When a Non-Citizen Dies Owning Florida Property: Ancillary Administration and the $60,000 Federal Threshold
The call usually comes from Bogotá, or Toronto, or Taipei. Mom died. She owned a condo in Brickell, or a house she bought in Kendall twenty years ago because a cousin said Florida real estate only goes one direction. Now the building manager wants a death certificate, the bank in Miami will not speak to anyone on the phone, and a relative has told the family there is going to be a tax.
The relative is usually right. What almost nobody tells the family is how much.
Two separate problems land at the same time. One is the Florida side — the ancillary administration Florida law provides for when a nonresident dies owning property here. The other is the federal nonresident alien estate tax, and it is the one nobody warns you about.
A United States citizen who dies in 2026 can pass roughly fifteen million dollars before a dollar of federal estate tax is owed. A person who was not a US citizen and was not domiciled here gets an effective exclusion of sixty thousand dollars. Same country, same condo, same Miami-Dade folio number. A gap of about two hundred and fifty to one, and it widens every single year, because the citizen figure is indexed to inflation and the sixty thousand is not.
Very little is written about this from the Florida side, and most of what exists is written for accountants. This page is written for the daughter in Caracas trying to work out why the Florida lawyer, the bank and the IRS all seem to be waiting on each other.
I handle the Florida ancillary administration. I am not a tax attorney or a CPA — where the federal estate tax return and treaty analysis are involved I work alongside other professionals, and I will tell you at the outset which parts are which.
Where should I start if I am new to this?
Start with the page that matches your question. This one is about the federal tax exposure of a non-citizen decedent. The three below cover the Florida procedure itself.
| If you are asking | Read this |
|---|---|
| what is ancillary probate — the ancillary probate meaning, and the ancillary probate definition | Florida Ancillary Probate for Non-Residents |
| what is an ancillary probate versus what is ancillary administration, and the ancillary estate meaning | Florida Ancillary Probate for Non-Residents |
| when is ancillary probate required, and what an ancillary probate proceeding costs | Florida Ancillary Probate for Non-Residents |
| ancillary probate Florida non residents — how a Florida ancillary probate actually runs | Florida Ancillary Probate for Non-Residents |
| who can serve as ancillary personal representative, and the priority order under the statute | Out-of-State Executor in Florida |
| out-of-state executor qualification, and the Florida resident agent rule | Out-of-State Executor in Florida |
| The federal estate tax on a non-citizen decedent | You are on it |
Everything below assumes the Florida side is understood, or that you will read it after.
Do I need a lawyer for ancillary probate in Florida?
Yes, in almost every case. Florida requires a Florida Bar member to appear for a personal representative unless that representative is the estate’s only interested person — and a foreign family almost never is.
That is a practical consequence of what an ancillary administration is. You are asking a Florida circuit court to grant authority to a person it has never heard of, appointed by a court in another country, over property it can see on the tax roll but cannot verify anyone has a right to. Someone has to assemble the authenticated copies, the translations, the oath, the designation of resident agent, and the proof that the foreign appointment is what it claims to be.
Families call me looking for an ancillary administration lawyer, an ancillary administration attorney, an ancillary probate lawyer or an ancillary probate attorney. Those four phrases describe one job. Whichever one you typed, the first question is always cost, so let me answer it directly. Florida Statute §733.6171 sets out a presumed reasonable fee schedule based on the value of the estate, and while that section is written for formal administration, it is the benchmark everyone in Florida works from. On top of the attorney’s fee sit the filing fee, the certified copies, the recording costs, and — in the cases this page is about — the accountant’s fee for the federal return. The ancillary probate cost discussion on my main ancillary page goes through the numbers in detail.
To a family weighing whether to hire an ancillary probate administration attorney at all: the Florida case is rarely the expensive part. The expensive part is the eighteen months the money sits frozen because nobody opened the right proceeding at the right time.
A word about free forms. There are free online probate form packets and DIY templates circulating for Florida. They are drafted for a resident decedent with a Florida will. Filing a blank form packet in a nonresident matter tends to produce an order the bank will not accept, which means doing it twice. If cost is the obstacle, tell me — a scoped engagement is usually cheaper than a rejected filing.
Is there a shortcut if the Florida property is worth under $50,000?
Sometimes, yes. Under §734.1025, a foreign personal representative of a testate nonresident whose Florida property does not exceed $50,000 may file an authenticated transcript of the foreign proceedings instead of opening a full ancillary administration.
There are real conditions attached. The decedent has to have died with a will. The filing has to happen within two years of the date of death. And the property in Florida — the property this procedure reaches — has to fall under the fifty-thousand-dollar line.
In my experience this section is almost never raised. Families with a modest Florida bank account, a timeshare in Kissimmee or a small lot bought decades ago get quoted a full ancillary probate in Florida as though there were no alternative. Sometimes there is, and it is worth half an hour of somebody’s time to check.
Two cautions. It is not available in an intestate estate, and a surprising number of foreign decedents died without a will Florida will recognise. And it solves a Florida problem only — if the estate is over the federal filing threshold, that return is still yours to deal with.
Why is the estate tax exclusion $60,000 instead of $15 million?
Because a nonresident non-citizen gets no citizen exclusion at all. The estate gets a $13,000 unified credit under IRC §2102(b)(1) — enough to erase the tax on the first $60,000.
Run that credit against the IRS rate table and the first sixty thousand dollars comes out untaxed. That is where the number everybody quotes actually comes from. People search for the nonresident alien estate tax exemption, type the number into the box, and attach the word “official” or “IRS” to it, because they have heard the figure and cannot believe it. The figure is real. The IRS simply does not call it an exemption.
That matters for how you talk about it. The IRS does not call it a sixty-thousand-dollar exemption. It calls sixty thousand the filing threshold, and the difference is not pedantry — it is the reason the arithmetic behaves the way it does at the margin.
Here is the second thing nobody explains. The filing test is not simply “US assets over $60,000.” The executor must file Form 706-NA if the date-of-death value of the US-situated assets, together with the gift tax specific exemption and the amount of adjusted taxable gifts, exceeds the threshold. Lifetime gifting is in the formula. A family that gave away US property years ago and thinks the Florida condo is comfortably under the line can be wrong about that.
Third: the tax above the line is not a flat forty percent, whatever you have read. The schedule is progressive from eighteen percent. The first dollar over $60,000 is taxed at 26%. Forty percent does not appear until the taxable amount exceeds a million dollars.
| Decedent, dying in 2026 | Effective federal exclusion |
|---|---|
| US citizen | $15,000,000 (indexed annually) |
| US domiciliary, not a citizen | $15,000,000 (indexed annually) |
| Nonresident, not a citizen | $60,000 (fixed — never indexed) |
The line at the bottom of that table is the whole argument. IRC §2102(b) carries no inflation adjustment. The citizen number has gone up every year for decades. The sixty thousand has not moved since the 1980s, and it will not move next year either. The gap is not a quirk. It is a policy that compounds.
Which assets count toward the $60,000?
Only US situs assets — and the situs rules are stranger than anyone expects. The one that catches Florida families is real property. A Miami condo is US situs, always, without argument.
That single asset is usually the whole problem by itself. Past it, things get counterintuitive. Under §2104(a), stock is US-situs only if it was issued by a domestic corporation. Situs follows the issuer, not the brokerage. And under §2105(b)(1), a US bank deposit not connected with a US trade or business is excluded from the nonresident’s gross estate.
Put those two together and you get the asymmetry that catches every single client I have had this conversation with. Cash sitting in a Miami bank account is generally not in the taxable estate. The exact same money, in the exact same institution, invested in Apple stock, is. Same bank, same statement, different answer.
Be careful with it: this is an estate tax rule and it does not carry over to gift or income tax. But for the question this page is about — is the estate over $60,000, and does someone have to file — it is often decisive, and it is why a real inventory has to come before anybody guesses.
Why is the bank asking for an IRS transfer certificate?
Because a US institution that releases a nonresident decedent’s assets can be held liable for the estate tax. The IRS transfer certificate, under 26 CFR §20.6325-1, is what removes that liability.
Until the certificate arrives, the bank will not move. This is the practical chokepoint, and it is the reason most families end up calling a lawyer. The Florida court order is not the thing the transfer agent is waiting for. The certificate is. You will sometimes see it referred to as Form 5173 — that number circulates widely on law firm websites, but I could not find it on any current IRS source, and the current procedure is an affidavit-and-documents submission rather than a numbered form.
Three carve-outs are worth knowing, because one of them is the reason a Florida ancillary administration can be worth opening even in a case where you were not sure it was needed:
- No certificate is required where the US gross estate does not exceed $60,000 (for deaths after 1 January 1977).
- No certificate is required for a decedent who was a US resident.
- No certificate is required for property being administered by an executor appointed, qualified and acting within the United States.
Read that third one twice. It is the reason a properly opened Florida ancillary administration is not merely a procedural hoop. It can remove the single longest delay in the whole matter.
Why does the Florida case finish before the IRS does?
Because the two clocks run at different speeds. A Florida ancillary administration is often substantially complete in months. The IRS publishes a processing time of twelve to eighteen months for a transfer certificate.
Nobody tells the family that at the beginning. I have watched this play out more than once. The Florida side goes well. Letters of ancillary administration issue, the creditor period under chapter 733 runs, claims are barred under §733.702, the personal representative has clear authority to sell, lease or mortgage the Florida property under §734.102. The family thinks they are finished. Then the brokerage says it needs the transfer certificate, and there are eleven months left on that request, and the answer to “how long does ancillary probate take” turns out to have been the wrong question all along.
The sequencing point is simple once you see it. The federal return is due nine months after death, and the certificate request is generally made with that filing. If nobody starts the tax side until the Florida case is underway, the nine-month deadline has usually gone and the twelve-to-eighteen-month clock has not even started.
So, two pieces of advice at the first meeting. Start the federal side early enough that the accountant is working while the Florida petition is being prepared, not after. And if you are anywhere near the line, open the Florida administration properly, because a representative who has been appointed and qualified here, and who is acting in Florida, may take the certificate requirement off the table for the property in that representative’s hands. That is the one place in this entire process where the Florida work and the federal problem line up in the family’s favour.
Does a tax treaty change the $60,000?
It can, substantially. The US has estate tax treaties with fifteen jurisdictions, and §2102(b)(3)(A) lets a treaty substitute a prorated share of the full citizen credit for the flat $13,000.
That is a different order of magnitude from the flat credit. The fifteen: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. A German or British decedent with a Florida condo is in a genuinely different position from a decedent whose country is not on that list.
And here is the one that matters most in South Florida, because of who actually calls me: Taiwan is not on the list. I checked the IRS list and the Treasury treaty page independently and Taiwan appears on neither. A Taiwanese decedent who owned Florida real estate gets the bare $60,000 with no treaty relief available. The same is true of most of Latin America — there is no US estate tax treaty with Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina or Peru.
One caveat I will flag rather than paper over. The IRS list includes Canada, but Treasury’s treaty page shows no standalone Canada estate tax convention. Two government sources, two presentations. If Canada is your situation, that is a question for the tax professional, not a website.
Treaty analysis is exactly the part I do not do alone. It is country-specific, it turns on domicile as the treaty defines it rather than as you would define it, and it belongs with someone who does this work.
What should the family do first?
Four things, in this order, before anyone signs anything.
- Inventory the US assets by situs, not by where the statement comes from. Real property, then stock by issuer, then everything else. This determines whether there is a federal filing at all.
- Find out whether there is a will, and whether it has been admitted anywhere. The answer decides whether §734.1025 is even on the table.
- Put the nine-month date on a calendar today. Not the Florida dates. The federal one.
- Call before the bank says no. Almost every genuinely bad outcome I have seen in these matters was a timing problem, not a legal one.
If you are looking for an ancillary probate administration lawyer — or an ancillary probate administration attorney; the phrasing varies, the work does not — for a relative who was not a US citizen, call me at (305) 224-6811. I will tell you in the first conversation which parts are mine and which parts need the accountant, and roughly what each is going to cost.
What else do families ask about non-citizen estates?
Five, in nearly every call. Short answers below — each has more behind it than a paragraph holds.
Is ancillary probate the same as ancillary administration?
One proceeding, two names. People search ancillary probate Florida; the statutes say ancillary administration Florida. Both mean a Florida case opened alongside the main one abroad — full definition on my ancillary administration in Florida page.
Does the $60,000 threshold apply to green card holders?
Not necessarily. The test is domicile, not immigration status, and a lawful permanent resident domiciled here is generally treated as a US domiciliary with the full exclusion. Domicile is fact-specific.
Is there a Florida estate tax on top of the federal one?
No. Florida repealed its estate tax and collects nothing at the state level. The exposure discussed on this page is entirely federal.
What if the Florida property is the only US asset?
Then the whole question is its date-of-death value against the $60,000 threshold, plus adjusted taxable gifts. A single Florida condo clears that line easily in most of the state.
Can the personal representative sell the Florida property before the tax is resolved?
Under §734.102 the ancillary personal representative has authority to sell, to lease, or to mortgage the local property. Whether the sale can close, and what happens to the proceeds, is a separate question involving withholding.
Last updated: 8 August 2026. What changed: first publication. Figures verified against IRC §2102, the current Form 706-NA instructions, 26 CFR §20.6325-1, and the 2025 edition of the Florida Statutes.
José Lorenzo, Fla. Bar No. 107002, admitted 2013. Lorenzo Law, Miami, Florida.
This page is general information about Florida ancillary administration and federal estate tax rules. It does not constitute legal or tax advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Federal tax figures change and situs and domicile questions are fact-specific — do not act on this page without advice on your own facts.