petition to state the petitioner’s relation to the owner and whether the land sits inside or outside a municipality, because the constitutional cap is half an acre inside a municipality and 160 acres outside. Nothing about the house had changed. The petition simply had to say which of the two numbers applied.

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 Jefferson 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.
• Jefferson County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · AO 2026-02 · AO 2026-02, First Amendment · AO 2026-02, Second Amendment. 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/jefferson-county.md.
• Jefferson County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Second 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 Monticello residents wherever you are, and this is not a Jefferson County office.