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

Where the Walton County Probate Court Actually Sits

Walton County probate is heard in the First Judicial Circuit, at the Walton County Courthouse at 571 U.S. Highway 90 East in DeFuniak Springs, where the Clerk’s Probate Division sits and where every probate hearing in the county is held. Filings go through the Walton County Clerk of Courts and Comptroller, whose probate line is (850) 892-8115, where pressing 1 reaches Court Services. Both offices run Monday to Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Central time, an hour behind Miami.

A 30A family does not necessarily drive inland to hand something over. The Clerk lists probate at two counters, the Probate Division in DeFuniak Springs and the South Walton Courthouse Annex at 31 Coastal Centre Boulevard in Santa Rosa Beach, which answers at (850) 267-3066 and serves the beach communities rather than the inland county seat. The hearing is still in DeFuniak Springs, and the circuit prints the annex zip as 32549 while the Clerk prints 32459, which is the correct one for Santa Rosa Beach. Mail goes to P.O. Box 1260, DeFuniak Springs, FL 32435, and a package goes to the courthouse street address instead.

The probate counter is at the Walton County Courthouse, 571 U.S. Highway 90 East, DeFuniak Springs, FL 32433, with a second counter at the South Walton Courthouse Annex, 31 Coastal Centre Boulevard, Santa Rosa Beach, FL 32459, Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Central time, (850) 892-8115 for the Probate Division in DeFuniak Springs and (850) 267-3066 at the South Walton annex. Both offices are listed for probate, which is what saves a 30A family a 50-mile drive inland. The Clerk prints the Courthouse Probate Division in DeFuniak Springs and then, under its own heading, the annex at 31 Coastal Centre Boulevard in Santa Rosa Beach with a separate phone number. Pressing 1 on the DeFuniak Springs line reaches Court Services, which carries probate. Walton also gives the clearest statement on wills of any clerk in this project, namely that a will is filed only after a death, that Florida gives ten days to file it, and that there is no fee for filing one. The Clerk publishes no probate forms of its own and points filers to the Florida Bar instead. Mail goes to P.O. Box 1260, DeFuniak Springs, FL 32435, while packages go to the courthouse street address. Walton runs on Central time, an hour behind Miami, which matters for every hearing and every clerk call.

• The clerk’s probate page for Walton County
• First Judicial Circuit judges directory
• Administrative orders of the First Judicial Circuit

One thing worth settling before you go any further. The case belongs in the county where the person was domiciled when they died, and Florida law fixes that rather than letting anyone choose it. If your mother lived in Walton County, her estate is a Walton 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 Santa Rosa Beach, Miramar Beach, DeFuniak Springs, Freeport, Seaside, Inlet Beach, and Blue Mountain Beach are all Walton 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 Walton County Courthouse is free, in the lot across the street from the front of the building, with more accessible spaces near the front entrance next to the ramp. The South Walton Courthouse Annex in Santa Rosa Beach has free parking and accessible parking in front of the annex. Both buildings run Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Central time, and close on weekends and court-observed holidays. The court keeps its own parking and directions page.

If you are dropping off an original will or sitting through a morning calendar, coffee within a short walk is Perla Baking Co. at 766 Baldwin Avenue, DeFuniak Springs, about 0.1 mi from the public entrance. Perla posts 6:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., seven days a week, which covers a morning calendar, and sits on the historic main street rather than in a chain’s drive-through. Roughly 156 metres separate its door from the courthouse, which is about a three-minute walk.

Which Judges Hear Probate Cases in Walton County?

Probate cases in Walton 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.

• J. Ryan Love, Division A, holding all probate and guardianship in Walton County since January 1, 2026, alongside circuit criminal, writs and appeals, part of the injunction docket and part of first appearances, and serving as the county’s administrative judge, assigned January 1, 2026, when the current directive consolidated a probate docket that two judges had been dividing by whether the case was contested (WCAD 2025-02, with WCAD 2025-01 behind the arrangement it replaced).

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 Walton County Probate Court Is

The state court system counts every petition filed in the circuit probate division, and the FY 2024-25 figures for Walton County are 406 probate filings, 36 guardianship filings and 5 trust filings, plus 69 Baker Act and Marchman Act cases that the same division carries. The division closed 574 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.

How a Case Gets Filed in Walton 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 Walton 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.

Walton stopped splitting its probate docket on January 1, 2026, and the change is the most useful fact about this county for anybody with a case that started earlier. Under the directive in force for most of 2025 an estate went to one judge if nobody objected and to a different judge the moment somebody did, because contested probate and guardianship sat with one judge and uncontested probate and guardianship with another. A directive signed on October 1, 2025 consolidated all of it under a single circuit judge, who is also the county’s administrative judge and carries circuit criminal, writs and appeals, part of the injunction docket and part of first appearances alongside every estate in the county. What the county does not publish is where a probate case goes when that judge is recused, because Walton has no recusal directive at all, unlike Santa Rosa and Escambia.

Are Walton County Probate Hearings Remote?

Probate hearings in Walton County can be held remotely on Zoom, and the division decides which matters must be in person. Remote is not the default in Walton, which is the opposite of the rule the same circuit runs in Santa Rosa. A hearing of one hour or less in a civil or family case, which is where probate sits, may be attended on Zoom if all parties agree. Where they do not all agree, the hearing is in person unless the court authorizes otherwise, and a request to appear by video is made in writing by motion with a proposed order at least five days before the hearing date, with objections due within forty-eight hours of receipt. No standing meeting room is published. The link comes after the hearing date is confirmed and then has to go into the notice of hearing. Participants need working audio and video both, and in an evidentiary hearing a camera that does not work may get the testimony excluded.

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. Walton gives the plainest statement on wills of any clerk in this project. A will is filed only after a death, Florida gives ten days to file it, and there is no fee for filing one. The Clerk says all three in as many words on its own probate page, and the fee schedule confirms the absence of a deposit charge. The original travels on paper to the Probate Division at the courthouse in DeFuniak Springs, and the ten-day clock runs from when the custodian learns of the death rather than from the death itself.

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 Walton 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. Walton is the county where the honest answer is that there is no local hurdle. Its published directive library holds fourteen documents and not one of them is about probate practice, so there is no checklist regime, no county filing deadline and no proposed-order directive. Escambia has mandatory checklists, Okaloosa has presumptive deadlines with contempt behind them, and Santa Rosa wants five documents. Walton has the Florida Probate Rules and the judge’s own written procedures, which is genuinely easier and also means there is no local form to hide behind when the rules themselves are not followed. Those procedures are a criminal judge’s procedures, because the same judge carries circuit criminal, so they carry no probate section and a probate filer works from the general civil rules. Five of them matter. Everything reaches the court by email to the judicial assistant with the case number, the case name and the matter in the subject line, and every party copied unless the law authorizes an ex parte communication. A motion has to be on the docket before it can be set, and the moving party then emails for a date with all attorneys copied, giving the type of hearing, the length requested and any timing constraint. Proposed orders go through the proposed order portion of the e-filing portal in Word, with a cover letter that either certifies that all parties agree or states the disagreement, within five business days after the proceeding, one order per case number, with room below the Done and Ordered line for an electronic signature and no date typed in. Case law and other materials go to the judicial assistant in PDF within five days of the hearing, and exhibits for an evidentiary hearing are labelled before they are offered and are due three business days ahead. And an emergency is e-filed and then emailed marked urgent, after which the court may enter an order and set the hearing unilaterally, so the parties have to be available. Accessibility requests and interpreters both run through court administration in Pensacola, two counties away, so ask early rather than the week of the hearing.

The Administrative Orders That Govern Probate in Walton 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 Walton County as of September 16, 2026.

• WCAD 2025-02, Walton County Division Assignments (signed October 1, 2025, effective January 1, 2026 until further notice). Gives all probate and guardianship to one circuit judge in Division A, ending the arrangement under which a Walton estate went to one judge if nobody objected and to a different judge the moment somebody did. This is the single most important Walton development of the year for an estate.
• WCAD 2025-01, Walton County Division Assignments (signed February 28, 2025, superseded January 1, 2026). The arrangement that ended. Contested probate and guardianship went to one judge from January 2, 2025 and uncontested probate and guardianship to another from February 17, 2025, so an objection moved the case to a different courtroom. Read it only to understand a case opened in 2025.
• AO 2025-27, Appointment of First Judicial Circuit Administrative Judges (July 1, 2025). Names the administrative judge for Walton County through June 30, 2027, which matters here because the same judge holds probate and signs the county directives.
• AO 2015-32, Notice of Court Proceedings and the Accessibility Notice (2015, cited on the judge’s own page and not separately retrieved). Requires the accessibility notice the rules call for on every notice of court proceeding, in Times New Roman or Courier at 14-point bold. The judge’s procedures cite it by number for the notice of hearing, which is where a Walton filer meets it.

The division also publishes its own procedures, last revised November 2025, and the points a filer most needs are these.

• Walton publishes no probate checklist, no probate filing deadlines and no probate proposed-order directive, because the county has no probate administrative directive at all. Fourteen documents sit in its published directive library and not one of them is about probate practice, so a Walton estate runs on the Florida Probate Rules plus the judge’s own written procedures. That is genuinely easier than Escambia or Okaloosa, and it also means there is no local checklist to hide behind.
• Everything reaches the judge by email to the judicial assistant at [email protected], with the case number, the case name and the matter in the subject line, and every party copied unless the law authorizes an ex parte communication. A self-represented party is told to file the communication with the Clerk, who sends it to the judge electronically.
• A motion has to be on the docket before it can be set for hearing. The moving party then emails the judicial assistant with the case number, the party names, every attorney copied, the type of hearing, the length requested and any timing constraint, and once the date is confirmed the notice of hearing is filed and served immediately, stating the date, the time and the type, listing the judge’s Zoom credentials if anyone is appearing remotely, and carrying the accessibility notice.
• Proposed orders go through the proposed order portion of the e-filing portal in Word, labelled with the case name and the title of the order, with a cover letter that either certifies that all parties agree or states the disagreement, and with the names and email addresses of everyone entitled to service. They are due within five business days after the proceeding. Write Done and Ordered with room below for the electronic signature and add no date, because the date is generated. File one order per case number even where the same order covers several.
• Case law and other materials the court will rely on go to the judicial assistant by email in PDF within five days of the hearing, with every opposing party copied. Exhibits for an evidentiary hearing are labelled before they are offered and are due three business days ahead. An emergency is e-filed and then emailed to the judicial assistant marked urgent, and where the court finds an emergency it enters an order and sets the hearing unilaterally, so the parties have to be available.
• Accessibility requests and interpreters both run out of Pensacola, two counties away. Accommodations go to the ADA liaison at (850) 595-4400 or [email protected], and interpreters to court administration at (850) 595-4533. Build the extra day in rather than calling the week of the hearing.

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 Walton 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 Walton 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 Walton 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 Walton 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 Walton County estate, our probate attorney page for Santa Rosa Beach 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 Walton County Probate Court This Year

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

• February 28, 2025. WCAD 2025-01 divided probate by whether the case was contested, sending contested estates and guardianships to one judge and uncontested ones to another. For most of 2025 an objection moved a Walton estate to a different courtroom. Source.
• July 1, 2025. AO 2025-27 named the administrative judge for Walton County through June 30, 2027, and the same judge now holds probate, so one person signs the county directives and hears the estates. Source.
• October 1, 2025. WCAD 2025-02 consolidated all probate and guardianship under one judge effective January 1, 2026, ending the contested and uncontested division. A Walton estate opened this year has one judge from the first filing to discharge. Source.
• September 16, 2026. The county’s published index of administrative directives still carries its March 20, 2025 revision date, so the directive that consolidated probate does not appear on it. Fourteen documents are listed and none of them is about probate practice. Source.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The estate that changed judges when somebody objected. A Freeport family opened an uncontested estate in the spring of 2025 and got a judge. A cousin filed an objection that summer and the case moved to a different judge in a different courtroom, because Walton divided probate by whether the case was contested for most of that year. A directive signed on October 1, 2025 ended the division, so an estate opened since January 1, 2026 has one judge from the first filing to discharge. A case that straddles the change may not.

The hearing that could not be attended from Atlanta. A son in Atlanta ran his mother’s Santa Rosa Beach estate through the portal, then assumed the 20-minute hearing would be on Zoom, because his friend’s estate one county over in Milton had been. Walton runs the opposite rule. A hearing of an hour or less may be on Zoom if every party agrees, and otherwise it takes a written motion with a proposed order at least five days before the hearing date. He filed the motion on the Monday for a Wednesday hearing, which was two days too late.

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 Walton 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.
• Walton County local court layer, retrieved September 16, 2026, from the judicial directory · WCAD 2025-02 · WCAD 2025-01 · AO 2025-27 · AO 2015-32. 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/walton-county.md.
• Walton County practice, retrieved 2026-08-12: clerk probate page · First Judicial Circuit administrative orders · judges directory.

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 Santa Rosa Beach residents wherever you are, and this is not a Walton County office.