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

Where the Okeechobee County Probate Court Actually Sits

Okeechobee County probate is heard in the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit, at the Okeechobee County Courthouse at 312 Northwest 3rd Street in Okeechobee. Filings go through the Okeechobee County Clerk of Circuit Court and Comptroller, which answers at 863-763-2131 and keeps the counter open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. One address covers the whole case here, because the Clerk, the courtrooms and the probate judge’s chambers all sit in that building.

The Clerk publishes no probate department page, which is worth knowing before you go looking for one. Probate appears on the site only as a tab on the fee schedule, and the service menu runs from child support to passports with no probate entry, so a counter question goes to the Supervisor of Court Services rather than to a probate line. What the circuit publishes instead is the probate judge’s own practices and procedures, and that document runs this county.

The probate counter is at the Okeechobee County Courthouse, 312 N.W. 3rd Street, Okeechobee, FL 34972, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., 863-763-2131. The Clerk, the courthouse and the probate judge’s chambers share that one address, so Okeechobee gives a filer a single place to go. The Clerk publishes no probate department page at all, and probate appears on the site only as a tab on the fee schedule, so a counter question goes to the Supervisor of Court Services rather than to a probate line. Depositing a will costs $1.00 here, which the schedule calls indexing of wills filed for record only, and no room or floor is published for the counter, so call before carrying an original in.

• The clerk’s probate page for Okeechobee County
• Nineteenth Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the Nineteenth 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 Okeechobee County, her estate is a Okeechobee 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 Okeechobee, Cypress Quarters, Taylor Creek, Fort Drum, and Basinger are all Okeechobee 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 street parking is available and free around the side streets of the Okeechobee County Courthouse. Okeechobee is the one location in this circuit with no lot and no garage, where Fort Pierce has a courthouse garage, Port St. Lucie an open lot, Vero Beach a free garage and Stuart a free lot, so plan on finding a space on the street. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Okeechobee County?

Probate cases in Okeechobee 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.

• Laurie E. Buchanan, Circuit Judge, holding all Okeechobee probate and guardianship along with every civil case in the county, the dependency docket and half the domestic relations docket, in Courtroom B at 312 N.W. 3rd Street, with judicial assistant Tiffany Wile at (863) 763-1122, assigned January 12, 2026, the date of the order now in force (Amended AO 2026-03).
• William Wallace, the Okeechobee County Judge, whom the same order assigns to assist with probate on top of the whole county court docket, in Courtroom D, Suite 368, assigned January 12, 2026 (Amended AO 2026-03).

The circuit’s judicial directory is the source, read on September 16, 2026. Assignments rotate, usually at the start of a calendar year, so check it before a hearing.

How Busy the Okeechobee County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Okeechobee County are 180 probate filings, 17 guardianship filings and 6 trust filings, plus 40 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 189 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 Okeechobee County Courthouse Is Closed

Florida sets nine paid state holidays by statute, and a circuit may close on more. The Okeechobee County courthouse follows the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit calendar, which adds Good Friday, 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 Okeechobee 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 Okeechobee 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.

Okeechobee assigns by what the case is rather than by where in the county anyone lives, and the arrangement is unusual. One circuit judge holds all probate and all guardianship here along with every civil case in the county, and the same assignment order separately puts the county judge on probate as an assisting judge, which no other county in this circuit does. A general magistrate may take a probate or guardianship matter on a separate order of referral. There is no second courthouse and no division to draw, so the only question left is whose procedures apply, and the probate judge publishes hers in full.

Are Okeechobee County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Okeechobee County can be held remotely on Zoom, and the division decides which matters must be in person. The division keeps one standing room, meeting ID 516-390-0212, and the judge’s page and her procedures both say there is no password requirement. The courtroom is hybrid by default and every evidentiary hearing is in person unless the court allows otherwise in advance, so a notice of hearing has to state which kind of hearing it is. No motion is needed to appear remotely at a non-evidentiary hearing, which is lighter than the rule in Martin County. Anyone who is going to testify appears on video, or has a notary present to administer the oath, and a witness with neither will not be permitted to testify. Each party is responsible for having its own witnesses in the waiting room at the scheduled time.

The division’s remote hearing instructions carry the current links and the dress and conduct rules, which judges enforce on camera exactly as they do in the room.

Where the Original Will Goes

Here is the rule that catches almost everyone, and it is stricter than families expect. Whoever is holding the original will has to deposit it with the clerk of the court that has venue over the estate, within 10 days of receiving information that the person has died. Read that trigger carefully. The clock does not start at the death, it starts when the custodian learns of the death, and the duty belongs to that custodian personally. It does not wait for a lawyer, it does not wait for the family to agree on anything, and it applies whether or not anybody intends to open a probate case. When the will goes in, the clerk also wants the date of death or the last four digits of the deceased person’s Social Security number.

The original itself travels on paper. Whatever a county does about an electronic copy, the physical document has to reach the clerk, and how it gets there is settled county by county rather than statewide. The original goes to the Clerk at 312 Northwest 3rd Street on paper, and Okeechobee charges $1.00 for taking it, which the fee schedule calls indexing of wills filed for record only. Neighbouring counties take a will for nothing, so the dollar is a curiosity rather than a cost, and it does mean the counter expects a payment. No room or floor is published for the probate counter, so call 863-763-2131 before you travel with an original. One more rule applies to every original in the case. Originals and money never go to the judge’s office, which says plainly that it takes no responsibility for either.

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 Okeechobee County probate forms, you are looking for something that does not exist as one official packet, which is why the results are a scatter of clerk pages, circuit pages, and companies selling you a template. What actually controls comes from three layers, and you need all three.

• The Florida Probate Rules, which prescribe contents rather than forms. The rule on the petition for administration lists eleven things the petition must state, from the decedent’s domicile to whether the proposed personal representative has been convicted of a felony. A document that satisfies the rule is legally sufficient even if it looks nothing like anyone’s template. The rules do carry a small set of forms of their own, but they are almost entirely guardianship forms, and the rules say outright that those forms are not intended to be part of the rules and are provided for convenience only. The one decedent-estate form actually written into the probate rules is the oath of the personal representative.
• The practitioner form set. Most Florida probate documents you will ever see are built from a numbered probate form set published by a private nonprofit and sold commercially. Lawyers treat it as the standard. It is not court-approved, and nothing obliges a court to accept it.
• The local layer, which is the one that rejects you. The local layer in Okeechobee is one judge’s published procedures, last revised on June 9, 2026, and it starts with an address. The division runs a paperless office, and probate documents go to [email protected], which reaches the case manager. Note what is missing from that address, because St. Lucie uses ProbateSLC and Martin uses ProbateMC, and the Okeechobee box carries no county letters at all. Anything to do with a hearing splits off to the judicial assistant at [email protected] instead. Checklists are required to open an estate and to close one, the attorney signs them personally and a signature stamp is not accepted, and the completed checklist, the proposed orders in Word and a description of what is being asked for all travel in a single email. Then comes the rule that costs the most. A certificate of conferral goes above the signature block on every probate motion, the procedures print the wording to use, and they say in bold that a motion without it, and the hearing set on it, are stricken from the docket. Scheduling splits at one hour, with hearings of less than an hour booked on the circuit’s online attorney calendar and anything longer requested by email with the time estimate, whether the other side agrees with it, and the filed motion attached. Time reserved is time enforced, a motion that runs over is suspended and reset, and one reset per motion is all the procedures allow. The notice of hearing goes out immediately after the time is reserved, says whether the hearing is virtual or in person, carries the Zoom credentials where anyone is appearing remotely, carries the accessibility notification, and certifies that the date and the length were coordinated. A probate trial is noticed for trial and then set for a case management conference before it is tried.

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 Okeechobee 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 Okeechobee County as of September 16, 2026.

• Amended AO 2026-03, Judicial Assignments for 2026 (signed January 12, 2026 and effective the same day, superseding AO 2025-08). Gives one circuit judge all Okeechobee probate and guardianship along with every civil case in the county, and separately assigns the county judge to assist with probate. The caption covers Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee and St. Lucie together, so the Okeechobee assignments sit inside a four-county order rather than one of their own.
• AO 2025-06 Amended, Magistrates and Hearing Officers (indexed October 21, 2025, with Appendix A revised August 3, 2026). Lets the circuit’s general magistrates hear a probate or guardianship matter on a separate order of referral under the Florida Probate Rules. The circuit directory and the Clerk’s judges page name different magistrates for Okeechobee, so ask the division who holds the referral instead of relying on either list.
• AO 2024-01, Guardianship Education for Non-Professional Guardians (2024). Sets the education a family guardian has to complete before serving. The Okeechobee probate judge links it from her own page, which the circuit’s other judges do not all do, so expect it to be raised here.

The division also publishes its own procedures, last revised June 9, 2026, and the points a filer most needs are these.

• Probate documents go to [email protected], which reaches the case manager, and anything to do with a hearing goes to the judicial assistant at [email protected] instead. Okeechobee is the one county in the circuit whose probate box carries no county letters, so ProbateSLC and ProbateMC reach the wrong case manager.
• Checklists are required to open an estate and to close one, the attorney signs them personally and a signature stamp is not accepted, and the completed checklist, the proposed orders in Word and a description of what is being asked for all travel in a single email.
• A certificate of conferral goes above the signature block on every probate motion. The procedures print the wording to use and say in bold that a motion filed without it, and the hearing set on it, are stricken from the docket.
• Hearings of less than an hour are booked on the circuit’s online attorney calendar, which takes a registered user ID. Anything longer is requested by email to the judicial assistant with the time estimate, whether the other side agrees with that estimate, and the filed motion attached.
• Time reserved is time enforced. A motion that does not finish inside its slot is suspended and has to be reset, and one reset per motion is all the procedures allow.
• A notice of hearing goes out immediately after the time is reserved, says whether the hearing is virtual or in person, carries the judicial Zoom credentials where anyone is appearing remotely, carries the accessibility notification, and certifies that the date and the length were coordinated.
• Originals and money never go to the judge’s office, which takes no responsibility for either. A probate trial starts with a notice for trial e-filed and emailed to the judicial assistant, and the matter is then set for a case management conference rather than straight for trial.
• Proposed orders are Word documents with a cover letter that either certifies that every party agrees on the form or identifies the disagreement.

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 Okeechobee 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 Okeechobee 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 Okeechobee 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 Okeechobee 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 Okeechobee County estate, our probate attorney page for Okeechobee 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 Okeechobee County Probate Court This Year

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

• January 12, 2026. Amended AO 2026-03 took effect and left the Okeechobee assignments where the September 2025 order had put them, with all probate and guardianship on one circuit judge and the county judge assigned to assist. Source.
• June 9, 2026. The probate judge’s judicial practices and procedures were last revised. That document is the working rulebook for an Okeechobee estate, because the circuit has no administrative order on decedent probate practice. Source.
• August 3, 2026. Appendix A to the magistrate order was revised, refreshing which general magistrates may take a probate or guardianship referral in Martin and Okeechobee. Source.
• September 11, 2026. The Governor announced ten judicial appointments, one to the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit and one to the Martin County Court, and neither of them filled an Okeechobee seat. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The motion nobody read. A son filed a motion to sell his mother’s house in Okeechobee, set a hearing on it, and drove down for the date. The division requires a certificate of conferral above the signature block on every probate motion, and a motion that arrives without one is stricken along with the hearing. Nothing about the sale was wrong. One missing paragraph cost the hearing date and the six weeks it took to get another.

The email that reached the wrong county. An attorney who handles St. Lucie estates sent the Okeechobee checklist and the proposed orders to [email protected] out of habit. Okeechobee uses [email protected], with no county letters after the word, and the two addresses reach different case managers. The papers were correct and complete, and they sat in another county’s queue until somebody noticed the address.

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 Okeechobee 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.
• Okeechobee County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · Amended AO 2026-03 · AO 2025-06 Amended · AO 2024-01. 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/okeechobee-county.md.
• Okeechobee County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · Nineteenth 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 Okeechobee residents wherever you are, and this is not a Okeechobee County office.