Santa Rosa County Probate Court: Where to File and What to File

Where the Santa Rosa County Probate Court Actually Sits

Santa Rosa County probate is heard in the First Judicial Circuit, at the Santa Rosa County Courthouse at 4025 Avalon Boulevard in Milton, where Division D takes every probate and guardianship case in the county. Filings go through the Santa Rosa County Clerk of Court and Comptroller, whose probate line is (850) 981-5584 and whose probate email is [email protected]. The counter runs Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Two things about this courthouse surprise people. Division D is not a probate division, and calling it one misleads a filer about the calendar an estate is waiting in. The circuit labels it juvenile dependency, juvenile delinquency, probate and guardianship, and the same judge also carries unified family cases, truancy court and part of the domestic violence injunction docket. Then there is the address. Court correspondence goes to 4025 Avalon Boulevard in Milton, and everything else goes to the Clerk’s Recording and Records office at 6495 Caroline Street. Search engines and older directories still show the Caroline Street address, and the mapping services still put a Santa Rosa County Court House in downtown Milton, so the wrong address is easy to find and easy to use.

The probate counter is at the Santa Rosa County Courthouse, 4025 Avalon Boulevard, Milton, FL 32583, Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., (850) 981-5584 for probate, with (850) 981-5554 on the general information line. Santa Rosa keeps two mailing addresses, and sending probate to the wrong one is the classic mistake in this county. Court correspondence goes to 4025 Avalon Boulevard in Milton, and everything else goes to the Recording and Records office at 6495 Caroline Street. Search engines and older directories still show the Caroline Street address, and OpenStreetMap still maps a Santa Rosa County Court House in downtown Milton, so the wrong address is easy to find and easy to use. Probate email goes to [email protected]. No will-deposit procedure, counter or fee is published, though the opening checklist has a field for a deposited will number, so a will deposited before the estate is opened gets its own case number.

• The clerk’s probate page for Santa Rosa County
• First Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the First 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 Santa Rosa County, her estate is a Santa Rosa 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 Milton, Pace, Navarre, Gulf Breeze, Jay, Bagdad, and Navarre Beach are all Santa Rosa 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

Parking at the Santa Rosa County Courthouse is free along the frontage of the building, unless a space is marked for employees. Accessible parking sits in front of the courthouse and in the employee lot along the side. The building runs Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and closes on weekends and court-observed holidays. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Santa Rosa County?

Probate cases in Santa Rosa 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.

• Steven C. Warrick, Division D, which the circuit labels juvenile dependency, juvenile delinquency, probate and guardianship, and which also carries unified family cases, truancy court and part of the domestic violence injunction docket, sitting at the Santa Rosa County Courthouse on Avalon Boulevard in Milton, assigned May 1, 2023 in Division D, and January 2, 2025 for probate and guardianship under the current directive, which runs until January 4, 2027 (SRCAD 2024-02, with SRCAD 2023-01 behind the 2023 date).

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 Santa Rosa County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Santa Rosa County are 526 probate filings, 94 guardianship filings and 2 trust filings, plus 186 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 457 probate cases in the same year. Spread across one judge, that is about 526 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.

How a Case Gets Filed in Santa Rosa 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 Santa Rosa 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.

Santa Rosa assigns by subject rather than by geography, and the whole county files in Milton. Division D holds all probate and all guardianship with no ratio, no ZIP code test and no rotation among judges, under a directive signed November 21, 2024 that runs until January 4, 2027, and the same division has carried probate since at least 2016. What is worth knowing is the rest of that division’s calendar, because dependency, delinquency, unified family cases, truancy court and part of the injunction docket sit in the same courtroom as your uncontested order. One thing the county does not publish is where a conflicted probate case goes. Escambia posts its answer and Santa Rosa’s recusal directive could not be read, so ask the division rather than assuming the Escambia route.

Are Santa Rosa County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Santa Rosa County are held remotely by default, on Zoom. All probate and guardianship hearings here are on Zoom unless in person is specifically requested, which is the sentence the judge puts on his own page and the opposite of the rule a county away in Walton. The judge publishes a standing room and requires the whole Zoom block to be pasted into the notice of hearing, with the meeting number 984 761 3263 and the dial-in lines +1 312 626 6799 and +1 929 205 6099. No motion is needed for a routine probate hearing, and nothing published sets a deadline for asking to appear remotely. The published instructions warn that the proceeding is digitally recorded and every participant is recorded from log-in to exit, tell participants to mute when not speaking, and ask everyone to connect ten minutes before the hearing begins.

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. Florida gives the custodian ten days from learning of the death to deposit the original with the Clerk, and Santa Rosa publishes no deposit procedure, no counter and no fee for it. One clue in the county’s own paperwork says how it works in practice. The opening formal administration checklist has a field for a deposited will number, so a will deposited before anyone opens an estate gets its own case number, and the later petition points back at it. Call the probate department at (850) 981-5584 before you drive an original anywhere, and send it to 4025 Avalon Boulevard rather than to the Caroline Street office that older listings show.

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 Santa Rosa 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. Santa Rosa is a checklist county where the list is longer than the Clerk’s forms page shows. A county administrative directive signed on April 3, 2018 requires the matching checklist at the moment a petition for formal administration, summary administration, determination of homestead status, or discharge is filed, and it prescribes all four. The judge then adds a fifth document, an Affidavit of Heirs, required in every intestate matter, formal and summary alike. The Clerk posts three of the five, so a filer who never reads the judge’s own page arrives short. One honest caution goes with that list, because two published sources disagree about where the checklists go. The directive says they are emailed to the assigned division and are not filed in the court file, while the judge’s own preferences page says they are e-filed once completed. Both are the court’s own publications, so confirm with the probate division at 850-981-5540 before you send anything rather than picking one. The order rules are settled and worth following to the letter. Proposed orders go through the Florida Courts ePortal on the proposed order function, with Santa Rosa picked in the drop-down and the correct judge selected, in Word, titled the same as the order, with no cover letter and no need to add the word proposed. Every proposed order ends with the pro se service paragraph placed before the Done and Ordered clause, which makes the only attorney in the case responsible for serving the order within five business days on any self-represented party who is not a registered portal user, and no certificate of service is left for the judicial assistant to complete. Check the Clerk’s website for the status of an order before emailing the office. Hearing time comes from an email to the judicial assistant with the opposing party or attorney included, and the moving party then files a notice of hearing stating the matters, the length, the location, and whether it is in person or on Zoom.

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 Santa Rosa 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 Santa Rosa County as of September 16, 2026.

• SRCAD 2018-02, Probate Filings (April 3, 2018). The operative probate rule in this county. A petition for formal administration, summary administration, determination of homestead status, or discharge has to arrive with its matching checklist, and the directive prescribes all four. The opening checklist is a four-page attorney certification grid with a second column for the court’s own review, covering the death certificate, the original will and its self-proof or witness oath, any deposited will or caveat case number, priority to serve, bond, and the proposed orders.
• SRCAD 2024-02, Santa Rosa County Division Assignments (signed November 21, 2024, Division D effective January 2, 2025, in effect until January 4, 2027). Puts probate and guardianship with the Division D judge, alongside dependency, delinquency, unified family, truancy court and part of the injunction docket. Assignments rotate under the county’s own circuit rotation policy, so the January 2027 date is worth a check before a long case.
• SRCAD 2025-02, Procedures for Recusals and Disqualifications (May 6, 2025). Amends the 2021 and 2023 versions and is where the conflict route for a Santa Rosa probate case lives. The directive was located but not read, so where a conflicted estate actually goes here is an open question rather than something this page states.
• SRCAD 2026-01, Santa Rosa County Division 3 Assignment (signed August 6, 2026, effective August 10, 2026). Gives a county judge the Division 3 docket of county civil, traffic, small claims, county ordinances and Marchman Act cases. Probate is untouched, and the directive matters here only because it is the one 2026 change to the Santa Rosa bench.
• AO 2025-27, Appointment of First Judicial Circuit Administrative Judges (July 1, 2025). Names the administrative judge for Santa Rosa County through June 30, 2027, which matters because the county directives that govern probate are signed by that judge rather than by the chief judge.

The division also publishes its own procedures, last revised December 2024, and the points a filer most needs are these.

• Five documents carry a Santa Rosa probate, which is two more than the Clerk posts. Three are the checklists for opening a formal administration, closing one and summary administration, the fourth is the checklist for determining homestead status of real property, required in both formal and summary administration, and the fifth is an Affidavit of Heirs, required in every intestate matter. The Clerk posts three of the five, so a filer working from the Clerk’s forms page alone will be short two documents.
• Two published sources disagree on where those checklists go. The county directive says they are emailed to the assigned division and are not filed in the court file, while the judge’s own preferences page says they are e-filed once completed. Both are the court’s own, and until the division settles it, confirm with the probate division at 850-981-5540 before you send anything.
• Proposed orders go through the Florida Courts ePortal, on the proposed order function, with Santa Rosa picked in the drop-down and the correct judge selected, in Word. No cover letter is wanted, and the document is titled the same as the order, with no need to add the word proposed. An order carrying an exhibit that cannot be handled in Word goes to the judicial assistant by email instead.
• Every proposed order ends with the pro se service paragraph, placed before the Done and Ordered clause, which makes the only attorney in the case responsible for serving the order within five business days on any self-represented party who is not a registered portal user. Do not add a certificate of service for the judicial assistant to complete. The signature block the division wants reads Done and Ordered in Milton, Santa Rosa County, Florida.
• Check the Clerk’s website for the status of an order before emailing the office, and email the judicial assistant only if the order is not docketed. Hearing time comes from an email to the judicial assistant with the opposing party or attorney included, asking for dates and stating the time needed. The moving party then prepares, serves and files the notice of hearing, which states the matters to be heard, the length, the location, and whether it is in person or on Zoom. A cancellation goes to the judicial assistant, and where a notice was filed it takes a notice of cancellation too.

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 Santa Rosa 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 Santa Rosa 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 Santa Rosa 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 Santa Rosa County

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

Posted August 2026. The Santa Rosa Clerk posts no probate fee schedule that could be reached on September 16, 2026. The court-fees page is a payment page with no fee table, the site search for a fee schedule returns nothing matching, four likely fee paths return 404, and the pro se page mentions only a minimal charge for forms. The ranges above run from the statutory base charge plus the $4 statutory add-on to the highest total any Florida clerk posts, and the other First Circuit counties post $400, $345, $235 and $231. Confirm by phone at (850) 981-5584 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 $232 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 Santa Rosa County estate, our probate attorney page for Milton 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 Santa Rosa County Probate Court This Year

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

• April 24, 2026. A Santa Rosa county judge was appointed to the First Judicial Circuit Court and assigned to Escambia criminal divisions on May 1, 2026, which is what opened the Division 3 seat in Santa Rosa later in the year. Source.
• August 6, 2026. SRCAD 2026-01 gave Division 3 to a new county judge effective August 10, 2026, and recites his appointment date as July 28, 2026. Probate stayed in Division D. Source.
• September 11, 2026. The Governor’s office published a release announcing the same Division 3 appointment, dated after the directive that already seated him. Take the directive’s July 28, 2026 date for the appointment and August 10, 2026 for the start, and treat the release date as unexplained. Source.
• September 16, 2026. The county’s published index of administrative directives still carries its April 22, 2025 revision date, so a 2026 directive does not appear on it. Read the directives themselves rather than the index. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The intestate estate with no Affidavit of Heirs. A Pace family downloaded every probate checklist on the Clerk’s forms page, filled all three in, and filed their father’s intestate estate. Santa Rosa requires an Affidavit of Heirs in every intestate matter, and that requirement lives on the judge’s own preferences page rather than on the Clerk’s forms page. Nothing was wrong with the petition. The document that was missing was one the Clerk had never offered them.

The package that went to Caroline Street. A Gulf Breeze filer mailed a probate package to the Santa Rosa County Clerk at the Caroline Street address a search result had given her. Caroline Street is the Recording and Records office, and court correspondence goes to 4025 Avalon Boulevard in Milton. Nothing was lost, and the package took the scenic route through the Clerk’s internal mail while a ten-day clock ran.

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 Santa Rosa 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.
• Santa Rosa County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · SRCAD 2018-02 · SRCAD 2024-02 · SRCAD 2025-02 · SRCAD 2026-01 · AO 2025-27. 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/santa-rosa-county.md.
• Santa Rosa County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · First 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 Milton residents wherever you are, and this is not a Santa Rosa County office.