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

Where the Manatee County Probate Court Actually Sits

Manatee County probate is heard in the Twelfth Judicial Circuit, at the Manatee County Judicial Center at 1051 Manatee Avenue West in Bradenton. Filings go through the Manatee County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, whose Probate and Guardianship Department sits in a separate building one block east, at 1115 Manatee Avenue West, open Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and answering at 941-741-4037.

So there are two addresses, and they are not interchangeable. Hearings are at the Judicial Center. Paper, including the original will, goes to the Clerk’s building down the street.

The probate counter is at the Clerk’s Probate and Guardianship Department, 1115 Manatee Avenue West, Bradenton, FL 34205, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., 941-741-4037. The Clerk’s probate office is a separate building one block east of the Manatee County Judicial Center at 1051 Manatee Avenue West, where hearings are held, and mail goes to P.O. Box 25400, Bradenton, FL 34206. The page already states the summary administration ceiling at $150,000, the figure that took effect July 1, 2026.

• The clerk’s probate page for Manatee County
• Twelfth Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Twelfth 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 Manatee County, her estate is a Manatee 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 Bradenton, Palmetto, Lakewood Ranch, Anna Maria, Holmes Beach, Ellenton, and Parrish are all Manatee 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

Most downtown streets have free two-hour parking. For a longer stay the court points to two public garages, the city garage on 12th Street West between Sixth Avenue West and Eighth Avenue West and the county garage on 10th Street West between Manatee Avenue and Fourth Avenue West, with public parking on the first two levels of each. A placard holder may park in any metered or on-street space with no time limit and no payment. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

If you are dropping off an original will or sitting through a morning calendar, coffee within a short walk is Orange Blossom Coffee at 1166 3rd Avenue West, Bradenton, about a 5-minute walk from the public entrance. Walk west on Manatee Avenue to 12th Street West, then two short blocks south to 3rd Avenue West. It closes at 2 p.m. most days and at noon on Mondays.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Manatee County?

Probate cases in Manatee 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.

• Charles E. Williams, Probate and Guardianship Division, Manatee and Sarasota Counties, with listed chambers in Courtroom 8B at the Silvertooth Judicial Center in Sarasota, assigned August 3, 2026 (AO 2026-05b.4 of August 31, 2026, which carried forward AO 2026-05a.4 of May 29, 2026).

The circuit’s judicial directory is the source, read on September 15, 2026. Assignments rotate, usually at the start of a calendar year, so check it before a hearing.

How Busy the Manatee County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Manatee County are 1,460 probate filings, 169 guardianship filings and 0 trust filings, plus 717 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 1,498 probate cases in the same year. Spread across one judge, that is about 1,460 new probate cases per judge a year, which is the number behind how long an uncontested order takes to get signed.

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 Manatee County Courthouse Is Closed

Florida sets nine paid state holidays by statute, and a circuit may close on more. The Manatee County courthouse follows the Twelfth Judicial Circuit calendar, which adds Good Friday, Juneteenth, Yom Kippur, Christmas Eve and Rosh Hashanah 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 Manatee 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 Manatee County estate does not require anyone to be in Florida. An out-of-state family can open, run, and close a case from a kitchen table in another state, because the filings, the notices, and the proposed orders all move electronically. The exceptions are physical documents, and there are only a few of them.

A Manatee case is filed once and stays in the Manatee probate division, with no branch courthouse and no ZIP code test. The one moving part in 2026 is the judge. Under the third amended assignment order of May 29, 2026, the Manatee probate and guardianship seat passed on August 3, 2026 from the judge who had held it, and who remains Chief Judge, to the judge who already held Sarasota and Venice, so the whole two-county division now answers to one judge whose listed chambers are in Sarasota. Where Manatee matters are heard under that arrangement is the question to ask before a hearing is set.

Are Manatee County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Manatee County can be held remotely on Zoom, and the division decides which matters must be in person. The rule the Manatee tab published, in effect from October 1, 2022, puts every non-evidentiary hearing and every evidentiary hearing of 60 minutes or less on Zoom or hybrid, requires a written motion or stipulation to hold a longer evidentiary hearing remotely, and treats an objection to remote appearance as waived after 10 days. There is no standing room, because one Zoom credential covers all of a day’s hearings and is posted on the circuit’s Public Court Hearings page, with scheduling through JACS and the ex parte docket set by email instead. Those defaults were published under the judge who held the division until August 2, 2026, so confirm them with the division before you rely on them.

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. Manatee names the office. The custodian deposits the original with the Clerk’s Probate and Guardianship Department at 1115 Manatee Avenue West within 10 days, with the date of death or the Social Security number, and no attorney is needed to make the deposit. The department closes at 4:30 p.m., and it takes mail at P.O. Box 25400, Bradenton, FL 34206.

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 Manatee 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. What Manatee adds is a routine rather than an affidavit, and the routine has an asterisk on it this year. Under the division page as last published, uncontested and non-evidentiary matters of five minutes or less are heard ex parte Monday through Thursday at 8:30 a.m. in Courtroom 5D, by Zoom or in person, and they are not set through the judicial assistant or JACS. The whole packet, meaning the petition, the notice of hearing, the proposed orders, and every supporting document, is emailed as one PDF to the probate coordinator at [email protected] by noon on the business day before the hearing, with no exceptions and no telephone appearances. Evidence for an evidentiary hearing is submitted and marked at least five business days ahead, a telephone appearance needs a written motion and proposed order five business days ahead, and everything that is not ex parte is set through JACS. All of that was published under the judge who held the division until August 2, 2026. Since August 3, 2026 the division belongs to a judge whose listed chambers are in Sarasota, and whether the 8:30 docket, the courtroom, and the coordinator mailbox carried over is not stated on the circuit’s page, so confirm with the division before you send a packet.

The Administrative Orders That Govern Probate in Manatee 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 Manatee County as of September 15, 2026.

• AO 2026-05b.4, Fourth Amended Judicial Assignments 2026 (signed at Bradenton on August 31, 2026, effective September 3, 2026). The operative assignment order, amending AO 2026-05a.4 of May 29, 2026. The Manatee probate and guardianship seat moved on August 3, 2026 under the order this one amends, from the prior judge, who went to a civil division while remaining Chief Judge, to the circuit judge who already held Sarasota and Venice, and this order keeps him there.
• AO 2019-04.5, Assignment of Adversary Probate Proceedings (February 22, 2019, effective immediately). A Manatee adversary probate proceeding that needs a trial longer than half a day transfers to the Civil Division when it is ready for trial, and the pretrial motions stay in Probate.

The division also publishes its own procedures, last revised August 3, 2026, and the points a filer most needs are these.

• Ex parte hearings run Monday through Thursday at 8:30 a.m. before the probate judge in Courtroom 5D, by Zoom or in person, for uncontested, non-evidentiary matters of five minutes or less, and they are not scheduled through the judicial assistant or JACS.
• The ex parte packet, meaning the petition, the notice of hearing, the proposed orders and every relevant document, is emailed as one PDF to the probate coordinator at [email protected] by noon on the business day before the hearing, with no exceptions, with the case style, petition and hearing date in the subject line, and with no telephone appearances.
• Evidence for an evidentiary hearing is submitted and marked at least five business days before, with petitioners using numbers and respondents using letters.
• A telephone appearance needs a written motion and a proposed order at least five business days ahead, and phone hearings are taken last.
• Everything else is set through JACS, one Zoom credential covers all of a day’s hearings, and every point above was published under the judge who held the division until August 2, 2026. The circuit now posts the Manatee requirements as effective August 3, 2026, under the judge who took the division that day, so read the current version before you rely on the routine above.

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 Manatee 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 Manatee 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 Manatee 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 Manatee County

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

Posted August 2026. 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 Manatee County estate, our probate attorney page for Bradenton 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 Manatee County Probate Court This Year

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

• August 31, 2026. The fourth amended assignment order for 2026 was signed, effective September 3, 2026, and it is now the operative one. The order keeps the whole Manatee and Sarasota probate and guardianship division with the judge who took the Manatee seat on August 3, and the circuit now posts the Manatee requirements as effective that August date. Source.
• May 29, 2026. The third amended assignment order for 2026 moved Manatee probate and guardianship from the judge who had held it, who remains Chief Judge, to the circuit judge who already held Sarasota and Venice, effective August 3, 2026. Source.
• July 1, 2026. The Clerk’s probate page now states the summary administration ceiling at $150,000, the figure that took effect on this date under chapter 2026-57. Source.
• April 24, 2026. The Governor appointed three judges to the Twelfth Circuit, including Andrea Johnson of Bradenton, who filled the vacancy left by Judge Arend’s resignation, and the assignment order that followed placed none of them in probate. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The packet that arrived at 12:15. A Palmetto family’s attorney emailed the ex parte packet for an uncontested petition at 12:15 p.m. on the day before the 8:30 a.m. docket. The published deadline is noon on the business day before, with no exceptions, and the hearing moved to the next available morning. Nothing was wrong with the petition. Fifteen minutes cost the estate a day.

The will carried to the wrong building. A son drove his mother’s original will to the Manatee County Judicial Center at 1051 Manatee Avenue West, because that is the courthouse. The Clerk’s Probate and Guardianship Department, which takes the will, is one block east at 1115 Manatee Avenue West and closes at 4:30 p.m. He walked the block, and the will went in before the counter closed. The 10-day clock would not have cared which door looked like the right one.

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 Manatee 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.
• Manatee County local court layer, retrieved September 15, 2026, from the judicial directory · AO 2026-05b.4 · AO 2019-04.5. 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/manatee-county.md.
• Manatee County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Twelfth Judicial Circuit administrative orders · judges directory.

Updated on September 15, 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 Bradenton residents wherever you are, and this is not a Manatee County office.