Probate in Florida’s Third Judicial Circuit: Seven Counties, One Court

Where a Third Judicial Circuit Estate Gets Filed

The Third Judicial Circuit covers Columbia, Suwannee, Taylor, Madison, Dixie, Hamilton and Lafayette counties, and an estate belongs in the county where the person lived when they died. Florida law fixes venue by domicile rather than leaving the family a choice, so a Mayo estate is filed in Lafayette County and a Perry estate in Taylor County even when a different courthouse is an hour closer to the people doing the work. Each of the seven counties has its own clerk, its own courthouse and its own filing counter, and the four clerks who post a probate fee schedule post it separately.

What the seven counties share is the court itself. One assignment order signed by the chief judge places every judge in all seven counties, one general magistrate covers probate, guardianship and trust matters in all of them, and one duty judge covers all seven after hours. Court Administration for the whole circuit sits in Room 408 at 173 NE Hernando Avenue in Lake City, which is also the Columbia County Courthouse, and every request for an accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act in any of the seven counties goes to that office at (386) 758-2163, at least seven days before the hearing.

Distance is a real part of practice here. Courtroom audio and video equipment is booked through Court Administration technology support in Lake City at 386-754-7066 or 386-754-7025, at least seven days ahead, and the department says plainly that it cannot test or support equipment on the day of the proceeding. Perry sits roughly 90 miles from that office. Plan the technology the week before, because nobody is driving over on the morning of your hearing.

Three of the seven counties have enough of their own published practice to carry a page here, and those pages go deeper than this one on the counter, the judge and the checklist for opening an estate. Read the Columbia County probate court guide, the Suwannee County probate court guide or the Taylor County probate court guide if the estate belongs in one of those. For Madison, Dixie, Hamilton and Lafayette, the paragraphs below carry everything those counties actually publish.

The Seven Counties, One at a Time

Here is the circuit county by county, as each court and each clerk published it on September 16, 2026. Four clerks post a probate fee schedule and three post nothing, two counties publish a case-number prefix and the rest do not, and one clerk does not publish its counter hours at all.

Five of the seven judges above hear probate as county judges sitting as acting circuit judges, which the assignment order says in those words. Taylor and Madison are the two counties where a circuit judge holds the probate docket. None of the seven is a probate judge in the sense a big county means it, because every one of them also carries a criminal, county court or family docket alongside the estates.

Columbia County, Lake City. Columbia is the largest probate county in the circuit at 260 filings in the 2024-25 fiscal year, more than Suwannee and Taylor together. County Judge Garrett Hill hears probate and guardianship as an acting circuit judge, and he also carries the county criminal and traffic docket and half the county’s circuit felony docket. The clerk’s office is the only one in the circuit with a direct probate line, (386) 758-1051, and staff will fill out a disposition of personal property without administration petition with a walk-in at the counter. Columbia also asks for a death certificate alongside an original will, which Florida law does not require. The Columbia County probate court page has the counter, the fee table and the opening checklist.

Suwannee County, Live Oak. Suwannee is the one county in this circuit where probate practice is written down. County Judge Jennifer K. Griffin, a former general magistrate of this circuit, publishes Courtroom Procedures with a Probate and Guardianship section that binds every estate in the county, and she is the reason a Suwannee proposed order goes to the general magistrate rather than to her office. The counter closes at 4:30, the earliest in the circuit, and depositing a will is free while the receipt for it costs $7.00. The Suwannee County probate court page carries all three probate requirements and the rest of her procedures.

Taylor County, Perry. Taylor posts the fullest probate fee schedule in the circuit and publishes no probate page to go with it, so the fee table is the whole of the clerk’s published probate guidance. Circuit Judge Gregory S. Parker, chief judge of this circuit from 2013 to 2017, holds the probate docket. Taylor is also the only county here with a checkable case-number prefix, county code 62, so a Taylor estate takes the form 62-2026-CP-000. Mail goes to P.O. Box 620 in Perry, FL 32348 while the counter is at 108 North Jefferson Street in Perry, FL 32347, and both ZIP codes are in circulation for the same building. The Taylor County probate court page has the fee lines nobody else prices and the four preference documents the judge posts.

Madison County, Madison. Madison took 90 probate filings and closed 43 of them in the 2024-25 fiscal year. Circuit Judge Cary A. “Bo” Hardee III hears probate, and the current assignment order carries a standing recusal that matters in this county and nowhere else. A Madison case in which the Hardee Law Firm, PL appears is reassigned by the clerk automatically, without anyone moving for it, because the judge owned that firm in Madison before his appointment in 2026. The backup carries a firm-specific bump of its own. The clerk publishes no probate page and no fee schedule of any kind, so the filing fee comes from (850) 973-1500 before you file, and Madison writes case numbers in a local short form such as 25-31-CA rather than with a county code. Billy Washington, the clerk here, was named Clerk of the Year by Florida Court Clerks and Comptrollers in June 2026.

Dixie County, Cross City. County Judge Jennifer J. Johnson hears probate as an acting circuit judge, and the same order gives her the entire county court docket and all of Dixie’s circuit civil cases, so one judge handles nearly everything filed in the county except felonies. She publishes a one-page Procedure for Submitting Proposed Orders dated May 10, 2023, two sentences long, and it makes you choose a route by how the signed order will come back. A proposed order that will be distributed electronically is emailed to [email protected] with a copy of the pending motion, and a proposed order that will go out by U.S. Mail is mailed with stamped envelopes to P.O. Box 1995, Cross City, FL 32628. Two more Dixie facts are worth having. The clerk opens at 8:30 rather than 8:00, alone in the circuit, and asks that FedEx and UPS deliveries go to the courthouse at 214 Northeast Highway 351 while all other mail goes to P.O. Box 1206, which decides the address for an original will posted against the ten-day deadline. Dixie posts no probate fee schedule, so call (352) 498-1200, and its case numbers carry the county code 15.

Hamilton County, Jasper. Hamilton is the smallest probate docket in the circuit but one, with 51 filings and 16 dispositions in the 2024-25 fiscal year. County Judge Jamie L. Tyndal hears probate as an acting circuit judge alongside the whole county court docket and all of Hamilton’s circuit felony cases. The clerk’s office is at 207 NE First Street, Room 106, in Jasper, and Room 106 is the only clerk room number published anywhere in this circuit. Hamilton posts the same four fee figures Columbia posts, down to the same misspelling in the inventory line, and its probate page is word for word Columbia’s with the county name changed, so treat the text as a shared vendor template rather than as anything Hamilton does differently. Two things on that page are still the clerk’s own statement of its practice, namely that a death certificate is filed with an original will and that staff will complete a disposition without administration petition with you at the counter. Hamilton is the only clerk in the circuit that does not publish its office hours, so call (386) 792-1288 before you drive.

Lafayette County, Mayo. Lafayette is the smallest court in the circuit, with 36 probate filings in the 2024-25 fiscal year, and its entry in the assignment order has a single name in it. County Judge Darren K. Jackson, on the bench since January 2007 and the longest serving county judge in this circuit, is assigned probate and guardianship, domestic relations, injunctions, delinquency, dependency, Marchman and Baker Act matters, risk protection orders and support, plus all remaining Lafayette circuit civil and the entire county court docket. One judge hears everything filed in Lafayette County except circuit felonies. The clerk’s office is at 120 West Main Street in Mayo, open 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with mail to P.O. Box 88, and it publishes no probate page and no fee schedule, so the filing fee comes from (386) 294-1600. The clerk’s line and the judge’s line differ by a few digits in the same building, which is worth checking before you dial.

How a Probate Hearing Gets Set in This Circuit

Start with the fact that decides everything else about scheduling here. The circuit’s July to December 2026 master calendar runs all seven counties day by day for six months, and the word probate does not appear once in its 18 pages. No standing probate calendar exists in any county in this circuit, so there is no docket day to show up on and no motion calendar to add yourself to. Every probate hearing anywhere in the Third Circuit is specially set, one at a time, by the judicial assistant in the assigned judge’s office.

The seven judicial assistants below are the working phone book for this circuit, and they are the ones who answer whether a matter is heard in three weeks or in three months.

• Columbia County. Chelsey Chewning, 386-243-6367
• Suwannee County. Joyce Cameron, 386-362-3431, [email protected]
• Taylor County. Melanie Vaughn, 850-838-3520
• Madison County. Lindsay Evans, 850-253-0165
• Dixie County. Jaime L. NesSmith, 352-498-1234, [email protected]
• Hamilton County. Connor Ginn, 386-792-1220
• Lafayette County. Donna Moore, 386-294-1555

Suwannee is the only county with a published rule about how to ask. Hearing time is requested by email with opposing counsel and any self-represented party copied, a notice of hearing must be filed and served immediately after the time is reserved, and all hearing materials must reach the court no later than three business days before the hearing. The other six counties run on whatever the judicial assistant tells you, which is why calling before you file is worth the ten minutes.

The general magistrate is the second route, and it is the one most families have never heard of. Christina N. Seifert is the general magistrate over mortgage foreclosure, probate and guardianship, and domestic relations matters in all seven counties. A party who objects to a referral has ten days from service of the order of referral to say so in writing. On the presiding judge’s request the magistrate reviews guardianship inventories, accountings and plans with no order of referral at all, under the Florida Probate Rules, and everything else that goes to her needs an order of referral that the filing party drafts and submits to the assigned judge. Rehearing, clarification, contempt arising from a judge’s own order and emergencies of any type are not referred. All magistrate proceedings are electronically recorded.

The third route is the one nobody wants and everybody should know. After 5:00 p.m. on a weekday, on a weekend, on a holiday or during any courthouse closure, a single duty judge covers all seven counties on a rotation of every judge in the circuit, and the term runs from 8:00 a.m. Monday to 8:00 a.m. the following Monday. Contact runs through the local Sheriff’s Office dispatch, which relays the message to whoever is on duty. Calling a sheriff’s dispatcher to reach a judge feels wrong the first time. In this circuit it is the published procedure.

Hearings run on Zoom, and the circuit publishes a Notice of Hearing (Zoom) template and an Order Setting Zoom Hearing form for exactly that. No standing probate meeting identifier is published anywhere in the circuit, so the credentials come from the judicial assistant and go on the face of the notice of hearing. Suwannee inverts the usual burden, because a party who wants to appear in person at a hearing noticed for Zoom has to ask by the Friday before. Every notice and every order setting a hearing also has to carry the Supreme Court’s accessibility language in bold 14 point Bookman Old Style or Arial, which is a formatting requirement worth checking before anything goes in.

The Assignment Order Expires December 31, 2026

One document places every judge in this circuit. General Assignment of Judges No. 2026-020 was entered in chambers in Columbia County by Chief Judge Melissa G. Olin, posted on June 29, 2026, and it runs from July 1, 2026 to December 31, 2026, replacing all prior general assignment orders. Everything on this page about who hears probate in which county comes out of its county tables.

Read that date range again, because it is the shortest shelf life in Florida court practice. The Third Circuit rewrites the whole assignment every six months, and the chain runs GAO 2024-037, GAO 2024-049, GAO 2025-023, GAO 2025-041 and now GAO 2026-020. A replacement is due in late December 2026. If you are reading this in January, the judges named above may have moved, and the fix takes two minutes, because the current order sits at the top of the circuit’s administrative order index.

The same order carries something a family checking out local counsel should know about. Several footnotes set standing recusals, and a standing recusal works without anyone filing a motion, because the clerk reassigns the case automatically. In the current order the firms and lawyers named are Darby, Peele and Greene, Douglas and Douglas, Thomas, Holladay and Claiborne, Thomas T. Demas, Marlin Feagle, Hardee Law Firm, PL, Davis, Schnitker, Reeves and Browning, PA, and Angela Ball, Esq. Hiring one of them is perfectly ordinary, and it can also move your estate to a different judge before the first hearing, which is worth knowing when you choose.

What the Third Judicial Circuit Does Not Publish

Families arrive at this circuit looking for three documents that do not exist, and the search costs them a week.

• There is no probate administrative order. The circuit’s own Probate and Guardianship order category holds exactly three orders, and none of them administers an estate. One limits interviews of victims under 16, one covers habeas petitions where a mental health case exists, and one covers injunctions for protection against the exploitation of a vulnerable adult.
• There is no probate checklist or packet. Other Florida circuits reject a petition for formal administration that arrives without a signed local checklist, and one deletes a proposed order unreviewed when the checklist is missing. Nothing of the kind exists here.
• There are no local probate forms. A search of the circuit’s media library for the word probate returns nothing, and the clerks publish eviction, indigency and address-change forms rather than probate ones. Suwannee’s published procedures say only that certain probate forms are available at the clerk’s office.

So what does a filer work from. Three layers, and the first two are statewide. The Florida Probate Rules prescribe what each document has to contain rather than supplying a form, and a document that satisfies the rule is sufficient no matter whose template it came off. The practitioner form set that a private nonprofit publishes and sells is what most Florida probate paperwork is built from, and it is not court-approved. The third layer here is unusually thin, and it comes down to Judge Griffin’s Suwannee procedures, Judge Johnson’s one page in Dixie, Judge Parker’s four posted scans in Taylor, and the judicial assistant in the other four counties.

One practical consequence follows for a small estate. The Columbia and Hamilton clerks both say their staff will fill out a disposition of personal property without administration petition with you at the counter and present it to the probate judge, with the $231 fee due at filing. For the smallest estates in those two counties, the counter is the packet.

Which Judges Here Publish Their Own Procedures

Three of the seven judges in this circuit publish written procedures, and four publish nothing under the Preferences and Procedures heading on their own pages. Knowing which is which tells you whether to read a document or pick up the phone.

Suwannee, and the only probate rules in the circuit. Judge Griffin publishes thirteen sections of Courtroom Procedures, and the Probate and Guardianship section carries three requirements that estates get bounced on. A proposed order is not submitted until the original will and the death certificate have been confirmed as actually in the court file, and the document says in terms that having mailed or delivered them to the clerk is not the same thing. Where a separate will file exists, the cases have to be consolidated before a proposed order goes in. And every proposed order goes to the general magistrate for review rather than to the judge’s office. The rest of the document binds a Suwannee estate too, including proposed orders in both PDF and Word within ten days after a hearing, case law for an evidentiary proceeding 72 hours ahead, a paper courtesy copy of any motion of 50 pages or more at least 72 hours ahead or the matter will not be heard, and exhibits e-filed as searchable PDFs 72 hours ahead for a Zoom hearing. The Suwannee County probate court page goes through all of it.

Dixie, and two sentences. Judge Johnson publishes a one-page Procedure for Submitting Proposed Orders dated May 10, 2023, and it sets two routes. A proposed order that will be distributed electronically is emailed to the judicial assistant with a copy of the pending motion, and a proposed order that will come back by U.S. Mail is mailed with stamped envelopes to the chambers post office box in Cross City. Nothing is published about hearings, scheduling, exhibits, continuances or remote appearance, and nothing about probate specifically.

Taylor, and four documents nobody outside the county can read. Judge Parker posts four preference documents, uploaded on March 26, 2026, titled Communications with the Judicial Office, Scheduling Procedures, Remote Appearance, and Submissions of Orders and Judgements. All four are scanned images with no text layer, so the titles are all that can be read from them. Taylor therefore has a written remote-appearance policy that a filer cannot read from a search result, which is the clearest argument in this circuit for calling the judicial assistant before you notice a hearing. The Taylor County probate court page lists all four with their links.

Columbia, Madison, Hamilton and Lafayette publish nothing. Each judge’s page carries a Preferences and Procedures heading with no document beneath it. An estate in one of those four runs on the Florida Probate Rules, the two general magistrate orders, and whatever the judicial assistant says. Judge Griffin’s Suwannee document is the only written statement in this circuit of what the shared magistrate expects, and it binds Suwannee only, so never present it to another judge in this circuit as that county’s rule.

What It Costs to File Probate in the Third Circuit

Four of the seven clerks post a probate fee schedule, and the four figures agree because they come from the same statute. Columbia, Suwannee, Hamilton and Taylor each post $400 to open a formal administration, $345 for a summary administration of an estate worth $1,000 or more, $235 for a summary administration under $1,000 and $231 for a disposition without administration. Suwannee’s schedule carries its own effective date of January 1, 2021, and the other three print none.

Dixie, Lafayette and Madison post no probate fee schedule at all, and no neighbouring county’s numbers should be substituted for them. Florida sets the service charge for opening a formal administration by statute, so the real figure will be close, and the amount that comes out of the estate is the one the clerk quotes on the phone. Call Dixie at (352) 498-1200, Lafayette at (386) 294-1600 or Madison at (850) 973-1500 before you file.

Taylor prices two things nobody else in the circuit prices, and both are useful signals. A petition to determine homestead status on its own costs $231, which tells you the clerk will take a homestead petition on its own docket rather than only inside an administration, and a petition to establish a trust costs $400. Suwannee charges $7.00 for a receipt for a will deposit where Columbia and Hamilton issue the receipt at no charge, and depositing the will itself is free everywhere.

None of that is the number that decides what probate costs a family. 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. Run your own estate through the Florida probate cost calculator, and see the posted clerk charges across the state in our county-by-county filing fee study.

We quote flat. A disposition without administration is a flat fee from $1,500, a summary administration a flat fee from $2,500, and a routine formal administration a flat fee from $3,500, with larger estates estimated at the consult. Government costs are additional and passed through at cost, which here means the clerk’s filing charge, the newspaper notice to creditors, certified copies and recording. Litigation, meaning a will contest or a fight over a trustee, is quoted per matter. Before any of that, rule out whether the estate needs probate at all, because assets with a named beneficiary, a survivorship deed or a funded trust never reach the courthouse. Our pages on whether you need probate in Florida, summary administration and disposition without administration walk each test.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The original will that went to the wrong Perry address. A son in Atlanta put his father’s original will in an envelope addressed to the Taylor County Courthouse at 108 North Jefferson Street, because that is the address on the clerk’s contact page. Mail to that clerk goes to P.O. Box 620, in a different ZIP code, and the ten-day clock on depositing an original will runs from the day the custodian learns of the death rather than from the day anyone decides to open an estate. Nothing was lost in the end. A week was, and a week is most of the deadline.

The Live Oak order that sat in the wrong inbox. A family finished an uncontested summary administration in Suwannee County and emailed the proposed order to the judge’s office, which is where proposed orders go almost everywhere else in Florida. In Suwannee every proposed order goes to the general magistrate for review, and the same published procedure says the original will and the death certificate have to be confirmed as actually in the court file before the order is submitted at all. Two rules, both published, both in a document a search engine does not surface for the phrase Suwannee probate forms.

The Cross City hearing nobody could set. A daughter in Ohio spent a fortnight refreshing the circuit’s calendar page looking for the Dixie County probate docket, because every court she had dealt with published one. The Third Circuit has no standing probate calendar in any of its seven counties, and the entire six-month master calendar does not use the word once. One phone call to the judicial assistant produced a date. Nothing was wrong with the case, and nothing would ever have appeared on that calendar.

Sources of Law

Circuit, clerk and court data read September 16, 2026, with the research files at reference/research/probate-court-pilot/ carrying every source URL. Statutes and rules read against the current Florida Statutes and the Florida Probate Rules. Judicial assignments in this circuit change every six months, so confirm the current order before you notice a hearing.

• Venue and opening the estate. Fla. Stat. §733.101 (venue follows domicile), §733.202 and Fla. Prob. R. 5.200 (contents of the petition), Fla. Prob. R. 5.030(a) (attorney required for a personal representative unless the representative remains the sole interested person).
• The original will. Fla. Stat. §732.901(1) (deposit with the clerk having venue within 10 days of receiving information of the death, with the date of death or the last four digits of the social security number), (2) (costs, damages and a reasonable attorney fee where a custodian withholds it without just or reasonable cause).
• Smaller estates. Summary administration, Fla. Stat. §735.201, with the $150,000 ceiling from ch. 2026-57, Laws of Florida, effective July 1, 2026, and Fla. Prob. R. 5.530 amended to match. Disposition without administration, §735.301.
• Filing charges. Fla. Stat. §28.2401. Presumed-reasonable attorney compensation, §733.6171.
• General magistrates. Fla. Prob. R. 5.697 (review of guardianship inventories, accountings and plans). Remote proceedings, Fla. R. Gen. Prac. & Jud. Admin. 2.530. Accessibility language on notices and orders, Fla. Sup. Ct. order SC2025-0725.
• Circuit. Third Judicial Circuit administrative orders, including GAO 2026-020 (general assignment of judges, July 1 to December 31, 2026), AO 2024-001 (appointment of the general magistrate), AO 2010-004 (general magistrate in probate, guardianship, trust and mental health cases), AO 2024-002 (duty judge and emergency hearing protocol) and AO 2025-005 (court facility security procedures). Judges at the circuit judicial directory; Judge Griffin’s Courtroom Procedures for Suwannee; Judge Johnson’s proposed-order procedure for Dixie; the July to December 2026 master calendar; court technology and accommodation requests.
• Clerks. Columbia and its probate fees; Suwannee and its fee schedule; Taylor fees; Madison court services; Dixie court services; Hamilton and its probate fees; Lafayette court services.
• Caseload. Florida Office of the State Courts Administrator, FY 2024-25 Statistical Reference Guide, Chapter 6, Circuit Probate, filings and dispositions by circuit, county and category, read September 15, 2026. The seven counties together took 843 probate filings and closed 577.

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 assignments in this circuit are rewritten every six months and clerk charges change, so confirm both at the links above before you file. We serve families throughout the Third Judicial Circuit from a Miami office, and this is not a Third Circuit office.