Celebration Probate Attorney

If you are looking for a Celebration probate attorney, someone has probably died and there is a house involved. We are sorry. Before anything else, one thing worth hearing on day one: almost nothing here runs from the date of the funeral. The deadlines that matter start when court papers are served, and most families have more time than they fear. Take the week you need.

A Celebration probate lawyer handles estates filed in Osceola County, in Florida’s Ninth Judicial Circuit, at the Jon B. Morgan Osceola County Courthouse in Kissimmee — there is no probate court in Celebration itself. Lorenzo Law is an Osceola County probate law firm handling summary administration, formal administration, ancillary administration for out-of-state and foreign owners, and contested estates.

Celebration is not a typical Florida town, and the estates here are not typical either. Walt Disney World built this place in the 1990s — the white picket fences, the downtown around the lake, the fireworks you can see from the golf course on a clear night. It drew two kinds of people, and thirty years on, both of them are leaving estates. There are the families who moved here to stay, raised children on Water Street and grew old in the same house. And there are the people who bought a second home twenty minutes from the Magic Kingdom, came down for a few weeks a year, and rented it out the rest of the time.

Those two estates could not be more different, and Florida law treats them differently in ways that surprise almost everyone. The retiree’s home on Celebration Avenue is probably protected homestead, largely out of reach of creditors, passing under rules that can override the will itself. A Celebration vacation home or short-term rental in Reunion, ChampionsGate, Solterra, Windsor Island, Encore Resort or Storey Lake almost certainly is not — and that one distinction changes the procedure, the exposure to creditors, the cost, and sometimes whether the family gets to keep the house at all.

Then there is everything the brochures never mention. The Airbnb calendar that keeps taking bookings after the owner has died and nobody knows who may collect the money. The HOA that keeps billing, and the CDD assessment riding on the tax bill that most people have never heard of and that outranks nearly every other claim. The Disney Vacation Club membership or the Westgate week that the children do not want and are not sure they are allowed to refuse. The parent who lived in Manchester or Toronto or São Paulo, bought a villa off a rental-yield spreadsheet, and left a family who has never set foot in a Florida courthouse — that one is ancillary administration, and it is more common here than anywhere else in the state.

People arrive here from very different places. Some need an estate opened and letters of administration issued so somebody can finally sign for the bank. Some have an estate small enough to skip formal administration entirely. Some need a Celebration estate attorney because a will surfaced that nobody expected, or one sibling has been managing a parent’s accounts, and the deadlines are already running.

This page covers all of it, in plain language, with the statute behind each answer so you can check us. Start wherever your situation is — or start with what it costs, because that is what almost everyone wants to know first and almost nobody publishes.

How Much Does Probate Cost in Osceola County?

How much does probate cost in Florida? It is the first question almost every family asks, and the honest answer starts with what the statute actually says rather than with a number. Florida law does not set a mandatory attorney’s fee for probate. What section 733.6171(3), Florida Statutes, does is set a schedule of fees that are presumed to be reasonable for ordinary services in a formal administration. It is a starting point and a benchmark, not a price list, and the statute itself requires your attorney to tell you so in writing.

Compensable value of the estate	Presumed reasonable attorney’s fee	Cumulative
Up to $40,000	$1,500	$1,500
$40,000 – $70,000	plus $750	$2,250
$70,000 – $100,000	plus $750	$3,000
$100,000 – $1 million	3% of the next $900,000	$30,000 at $1M
$1 million – $3 million	2.5%	—
$3 million – $5 million	2%	—
$5 million – $10 million	1.5%	—
Above $10 million	1%	—

Worked through: a $400,000 Celebration estate produces a presumed reasonable fee of $12,000. A $2,000,000 estate produces $55,000. Notice that the percentage declines as the estate grows — which is why the “3% to 5% of the estate” figure repeated on a lot of law firm websites is wrong at both ends of the scale.

What Actually Counts Toward That Number?

This is where most published explanations go wrong, and it matters enormously for a Celebration family whose wealth is mostly in a house and retirement accounts. “Compensable value” means the inventory value of the probate assets plus income earned during administration. It does not include jointly held property, accounts with a named beneficiary, or assets already in a trust. A family with a $900,000 house, a $600,000 IRA payable to the children and a $200,000 joint account does not have a $1.7 million probate estate for fee purposes.

The schedule also covers ordinary services only. Section 733.6171(4) allows separate compensation for extraordinary services — a will contest, a partition action, an estate tax return, running a business, selling real property. And the personal representative (Florida’s name for what most people call the executor) may be paid a commission of their own under section 733.617(2): 3% of the first $1 million, 2.5% to $5 million, 2% to $10 million, and 1.5% above that.

What Your Probate Attorney Is Required to Tell You in Writing

Since 1 October 2021, an attorney who charges on the section 733.6171(3) schedule has had to make a set of written disclosures — and under section 733.6171(2)(c) must obtain the personal representative’s signature acknowledging them. You are entitled to be told, in writing:

• that there is no mandatory statutory attorney fee in Florida probate;
• that the fee need not be based on the size of the estate, and that the presumed-reasonable figure may not suit every administration;
• that the fee is negotiable;
• that selecting the attorney is the personal representative’s decision, and the personal representative is not required to use the attorney who prepared the will; and
• that at the end of the representation you are entitled to a summary of the ordinary and extraordinary services performed — either total hours or a detailed summary.

If those disclosures were not made and acknowledged, section 733.6171(2)(d) bars payment of the fee unless there was prior court approval or the written consent of all interested parties. It is worth knowing before you sign anything.

How We Charge

We do not publish a single number, because a number published without knowing the estate is a number that is wrong for most people who read it. What the cost actually turns on is the procedure the estate belongs in, whether there is Florida real property, how many beneficiaries there are, whether they agree, and whether anything has to be litigated.

What we will do is listen in detail before quoting, offer a flat fee wherever the scope allows it — a Florida probate attorney flat fee is realistic on an uncontested administration and dishonest on a contested one, and be as efficient as the case honestly permits. And if the estate does not need probate at all — which happens more often than people expect — we will tell you that on the first call. That conversation saves people more money than any fee arrangement.

Cost is also the first thing to ask any probate attorney Osceola County families are considering, and you should get a straight answer on the first call. The Clerk’s filing fee is separate and is set by the county schedule; the Osceola County Clerk’s probate line is (407) 742-3500, option 7, and they will quote the current figure. Our guide to the cost of probate in Florida works through how much probate costs in Florida in full — what the average cost of probate in Florida looks like across estate sizes, what probate fees in Florida actually cover, and what it costs to probate a will when there is real property involved.

Three questions we get constantly and will answer plainly on the phone, at no cost, in a free consultation. How much does it cost to hire a probate attorney for an Osceola estate, and what does it cost to probate a will when the only real asset is a house? Both depend on the route the estate takes, which is why we settle that first. And do you have to pay a probate attorney up front? Not usually — in a formal administration the fee is ordinarily paid from estate assets during the administration, not by you personally in advance. And how much does a probate lawyer cost in Florida for a small, uncontested estate? Far less than the schedule above suggests, because the schedule addresses formal administration and a small estate often does not need one.

How Do I Find a Good Probate Attorney?

Most people searching for a probate attorney near me are really asking two things: can this person handle my situation, and will they tell me the truth about it. So how to choose a probate attorney comes down to what you can learn in one call, and what to expect from a probate attorney in that call is a straight read of your facts, not a pitch. A few questions separate the two quickly.

• Ask which procedure your estate needs and why. A lawyer who cannot tell you on the first call whether you are looking at summary administration, formal administration or ancillary administration has not listened to the facts.
• Ask what the property is. If it is a vacation home, a short-term rental or a timeshare in this corridor, ask specifically whether they have handled one — the homestead, HOA, CDD and rental-income questions on this page do not arise in an ordinary Kissimmee estate.
• Ask for the fee disclosures in writing before you sign. The statute entitles you to them.
• Ask whether you need a lawyer at all. Anyone unwilling to say “this estate may not need probate” is not giving you a straight answer.

Proximity matters less than people expect and we say so plainly below — Florida probate is filed and heard electronically, and searching for a local probate attorney or a probate lawyer in my area will mostly surface firms by street address rather than by whether they know Osceola County. A local probate lawyer two miles away who has never handled a CDD-encumbered vacation rental is not more useful than one who has. What you want is someone who knows this county’s procedure and answers the phone. The first consultation is free either way — including if you got here searching for probate lawyers near me and are still deciding whether distance matters.

Who Pays the Probate Attorney’s Fees?

Who pays probate attorney fees in Florida? In an ordinary administration the estate does, not the personal representative personally — the fee is an administration expense paid from estate assets before distribution. That is why a beneficiary sometimes feels the fee is coming out of their inheritance: in a sense it is, because it reduces what is left to divide. Where a dispute arises, the picture changes. Section 733.609 lets the court award attorney’s fees in an action for breach of fiduciary duty and direct that they be paid from the losing party’s interest in the estate, from that party’s own property, or both.

Do I Need a Lawyer to Go Through Probate in Florida?

For a formal administration, almost always yes. Florida Probate Rule 5.030 requires every personal representative and every guardian to be represented by a Florida-admitted attorney, with narrow exceptions: a personal representative who is the sole interested person, a personal representative or guardian who is themselves a Florida attorney, and a guardian advocate unless the court requires counsel.

Summary administration and disposition without administration are different, because no personal representative is appointed at all, so Rule 5.030 does not reach them by its terms. That does not always make them safe to do alone — a summary administration is still a probate proceeding in which the will is proved, a diligent creditor search is required, and the people who receive assets are personally liable to creditors pro rata. But if the estate is small and uncontested, it is a fair question to ask, and we will give you a straight answer about whether you need us.

Someone Just Died and There Is a House in Celebration. What Do I Do This Week?

In order, and none of it requires a lawyer to start:

1. Find the original will. Not a copy — the signed original. Florida law requires whoever has custody of it to deposit it with the Clerk of the Circuit Court in the county of the decedent’s domicile within 10 days of learning of the death. In Osceola County that is 2 Courthouse Square, Kissimmee.
2. Order death certificates. Get more than you think you need — six is a reasonable floor. Order both the version showing cause of death and the version without it; banks and title companies want different ones.
3. Secure the property. Change the locks if strangers have keys, confirm the homeowner’s policy is still in force and tell the carrier the house is unoccupied, and make sure the utilities stay on. An empty Florida house without air conditioning grows mold in weeks.
4. If it is a short-term rental, stop taking new bookings until you have advice. Existing reservations are a separate question, addressed below. Do not cancel anything before you understand who is liable for the refunds.
5. Do not pay the decedent’s debts out of your own pocket. Not the credit cards, not the HOA arrears. Florida pays estate creditors in a statutory order and paying the wrong one first can leave you personally exposed.
6. Do not transfer or sell anything. No cars, no jewelry, no distributing furniture among the family. Until a personal representative is appointed nobody has authority, and acting as though you do carries real liability.
7. Find the will before you call anyone. Whether there is a signed original changes the whole conversation, and it is the first thing a Celebration will attorney will ask.
8. Write down what you know. Where the person was domiciled at death, what they owned in Florida and elsewhere, whether there is a will, and who the family members are. Those four answers determine the procedure, the timeline and the cost, and we can usually give you all three on the phone.

Where Is a Celebration Probate Case Actually Filed?

Celebration is an unincorporated community in northwest Osceola County, so there is no “Celebration probate court.” Osceola County sits in the Ninth Judicial Circuit together with Orange County, under section 26.021(9), Florida Statutes. Probate, guardianship and mental health matters are filed with the Osceola County Clerk of the Circuit Court at the Jon B. Morgan Osceola County Courthouse, 2 Courthouse Square, Kissimmee, Florida 34741, on the second floor. The Clerk’s probate line is (407) 742-3500, option 7. The public counter is open 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, with recording and payments accepted until 4:30 p.m.

Sharing a circuit with Orange County does not mean sharing a courthouse. An Osceola estate is filed in Kissimmee, not at the Orange County courthouse in downtown Orlando, and venue under section 733.101 follows the decedent’s domicile at death — not where the family lives now, and not where the property happens to sit. Families near the county line may need a Kissimmee probate lawyer or an Orlando probate attorney depending on which county the decedent was domiciled in.

The Four Corners trap is real and it catches people. The Celebration–ChampionsGate corridor runs right up against the county line. ChampionsGate and Reunion are in Osceola County. But Davenport, Loughman, Haines City, Citrus Ridge and much of the Solterra and Windsor Island area sit in Polk County, which is in the Tenth Judicial Circuit and files in Bartow, not Kissimmee. A resort community’s mailing address is not a reliable guide to its county, and filing in the wrong one costs weeks.

One structural detail matters for anyone comparing counties: Osceola County has no standalone probate division. Under the Ninth Circuit’s Administrative Order 2025-13, effective January 1, 2026, Osceola probate, guardianship and mental health cases are assigned within Circuit Civil Division B — Judge Christine E. Arendas in subdivision 20-B and Judge Christy C. Collins in subdivision 22-B. Orange County, by contrast, maintains a dedicated probate, guardianship and mental health division. The practical consequence is that an Osceola contested matter is scheduled against a general civil docket, and the division’s own procedures govern how proposed orders reach the judge.

Attorneys e-file through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal. Certain documents must still reach the Clerk in original form, including the original will and any codicils, separate writings, oaths of witnesses, proofs of will, bonds and authenticated copies.

Which Appeals Court Hears an Osceola Probate Case?

The Sixth District Court of Appeal — and this is worth stating because a great deal of published Florida probate commentary still has it wrong. Following the 2023 appellate redistricting, section 35.044, Florida Statutes, composes the Sixth Appellate District of the Ninth, Tenth and Twentieth Judicial Circuits. Section 35.043 now composes the Fifth District of the Fourth, Fifth, Seventh and Eighteenth Circuits, with the Ninth absent. Before 1 January 2023, Osceola and Orange County appeals went to the Fifth District; today they do not.

That is not a technicality. The Sixth District has held that it is not bound by the precedent of its sister courts, and that where the Florida Supreme Court has not decided a question it works from the statutory text rather than adopting another district’s answer. So on any point where the districts disagree — and there are several that matter to a Celebration estate — an Osceola case is genuinely open in a way it would not be elsewhere in Florida. Florida Supreme Court decisions, of course, bind the Sixth District like every other.

Everything above is why an Osceola County probate attorney who files here regularly is worth more than one who is closer to your house.

Court divisions, judicial assignments and clerk fees change. Confirm current details with the Osceola County Clerk before filing.

Which Probate Route Will a Celebration Estate Need?

Florida offers several paths, and which one applies is a question of value, asset type and timing rather than preference.

Route	When it applies	Is a personal representative appointed?	Rough timeline
Summary administration § 735.201	Estate subject to Florida administration, less property exempt from creditors’ claims, does not exceed $150,000 — or the decedent has been dead more than two years, with no value limit at all	No	Weeks to a few months
Formal administration Ch. 733	Everything else, and every contested matter	Yes — letters of administration issue	Typically 6–12 months uncontested
Ancillary administration § 734.102	A nonresident died owning Florida assets, credits due from Florida residents, or liens on Florida property	Yes — ancillary letters	Runs alongside the home-state estate
Disposition without administration § 735.301	Very small estates of personal property only. Any real property in the decedent’s sole name disqualifies it — including homestead	No	Days to weeks

Summary administration is what most people mean when they ask for a Celebration small estate attorney. Under section 735.201, this shortened route is available where the value of the entire estate subject to administration in Florida, less the value of property exempt from the claims of creditors, does not exceed the statutory ceiling — or where the decedent has been dead more than two years. Note that those are two independent grounds, and the second carries no value limit whatsoever. An estate of any size qualifies if the death was more than two years ago.

That ceiling changed this summer. Chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida, section 7 (CS/HB 1337), effective July 1, 2026, raised it from $75,000 to $150,000. The companion thresholds moved as well: the intestate small-estate figure from $10,000 to $20,000, family income-tax-refund claims from $2,500 to $5,000, and qualified account distributions from $1,000 to $2,000. The Supreme Court of Florida conformed Florida Probate Rule 5.530(a)(7) to match by order effective 16 July 2026. Our Florida summary administration guide covers the procedure step by step.

One caution, stated carefully. Chapter 2026-57 contains no applicability clause keyed to a decedent’s date of death — section 14 says only that the act takes effect July 1, 2026. Whether the new $150,000 ceiling or the former $75,000 ceiling governs an estate where the death occurred before that date is an open question that no Florida court has decided. If your family member died before 1 July 2026, do not assume either figure; it is worth asking before a petition is filed. Note also that local court materials lag statutory changes — at least one circuit’s administrative order still displays the old $75,000 number.

Does the Celebration House Count Toward the $150,000?

This is the question that decides the route, and the answer for a corridor property is very often the opposite of what families are told.

Section 735.201 measures the estate less property exempt from creditors’ claims, and section 733.608(1) separately provides that all real and personal property of the decedent except the protected homestead constitutes assets in the hands of the personal representative. So a genuine Florida homestead drops out of the calculation on both grounds. An $800,000 homestead plus a $40,000 bank account qualifies for summary administration, because only the $40,000 counts.

But that only works if the house actually is protected homestead. Homestead status is a legal conclusion about a particular property and a particular family, not a label that attaches to any Florida address. If the property does not qualify — because it was not the decedent’s primary residence, or because it was devised to someone who is not a qualifying heir — it becomes a general estate asset subject to creditors’ claims, and it counts toward the $150,000 in full.

For a great many Celebration, Reunion and ChampionsGate properties that is exactly the situation. A second home, a seasonal residence or a vacation rental owned by someone who lived and voted somewhere else is not the owner’s homestead. Which means a competitor’s cheerful “a home in Celebration is excluded from the summary administration calculation” is, for a large share of this corridor, simply wrong — and a family that relies on it files the wrong petition.

Florida Probate Rule 5.030 requires that every guardian and every personal representative be represented by a Florida-admitted attorney, with three exceptions: a personal representative who remains the sole interested person, a personal representative or guardian who is themselves a Florida attorney, and a guardian advocate unless law or the court requires counsel. The rule addresses guardians and personal representatives — it does not by its terms govern a petition for summary administration, where no personal representative is appointed.

What Happens If There Is No Will?

Dying without a will in Florida happens more often than people expect, especially with a second home. The owner made a will in their home state years ago that says nothing about Florida, or there is no will at all. Probate in Florida without a will is intestate administration, and Florida then decides who inherits by statute — not by what anyone remembers being promised.

Who Inherits in Florida When There Is No Will?

Who inherits in Florida when there is no will is set by statute, not by anyone’s expectations. Section 732.102 fixes the surviving spouse’s share, and it turns entirely on whose children are involved:

Situation	Surviving spouse takes	Statute
No surviving descendants	The entire intestate estate	§ 732.102(1)
All descendants are also the spouse’s, and the spouse has no others	The entire intestate estate	§ 732.102(2)
Any of the decedent’s descendants is not a descendant of the spouse	One-half	§ 732.102(3)
All descendants are the spouse’s too, but the spouse has other descendants	One-half	§ 732.102(4)

Read the third and fourth rows carefully, because they are the blended-family trap and they catch people both ways. One stepchild anywhere in the picture — on either side of the marriage — cuts the surviving spouse from the whole estate to half. Second and third marriages are common in this corridor, and the couple almost never realize it.

Whatever does not pass to the spouse descends under section 732.103 in a fixed order of inheritance: to the decedent’s descendants; if none, to the parents equally or the survivor; if none, to brothers and sisters and the descendants of deceased siblings; if none, half to paternal and half to maternal kindred, starting with grandparents, then uncles and aunts and their descendants, with one side taking all if the other has no surviving kindred; and if there is no kindred at all, to the kindred of the decedent’s last deceased spouse.

This is the ground an inheritance attorney spends most of their time on, and there is one wrinkle worth knowing about for half-siblings. Section 732.105 provides that where property descends to collateral kindred and some are of the whole blood and some of the half blood, those of the half blood inherit only half as much — but if all are of the half blood, they take whole parts. It applies to siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins only. It never applies to children or grandchildren. Where the family tree itself is genuinely in doubt — an unrecorded marriage, a child nobody told the others about — that becomes heirship work, and a heirship attorney proves the tree before anyone can inherit anything.

What If They Married or Had a Child After Making the Will?

Two provisions rescue people the will forgot, and both come up in second-marriage estates.

A pretermitted spouse. Under section 732.301, where a person marries after making a will and that spouse survives, the spouse receives what they would have taken had the testator died intestate. Three things defeat it, and any one is enough: provision made for or waived by the spouse in a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement; the spouse being provided for in the will; or the will disclosing an intention not to provide for the spouse.

A pretermitted child. Under section 732.302, a child born or adopted after the will was made, who has not already received an equivalent share by advancement, takes an intestate share — unless the will shows the omission was intentional, or the testator already had children when the will was executed and left substantially everything to the other parent of that child, who survived and takes under the will.

Note the limit, because it disappoints people regularly: section 732.302 protects only children born or adopted after the will was signed. A child who was alive when the will was made and simply left out is not a pretermitted child in Florida and takes nothing unless the will itself can be set aside.

Who Becomes Executor If There Is No Will in Florida?

Florida calls the role personal representative rather than executor. For an intestate estate, section 733.301(1)(b) sets the order of preference: first the surviving spouse; then the person selected by a majority in interest of the heirs; then the heir nearest in degree, with the court free to choose the best qualified where more than one applies. If nobody in that list applies, the court appoints a capable person.

Two things families should know. Someone who had preference at the time of appointment but was never served with formal notice may later ask the court to revoke the letters and appoint them instead. And the nonresident restriction below applies at every tier — if the person entitled to preference cannot qualify in Florida, the court simply moves to the next.

An ancillary estate runs on a different ladder entirely, set by section 734.102(1) rather than section 733.301. That is covered below.

Inherited a Vacation Home or Short-Term Rental in Celebration, Reunion or ChampionsGate?

Drive fifteen minutes in any direction from Celebration and you are in the densest concentration of vacation-rental housing in the United States. Reunion and ChampionsGate off I-4, Solterra and Windsor Island out toward Davenport, Encore and Emerald Island closer to the parks, Margaritaville and Storey Lake on the 192 corridor, Old Town and the outlet malls in between. These homes were bought to be within a short drive of Walt Disney World and Universal, and most of them earn their keep on Airbnb and VRBO between family visits.

That produces a kind of estate the rest of Florida simply does not see, and almost nothing written about Florida probate addresses it. The owners are frequently out of state or out of the country. The houses sit inside layered communities with a homeowners’ association and a Community Development District. And a great many of them are running businesses, with guests booked in for next month, on the day the owner dies.

Four things are different about these estates, and each one is worth understanding before anything is filed.

Is a Florida Vacation Home Protected by Homestead?

Almost never, and this is the hinge that everything else turns on.

Florida’s constitutional homestead protection under Article X, section 4 of the Florida Constitution, and the devise and descent restrictions in sections 732.4015 and 732.401, reach only property that is actually the owner’s or the owner’s family’s residence. The character of property as homestead depends on an actual intention to reside there as a permanent place of residence, coupled with the fact of residence — and a homestead is abandoned by taking up a permanent abode at a distant place. An owner need not personally live in Florida in every case, but the owner must have intended to make the property the family’s permanent residence, and that intent is an integral element that cannot be dispensed with.

Florida courts have applied that squarely to people who look, superficially, like Floridians. A property owner whose principal residence was elsewhere, who spent well under a hundred days a year in Florida, and who claimed only a future intention to move here, was held not entitled to homestead protection — despite holding a Florida driver’s license, being registered to vote in Florida, and belonging to a local church.

Three consequences follow, and they are the practical heart of this page:

• Creditor exposure. Homestead’s immunity from forced sale presupposes actual homestead status. Without it, the Reunion villa is an ordinary probate asset, available to satisfy administration expenses and creditors’ claims like any other.
• The personal representative can sell it. Protected homestead is carved out of the property the personal representative takes into possession under section 733.607(1) and out of the assets in the representative’s hands under section 733.608(1). Where the property is not homestead, neither carve-out operates, and the representative may take possession and sell in the ordinary course. That is usually what the family wants.
• The surviving spouse’s homestead rights do not attach. The special descent scheme in section 732.401 — the life estate with a vested remainder to descendants, or the one-half tenancy-in-common election — applies only to the homestead. So does the devise restriction in section 732.4015. A second home may be devised freely, and a surviving spouse’s remedies lie in the ordinary elective share and intestate share instead.

The line is fact-specific and worth taking seriously in both directions. A snowbird who has taken concrete steps toward Florida domicile presents a genuinely close question. A pure investor who bought a rental villa and never lived in it does not.

Where the property is protected homestead, the opposite constraint applies and catches personal representatives out: section 733.608(2) permits the representative to take possession of protected homestead only to preserve, insure and protect it for the heir or devisee — not to sell it.

Who Is Entitled to the Rental Income After the Owner Dies?

Who is entitled to the rental income after the owner dies starts with who controls the property. Every personal representative has a right to, and must take, possession or control of the decedent’s property except the protected homestead, and must take all steps reasonably necessary for the management, protection and preservation of the estate until distribution. Because a vacation rental is generally not protected homestead, it falls squarely inside that possession right. All estate property and the rents, income, issues and profits from it are assets in the representative’s hands under section 733.608.

That possession right is not absolute. Where a colorable factual dispute exists over who is entitled to possess property, even property titled in the decedent’s name, a court may hold an evidentiary hearing rather than treating the representative’s statement as conclusive. And the representative’s possession is fiduciary only — the personal representative holds legal title but not beneficial title, and possesses estate assets only in an official capacity.

Then the question of who the money belongs to. It depends on how the property was left:

• Specifically devised — “I leave my Reunion villa to my daughter.” The post-death rental income belongs to that devisee from the date of death, not to the residuary estate, net of taxes and the costs of ordinary repairs, management and operation during administration.
• Falls into the residue, or passes by intestacy. The rents are ordinary estate assets, held for the statutory purposes — devises, debts, allowances, taxes, claims and administration expenses — and ultimately distributed.

Getting this backwards is expensive. A personal representative who sweeps a specifically devised property’s booking revenue into the general estate account is using one beneficiary’s money to pay everyone’s expenses. It is also the question that most often turns a routine file into one that needs a Celebration probate attorney rather than a form.

One thing we are not: your accountant. But it comes up on every call, so it is worth flagging. Inherited rental property generally takes a stepped up basis to fair market value at the date of death, which often matters more to the family’s eventual tax bill than anything that happens in the probate file — and depreciation the decedent had claimed does not carry over to the heirs in the way people assume. Get a date-of-death appraisal before you do anything else with the property, and take the tax question to a CPA. We will tell you what the probate record needs to show so that they can do their job.

Can the Estate Keep Operating the Short-Term Rental?

Whether the estate can keep operating the short-term rental is usually yes, carefully, and with a statutory clock on it.

Section 733.612 authorizes the personal representative to act reasonably for the benefit of interested persons, including leasing real property. Where the rental is a genuine going concern rather than a passive lease, section 733.612(22) allows the representative to continue an unincorporated business or venture the decedent was engaged in at death, in the same business form, for not more than four months from the date of appointment — and for any additional period approved by court order. Authorization beyond the statutory period comes by verified petition under Florida Probate Rule 5.350, which also requires the representative to keep separate, full and accurate accounts of the business.

There is a real protection built in: debts incurred after death by continuing the decedent’s business are a Class 7 obligation only to the extent of the assets of that business, which caps the estate’s exposure.

Two things here are genuinely unsettled, and any lawyer who tells you otherwise is overstating. First, whether an Airbnb or VRBO operation is treated as an ordinary rental — with receipts allocated to income under section 738.405 — or as a “business or other activity” accounted for separately, is a fiduciary election with no controlling Florida appellate decision either way. The principal-and-income statute expressly lists “managing rental properties” among the activities that may be accounted for separately, which cuts toward the business treatment. Second, the section 733.612(22) continuation cases address unincorporated businesses generally, not a single vacation-rental home; that application has not been tested on appeal.

The cautious course for a representative who intends to keep bookings live is to seek court authorization under section 733.612(22)(b) and Rule 5.350 and to account for the rental separately. It costs a petition and removes the argument.

Does the Vacation Rental License Survive the Owner’s Death?

A corridor short-term rental usually carries three separate registrations, and none of them is the deed: a Florida DBPR vacation rental license for transient public lodging, an Osceola County tourist development tax account, and a local business tax receipt. Platform listings sit on top of all three.

None of this is probate law, which is exactly why it gets missed. The licenses are generally issued to a person or entity rather than running with the land, which means the estate cannot simply keep operating on the decedent’s credentials indefinitely — and continuing to take bookings on a license that is no longer valid is its own problem, separate from any probate question.

Whether each registration transfers, lapses, or has to be re-applied for in the estate’s or the successor owner’s name is an agency question rather than a probate one, and the answer can differ between the three. Confirm the current position directly with the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation and the Osceola County Tax Collector before the estate takes another booking — and put the answer in writing, because the person who told you on the phone will not be the person reviewing the file later.

The practical sequence we use: pause new bookings, find out which registrations are in the decedent’s personal name, ask each agency what it requires on the owner’s death, and only then decide whether to keep operating, transfer the business, or wind it down and sell.

What About the Insurance?

Tell the carrier immediately, in writing, and confirm coverage in writing back. This is the single most common uninsured loss in an estate with a second home. Most homeowner’s policies contain a vacancy exclusion that suspends major coverage once a property has been unoccupied for a set period — often 30 or 60 days — and an estate property between a death and a distribution is very often exactly that. A rental policy raises the mirror-image problem: coverage written for a commercial short-term rental may not respond once the rental operation stops.

The personal representative’s duty to take all steps reasonably necessary for the preservation of the estate includes keeping the property insured. A hurricane claim denied for vacancy is a surcharge claim waiting to happen.

What Happens to the Mortgage on an Inherited Vacation Home?

The mortgage does not die with the borrower and the lender does not pause for probate. Two questions follow, and families get both wrong.

Who pays it off? Section 733.803 answers it in one sentence, and the default is the opposite of what most people assume:

“The specific devisee of any encumbered property shall be entitled to have the encumbrance on devised property paid at the expense of the residue of the estate only when the will shows that intent. A general direction in the will to pay debts does not show that intent.”

So a specific devisee takes the villa subject to the mortgage. The estate does not clear the loan out of other assets. A will saying “I leave my Reunion villa to my daughter” leaves her the loan with it — and, critically, the boilerplate direction to pay all debts that appears in nearly every will does not change that. The statute forecloses exactly that argument. The Third District held as much in Ashkenazy v. Ashkenazy’s Estate, 140 So. 2d 331 (Fla. 3d DCA 1962): a direction to pay debts as soon as practicable does not by itself show a positive intent to exonerate real property from a mortgage. The Sixth District, which hears Osceola appeals, is not bound by it, but it is the only published Florida authority on the point and no district split has emerged.

If you want a house to pass free of its mortgage, the will has to say so expressly. Most do not.

Will the lender call the loan? Usually not, on a death transfer. The federal Garn-St Germain Act, 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), exempts three death-related transfers from due-on-sale enforcement: a transfer by devise, descent or operation of law on the death of a joint tenant or tenant by the entirety; a transfer to a relative resulting from the death of a borrower; and a transfer where the borrower’s spouse or children become owners. The second is the broad one — it covers both intestate succession and a devise to a relative.

There is a limit worth knowing about, and this is where a vacation rental is genuinely different. Those exemptions apply only to a loan secured by residential real property containing fewer than five dwelling units. A single-family villa is structurally a one-unit residential property and the statute says nothing about owner-occupancy; the regulation defining residential real property counts units, not occupants, which supports applying the exemptions. But no Florida appellate court has decided whether a property operated exclusively as a short-term rental — never lived in by the borrower — still counts as residential for this purpose. A lender could argue it does not. Anyone relying on Garn-St Germain for a pure investment rental should know the argument exists before they need it.

One more exposure worth naming: a person who collects rents from a decedent’s property without authority is an executor de son tort, subject to all the liabilities of a duly appointed personal representative. The saving grace is that where the collected rent went solely to legitimate estate expenses and nothing was retained, the estate suffers no recoverable loss. That is a defense, not a plan.

HOA Dues and CDD Assessments After a Death

Every property in this corridor carries assessments, most carry two kinds, and the two are treated completely differently in probate. No other law firm page covering this market distinguishes them at all.

Who Pays the HOA Dues While the Estate Is Open?

Separate what was owed before the death from what comes due after it.

Pre-death arrears are a claim against the decedent’s estate that arose before death, and are subject to the statement-of-claim bar in section 733.702. Enforced as an unsecured claim, they sit in Class 8 — “all other claims” — near the back of the payment order. But section 733.702(4)(a) expressly preserves a proceeding to enforce any mortgage, security interest or other lien on the decedent’s property, and both homeowners’ association liens under section 720.3085 and condominium liens under section 718.116 run with the land and relate back to recording of the declaration. So the association’s lien survives the claim bar even where its unsecured claim would not.

Assessments coming due during the estate’s ownership are a different animal, and are best treated as a continuing obligation of the estate as owner rather than as a creditor claim at all. A parcel owner, regardless of how title was acquired, is liable for all assessments that come due while that person is the parcel owner, and that liability cannot be avoided by waiver, suspension or abandonment. The estate holds title during administration, so the estate is the owner, and the assessments have to be kept current or the association forecloses. Walking away from a Reunion villa’s dues while probate runs is not an option.

What Happens to the CDD Assessment When the Owner Dies?

This is the part almost nobody knows, and in this corridor it is the one that costs the most.

Celebration, Reunion and the ChampionsGate area are dense with Community Development Districts — the Celebration CDD, Reunion East and Reunion West, the Westside district serving ChampionsGate. A CDD assessment is not a homeowners’ association due and does not behave like one. Under section 190.021, benefit and maintenance special assessments constitute a lien on the property assessed, from the date of imposition until paid, coequal with the lien of state, county, municipal and school board taxes. They are certified to the property appraiser, and collected and enforced by the tax collector in the same manner and at the same time as county taxes.

The consequence in probate is significant, and it is the detail we most often have to explain to families who have already spoken to another Osceola County probate lawyer. A CDD assessment carries senior, tax-type lien dignity. It is not an ordinary contract creditor claim working its way through the class priority scheme — it behaves like the property tax bill, it survives the death, and it must be paid to protect the property. A personal representative who treats the CDD line on the tax bill as just another association charge to be argued about later is making an expensive mistake.

Do the Heirs Inherit Unpaid Assessments?

Partly, and the honest answer is that in this corridor the outer limit of that exposure is currently unsettled.

The rule itself is clear enough. A parcel owner is jointly and severally liable with the previous parcel owner for all unpaid assessments that came due up to the time of transfer of title — section 720.3085(2)(b) for a homeowners’ association, section 718.116(1)(a) for a condominium. So the estate, and ultimately the heir or devisee who takes the property, inherits joint-and-several exposure for what was already owed.

What is not settled is how far back that reaches. The First District held in Coastal Creek Condominium Association v. Fla Trust Services LLC, 275 So. 3d 836 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019), that under the current statutory text a present owner is jointly and severally liable for assessments unpaid during the ownership of both the immediate previous owner and the original owner. In doing so it certified conflict with a line of Third District decisions reading successor liability more narrowly — limited to the immediate prior owner. The Florida Supreme Court has never resolved that conflict.

For a Celebration estate this is where a detail almost nobody tracks becomes decisive. Since the 2023 appellate redistricting, Osceola County is in the Sixth District Court of Appeal, not the Fifth — section 35.044, Florida Statutes, composes the Sixth Appellate District of the Ninth, Tenth and Twentieth Judicial Circuits. The Sixth District has held that it is not bound by the precedent of any of its sister courts, and that where there is no Florida Supreme Court decision on point it decides the question by returning to the statutory text.

So neither side of the Coastal Creek conflict controls a Celebration case. A Sixth District court would resolve it on the words of the current section 718.116(1)(a) and section 720.3085(2)(b), which point toward the broader reading — but there is no binding answer, and anyone who tells you there is has not checked which appellate court hears Osceola appeals. Plan for broad exposure, order an estoppel letter early, and do not let arrears compound while the estate is open.

Can You Sell a House During Probate in Florida?

Usually yes, and for most Celebration and Reunion estates selling is the plan. But selling a house in probate Florida families expect to be simple follows rules that surprise people, and the first one is about who actually owns the property.

Non-homestead Florida real estate vests in the devisee or heir by operation of law immediately on death, subject to administration of the estate. The personal representative never holds title to it. What the representative holds is the power to administer — to take possession, manage, and where necessary sell.

Does the Court Have to Approve the Sale?

Whether the court has to approve the sale depends entirely on the will, and this is where a great deal of published material is simply wrong.

• If the will confers a power of sale — most professionally drafted wills do — section 733.613(2) governs and the personal representative may sell without court authorization.
• If there is no testamentary power of sale, or one too limited to exercise, section 733.613(1) applies, the representative must obtain a court order, and no title passes until the court authorizes or confirms the sale.

Anyone who tells you court approval is always required has not read the will. Anyone who tells you it is never required has not read it either. Find the power-of-sale clause first; it decides the timeline, and it is the first page any competent probate attorney turns to when a closing date is already set.

Two practical points that follow. A purchaser buying under a court order or a specific testamentary power takes free of the proceedings — a bona fide purchaser is not required to examine the probate file behind the order of sale. And for an intestate estate, or one with no power of sale, budget for the petition and the hearing when you set a closing date.

Do All Heirs Have to Agree to Sell Property in Florida?

No — and this is the answer three siblings who inherited one villa most need to hear.

Where the property is still in administration, section 733.814 lets the personal representative or any beneficiary petition the court, before the estate is closed, to partition the property in the same manner as a civil partition action. The court may direct a sale of property that cannot be partitioned without prejudice and cannot be allotted equitably. Florida Probate Rule 5.025(a) lists partition for purposes of distribution as an adversary proceeding, so it comes with formal notice and pleadings.

Where administration is already closed and the heirs simply co-own the villa, the remedy is an ordinary Chapter 64 partition. A partition action does not require agreement; one co-owner can force the issue. If a partition suit is filed while the estate is still open, expect the court to stay it pending administration — that is the modern pattern, and it is why sequencing matters more than urgency.

What Cannot Be Partitioned

Four things, and families are routinely surprised by the first:

• Successive interests. Chapter 64 reaches concurrent interests only. Where a surviving spouse holds a life estate with the children holding a vested remainder, that is not partitionable — one remainderman cannot partition against another while a life estate is outstanding. That is the default homestead descent scheme, which is one more reason the homestead question decides everything.
• Tenancy by the entirety, under section 689.15.
• Protected homestead where exclusive possession has been awarded.
• A binding written agreement. The right to partition is waivable in writing — though a clause in a will purporting to bar partition is an unlawful restraint on alienation.

Homestead itself is not immune. A judicial sale for purposes of partition among the beneficiaries of a homestead is not within the constitutional exemption from forced sale, and the prohibition does not apply where the sale is necessary to protect an ownership interest in the property.

The Heirs Property Act — a Buyout Right Almost Nobody Uses

If the villa passed from a relative and the co-owners are family, Florida’s Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act, sections 64.201 through 64.214, may apply — and it changes the outcome substantially. It gives the co-owners who want to keep the property a right to buy out the ones who want to sell, at a court-determined share of whole-parcel value with no minority discount, on a 45-day election. If a sale still has to happen, the court weighs statutory factors including the co-owners’ sentimental attachment to the property.

Two things worth knowing. The Act reaches property taken by will, not only intestacy — the trigger is that a cotenant acquired title from a relative, living or deceased. And as of September 2026 no Florida appellate decision appears to have construed the Act, so there is very little guidance on how courts will apply it. Most partition complaints in this state are still filed as though Part II did not exist.

Partition is its own body of law and most probate lawyers do not run these. On fees: section 64.081 is a proportional-sharing statute, not a prevailing-party statute. Each party has a right to have the others share their fees and a responsibility to share the others’. A court cannot assign the entire fee to one side. Our guide for siblings who disagree about selling a family home works through the whole sequence.

What Property Is Protected From Creditors?

First, the limit that decides whether this section applies to you at all. Both of these rights depend on the decedent having been domiciled in Florida at death — sections 732.402 and 732.403 each say so on their face. In an ancillary administration for a nonresident owner, neither is available, however valuable the Florida property. A family whose parent lived in Ohio or the United Kingdom and owned a Reunion villa gets no exempt property and no family allowance in the Florida proceeding at all.

For a Florida-domiciled decedent, section 732.402 exempt property passes to the surviving spouse, or to the children if there is no spouse, free of creditors’ claims:

• household furniture, furnishings and appliances in the usual place of abode, up to $20,000 net value at the date of death;
• two motor vehicles under 15,000 lb gross vehicle weight held in the decedent’s name and regularly used by the decedent or the immediate family;
• all qualified tuition programs under section 529, including Florida Prepaid; and
• certain death benefits for teachers and school administrators under section 112.1915.

This right is waived if you miss the deadline. Section 732.402(6) requires a petition to determine exempt property by the later of four months after service of the notice of administration or 40 days after termination of a will proceeding. Nobody reminds you.

Separately, section 732.403 allows a family allowance of up to $18,000 for the surviving spouse and lineal heirs the decedent was supporting, payable during administration and in addition to what they otherwise inherit.

And on furnished rentals the answer is clearer than most people expect, and it is unfavorable. Section 732.402 reaches furniture, furnishings and appliances in the decedent’s usual place of abode — the place the decedent habitually lived. A villa rented to transient guests through Airbnb or VRBO, and not occupied by the owner as a regular residence, is not the usual place of abode, so its furnishings are not exempt property. The one exception is factual: if the owner was Florida-domiciled and actually lived there between rentals, the analysis changes and is worth arguing.

What Happens to a Timeshare When the Owner Dies?

Osceola County is the timeshare capital of the United States, and it is not close. Disney Vacation Club at Saratoga Springs and Old Key West, Westgate on the 192, Orange Lake out by the Western Way — inherited weeks turn up in a large share of the estates we open here, and they are almost always the part of the estate the family least wants and least understands.

Whether the interest goes through probate depends on which of three things it is. Chapter 721 distinguishes a timeshare estate, a personal property timeshare interest and a timeshare license. A timeshare estate — occupancy rights coupled with a freehold or an estate for years, or an ownership interest in a condominium or cooperative unit — is by statute a parcel of real property under the laws of this state. That means it passes at death like other Florida realty, by devise or by intestate descent, and for a nonresident owner it is a Florida asset requiring administration to pass title. A personal property timeshare interest is personalty and does not carry the same real-property character.

Two corrections to what is commonly published. First, section 721.17 is not the mechanism by which an heir takes a timeshare — it governs transfers by the developer or the owner of the underlying fee, and it is a purchaser-protection provision. An individual owner’s week passes under the probate code and general real property law. Second, whether a lone timeshare estate compels a full ancillary administration has never been squarely decided by a Florida appellate court; the conclusion follows from the real-property classification applied to the general ancillary trigger, and the summary administration and record-only alternatives may be available instead.

How Do You Value a Timeshare for Probate?

People ask how to value a timeshare for probate because the number drives everything else, and they usually ask it right after discovering that timeshares do not pass automatically — do timeshares transfer on death without probate? Generally not, if the interest is a timeshare estate. The valuation answer: at fair market value as of the date of death, like any other estate asset — and for most weeks that figure is far lower than families expect and sometimes effectively zero or negative once the maintenance obligation is counted. Resale market evidence, not the original purchase price and not the developer’s current retail price, is what the inventory should reflect. This matters directly to the route the estate takes: a realistic timeshare valuation often keeps an estate under the summary administration ceiling that a developer’s price would have pushed it over.

Can You Inherit a Timeshare — and Can I Refuse One?

You can inherit a timeshare in Florida, and you can also refuse one — by disclaimer, and the timing matters more than almost anything else on this page.

A person may disclaim, in whole or in part, any interest in or power over property, notwithstanding a spendthrift or anti-disclaimer restriction. Chapter 739 is the exclusive means by which a disclaimer may be made under Florida law, and it makes no provision for partial compliance — strict compliance is required. To be effective a disclaimer must be in writing, declare itself to be a disclaimer, describe the interest disclaimed, be signed by the disclaimant, be witnessed and acknowledged in the manner provided for deeds, and be delivered or filed as the statute requires. For an interest in real estate, delivery is presumed on recording the disclaimer in the county where the property lies — which is the natural mechanism for a timeshare week.

The trap is acceptance. A disclaimer is barred if, before it becomes effective, the disclaimant accepts the interest, assigns or encumbers it, or is insolvent when the disclaimer becomes irrevocable. A beneficiary who has used the week has almost certainly accepted the interest and can no longer refuse it. Paying maintenance fees is a genuinely closer question — it may evidence acceptance of the benefits and burdens of ownership, or it may be characterized as protecting an interest one intends to reject — and no Florida appellate decision has resolved it in the timeshare context. Chapter 739 itself imposes no fixed deadline, but a disclaimer that is to be tax-qualified must meet the nine-month federal requirement.

The practical advice is simple: if you do not want it, disclaim promptly and do not use the week. If a week has already been used and the family still wants out, that is a conversation to have with a Celebration estate attorney quickly rather than at the end of the administration.

If you own a week yourself and would rather your children never face this, timeshare estate planning is worth an hour — a trust, a lifetime transfer or a deed-back while you are alive all beat leaving the problem in an estate.

Maintenance fees do not stop when the owner dies, the assessment lien keeps running, and the resort’s collection process does not pause for probate. We have written the full treatment separately — see what happens to a timeshare when the owner dies, which covers Disney Vacation Club and the right of first refusal, deed-back programs at Westgate and Orange Lake, foreclosure, credit consequences and the personal representative’s checklist.

The Owner Lived in the UK, Canada or Brazil. Is There a Florida Case?

Yes, and it is called ancillary administration. This corridor was sold to the world — British, Canadian and Brazilian families have been buying homes near Disney for thirty years, often through agents who never mentioned what happens when the owner dies. It is one of the most common situations here and one of the worst served.

Under section 734.102, if a nonresident of Florida dies leaving assets in this state, credits due from residents of this state, or liens on property in this state, ancillary letters may issue. That trigger is broader than most families assume — it is not limited to owning a house. Where a foreign court’s administration does not resolve the disposition of a Florida asset, the Florida court has power to resolve it in the first instance through an ancillary proceeding.

Who can be appointed follows a strict ladder, and the foreign personal representative is second on it, not first: a personal representative specifically designated in the will to administer the Florida property; otherwise the foreign personal representative; then a qualified alternate or successor named in the will; otherwise a representative selected by those entitled to a majority interest in the Florida property; and in intestacy, the Code’s order of preference. Every rung is conditioned on being qualified to act in Florida. Before ancillary letters issue, formal notice must go to everyone of equal or higher preference — and failing to serve a higher-preference person, a surviving spouse for instance, invalidates the appointment.

Can a Foreign Relative Serve as Personal Representative?

A foreign relative can serve as personal representative in some cases, and the test is family relationship rather than citizenship.

Florida’s baseline is that any person who is sui juris and a Florida resident at the time of death is qualified to serve. Section 733.304 then provides that a person who is not a Florida resident cannot qualify unless that person is a legally adopted child or adoptive parent of the decedent; related to the decedent by lineal consanguinity; a spouse, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece of the decedent, or someone related by lineal consanguinity to any of those; or the spouse of a person otherwise qualified.

Nothing in that text requires U.S. citizenship or U.S. residence. A decedent’s child or sibling living in London, Toronto or São Paulo is not excluded by section 733.304 on account of living abroad, provided the separate disqualifications in section 733.303 are cleared — felony conviction, conviction of abuse, neglect or exploitation of an elderly or disabled adult, mental or physical inability, or being under 18. Florida courts construe the relationship categories narrowly: “nephew” has been held to mean a blood relative of the decedent, so the nephew of a predeceased spouse did not qualify.

The practical lesson for a foreign family is straightforward. A close blood relative or a spouse can serve. An in-law, a cousin by marriage or a more distant relation very likely cannot, and the family should nominate a qualified Florida resident or a Florida corporate fiduciary instead.

There is also a procedural requirement that surprises people. Before letters issue, a personal representative must file a designation of address and — critically for anyone abroad — a designation of resident agent for service of process or notice, together with the agent’s acceptance. The resident agent must generally be a resident of the county where the proceedings are pending. For a family in the UK, Canada or Brazil that means securing an Osceola County resident agent, ordinarily local counsel, before the foreign relative can be appointed at all.

What If Someone Was Appointed Who Was Never Qualified?

This comes up often in ancillary cases, because a family abroad frequently nominates whoever is closest to the property rather than whoever the statute permits — and older commentary on the point is now out of date.

The current mechanism is section 733.3101. A personal representative who is not qualified, or who becomes unqualified, must resign or serve notice of the fact on interested persons, and an interested person then has 30 days to petition for removal. “Qualified” is defined by reference to sections 733.302 through 733.305, so the nonresident restrictions discussed above run through this route.

Note what this is not. The three-month objection deadline in section 733.212(3) reaches only the validity of the will, the venue and the jurisdiction of the court. It no longer reaches the qualifications of the personal representative — that ground was removed from the subsection, and a good deal of published material still says otherwise. If you have been told your objection to an unqualified representative is time-barred under the three-month rule, it is worth a second opinion.

Does a Foreign Will Work in Florida?

A nonresident’s will — other than a holographic or nuncupative one — is valid in Florida if it was valid under the laws of the state or country where it was executed. That is a generous rule and it saves a great many foreign estates.

Beyond full ancillary administration there are two shorter routes worth knowing about. An authenticated copy of a nonresident’s will devising Florida real property may be admitted to record in the county where the property lies, but only after two years from death or after the domiciliary personal representative has been discharged, where there has been no Florida administration proceeding, and where the will was executed as chapter 732 requires and has been admitted to probate elsewhere. Once admitted to record it is as effective to pass title as if it had been admitted to probate in Florida. Separately, section 734.1025 lets the foreign personal representative of a testate nonresident file an authenticated transcript of the foreign proceedings where the Florida property does not exceed $50,000 gross at death, with a full ancillary representative required only if a claim is filed.

Note the gap that has opened up: that $50,000 short-form ceiling was not raised by the 2026 amendments, so it now sits far below the $150,000 summary administration ceiling — and summary administration is expressly available for nonresident estates too. For a Reunion villa worth $120,000 net, the summary route is now the better one.

The Tax Problem Nobody Warns Foreign Owners About

Estate tax for a foreign owner of Florida property is the most expensive thing on this page, and almost no firm serving this corridor mentions it.

A US citizen or US-domiciled decedent currently gets a federal estate tax exclusion of $15 million, made permanent in 2025. A decedent who was neither a US citizen nor a US domiciliary gets a unified credit of $13,000 under section 2102(b)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code — the equivalent of roughly a $60,000 exemption. That figure is confirmed by the filing threshold itself: section 6018(a)(2) requires a return once the US-situs gross estate exceeds $60,000.

Florida real property is US-situs property and is included in full. The rates are the same graduated rates that apply to citizens, reaching 40% at the top. The practical effect is blunt: a non-resident, non-citizen owner of a single Osceola County vacation home worth more than $60,000 — which is essentially every property in this market — has a US estate tax filing obligation and probably a liability. Florida imposes no estate tax and no inheritance tax of its own, which is exactly why families assume there is nothing to worry about.

A treaty may change the arithmetic completely. Section 2102(b)(3)(A) provides that where a US treaty obligation requires it, the credit is the same proportion of the full applicable credit as the US-situs estate bears to the entire worldwide estate. The United States has estate tax treaties with roughly seventeen countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan and Australia. Worked through: a decedent with a $2 million worldwide estate and a $500,000 Florida villa would get 25% of the full applicable credit — potentially sheltering the Florida property entirely. Terms vary by treaty and the specific one has to be read.

The return is Form 706-NA, due nine months from the date of death under 26 C.F.R. § 20.6075-1. Form 4768 buys an automatic six-month extension, but read it carefully: it extends the time to file, not the time to pay. Interest runs on unpaid tax throughout.

FIRPTA: Selling Inherited Florida Property With Foreign Beneficiaries

The second half of the problem arrives at closing, and here almost everything published about FIRPTA is written for the wrong transaction.

The familiar rule — section 1445(a) — is that a buyer purchasing US real property from a foreign person must withhold 15% of the amount realized, meaning the gross sale price plus assumed liabilities, not the gain. Two relief provisions matter for a house: no withholding at all where the buyer will use the property as a residence and the amount realized does not exceed $300,000, and a reduced 10% rate where it is bought as a residence for not more than $1,000,000. Neither helps if the villa is sold to an investor who will keep renting it out — which, in this corridor, is the usual buyer.

But a Florida estate is not a foreign person, and that changes which rule applies. Where the seller is a domestic estate — and a Florida probate or ancillary estate is domestic even though the decedent was a foreign national — section 1445(a) does not govern. Section 1445(e)(1) does, and it works differently in three ways that matter at the closing table:

	§ 1445(a) — foreign person sells	§ 1445(e)(1) — Florida estate sells
Who withholds	The buyer	The personal representative
Withheld on	Amount realized (gross price)	Gain allocable to foreign beneficiaries
Rate	15% (10% or nil for a residence under the thresholds)	Highest corporate rate under § 11(b), currently 21%, or 20% by regulation

Two consequences worth stating plainly. If every beneficiary is a US person, there is no section 1445(e)(1) withholding at all — even though the decedent was a foreign national. And where some beneficiaries are foreign, the representative withholds only on the gain allocable to their shares. On a property that has not appreciated much, withholding on gain is dramatically less painful than withholding on the gross price, and getting this wrong in either direction is expensive.

A withholding certificate can reduce or eliminate the obligation, and the IRS must act on the application within 90 days. Where the gain is small relative to the sale price, applying before closing is usually the difference between a clean distribution and a year waiting on a refund.

One trap at the end: if the estate distributes the villa in kind to a foreign beneficiary who then sells it themselves, that later sale is a disposition by a foreign person and section 1445(a) applies to it in the ordinary way. Distributing first does not avoid FIRPTA — it moves it, and usually onto the worse of the two rules.

Where these layers apply they should shape the plan from day one — whether to sell at all, when, and in whose hands. See our page on ancillary administration and non-citizen estate tax. We are not your accountant, and a US tax adviser should run the numbers; what we do is make sure the probate record and the closing are structured so they can.

Our full guide to ancillary probate in Florida goes through the procedure, and we handle these matters for families in Latin America, Canada and the United Kingdom in English, Spanish and Portuguese where needed.

Florida Probate Deadlines: Quick Reference

These are the Florida probate deadlines that actually bite, and the one nearly everyone gets wrong is the trigger — most of them run from the date a document was served, not from the date of death.

What	How long	Running from
Deposit the original will with the Clerk	10 days	Learning of the death
Object to the will’s validity, venue or jurisdiction — § 733.212(3)	3 months	Service of the notice of administration
Outer limit on that objection	The earlier of final discharge or 1 year	Service of the notice of administration
Creditor claims — § 733.702	The later of 3 months, or 30 days if served	First publication / service on the creditor
Elective share election — § 732.2135	The earlier of 6 months or 2 years	Service on the spouse / date of death
Petition to determine exempt property — § 732.402(6)	The later of 4 months or 40 days	Service of notice of administration / end of a will proceeding
Caveat filed before death expires	2 years	Filing
Absolute bar on claims against the estate — § 733.710	2 years	Date of death

The last row deserves emphasis, because it is the most powerful rule in Florida probate and the least understood. Two years after death, neither the estate, the personal representative nor the beneficiaries are liable for any claim against the decedent — whether or not letters of administration were ever issued. Section 733.702 is a statute of limitations; section 733.710 is a jurisdictional statute of nonclaim that cannot be waived or extended by anyone, including the court. Two categories survive it: a creditor who filed a claim within the two years that has not been paid or disposed of, and the lien of a duly recorded mortgage, security interest or possessory lien, and the right to foreclose it.

For the corridor that cuts both ways. A nonresident family that delays opening a Florida proceeding — a very common pattern — gets a powerful, self-executing backstop that extinguishes most pre-death claims. But the association liens and the CDD’s tax-type liens are not extinguished, and a known or reasonably ascertainable creditor who was never served remains viable right up to the two-year mark. Our guide to Florida probate deadlines works through each of these.

What Makes Celebration Estates More Likely to End Up in Litigation?

The numbers explain a lot. Census figures for 2020–2024 put the median value of an owner-occupied home in Celebration at roughly $635,000, against about $353,300 countywide, and 18.7% of residents are 65 or over compared with 13.5% across Osceola. Add a housing stock full of second homes and seasonal residences and you get a particular kind of estate: valuable, often illiquid, frequently owned by someone who lived somewhere else. Four dispute patterns come up again and again, and they are most of what a Celebration probate litigation attorney sees.

The house is the estate. When the home is worth more than everything else put together, there is no way to divide it evenly without selling it — and one sibling who spent every Christmas there rarely sees that the same way as the sibling who lives out of state and wants their share. That is how families who got along end up in front of a judge. Florida homestead law compounds this: under section 732.4015, homestead cannot be devised at all if the owner is survived by a spouse or a minor child, except to the spouse where there is no minor child. A will that leaves the house to the wrong person does not accomplish what it says. Where co-owners cannot agree, a partition action is the remedy, and we handle those.

The owner was not a Florida resident. Where a decedent lived elsewhere but owned Celebration property, the Florida court’s role is ancillary administration under section 734.102 — and coordinating an ancillary proceeding in Kissimmee with a primary estate in another state or country is where a great many Celebration disputes begin.

Later-in-life documents. A new will, a new deed or a change of beneficiary signed in the last months of a long illness is the single most common trigger for a will dispute anywhere in Florida — and it is more common where estates are large enough to be worth fighting over.

Blended families. This is the one a probate dispute attorney sees most. Second and third marriages are common in a community with these demographics, and they set a surviving spouse against adult children from an earlier marriage more reliably than any other fact pattern.

How Long Do You Have to Contest a Will in Florida?

How long do you have to contest a will in Florida? Three months from service — and the clock is unusually unforgiving. Under section 733.212(3), Florida Statutes, an interested person served with a copy of the notice of administration must object to the validity of the will, the venue, or the jurisdiction of the court by filing a petition or other pleading within three months after that notice is served. Objections not filed in time are, in the statute’s own words, “forever barred.” If you are already past that mark, or think you might be, that is the first thing to check with a Celebration will dispute attorney rather than the last.

Two features of this deadline are routinely misstated, and both matter. It can be extended for essentially one reason: estoppel based on a misstatement by the personal representative about the time period itself. It expressly cannot be extended for affirmative misrepresentation, failure to disclose information, or misconduct by the personal representative or anyone else. And there is an outer limit — objections must be filed no later than the earlier of an order of final discharge of the personal representative or one year after service of the notice of administration.

The trigger is service of the notice, not the date of death and not the date the case was filed. Someone who learns about a Florida estate eight months after a parent’s death may still be within the window, or may be out of it, depending entirely on when — and whether — they were served. Our Florida will contest page covers the procedure in more detail.

What Are the Grounds for Contesting a Will in Florida?

The grounds for contesting a will in Florida are a defined set, and disliking the outcome is not one of them.

Lack of testamentary capacity. The standard traces to Newman v. Smith, 77 Fla. 633, 82 So. 236 (1918): the testator must be able to understand, in a general way, the nature and extent of the property being disposed of, the testator’s relation to those who would naturally claim a substantial benefit from the will, and the practical effect of the will as executed. Capacity is measured at the moment of execution — which is why a person under a guardianship may still execute a valid will during a lucid interval, as the Third District confirmed in American Red Cross v. Estate of Haynsworth, 708 So. 2d 602 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998).

Improper execution. Section 732.502 requires that the testator sign at the end of the will, or direct another to subscribe the name in the testator’s presence; that the testator sign or acknowledge the signature in the presence of at least two attesting witnesses; and that those witnesses sign in the presence of the testator and of each other. A will that fails these formalities fails entirely, however clear the decedent’s intent.

Undue influence, fraud, duress or mistake. Section 732.5165 makes a will void where its execution was procured by any of these. The statute operates surgically: a part procured by undue influence is void, while the remainder of the will stands if it is not invalid for other reasons. The same rule voids a revocation procured that way — which is how a superseded will sometimes comes back to life.

A self-proving affidavit under section 732.503 is optional; a will is validly executed without one. What it does is procedural, and the authority for that is section 733.201(1): a self-proved will may be admitted to probate without further proof. Its absence is not a defect — it simply means the proponent must prove execution another way.

How Does Florida Law Treat Undue Influence Claims?

This is the ground most Celebration disputes actually turn on, and Florida law here is stronger for contestants than most out-of-state families expect.

Under In re Estate of Carpenter, 253 So. 2d 697 (Fla. 1971), a presumption of undue influence arises where three things coincide: a substantial beneficiary under the will who occupies a confidential relationship with the testator and who was active in procuring the will. The confidential-relationship element is deliberately broad — the Florida Supreme Court adopted language reaching not only technical fiduciary relations but those informal relations existing wherever one person trusts in and relies upon another, and the relation may be moral, social, domestic or merely personal.

For active procurement, Carpenter identified seven considerations: presence of the beneficiary at the execution of the will; presence when the testator expressed a desire to make a will; recommendation by the beneficiary of the attorney who drew it; the beneficiary’s knowledge of the contents before execution; the beneficiary giving instructions to the drafting attorney; the beneficiary securing the witnesses; and the beneficiary keeping the will after execution. The Court was explicit that these criteria cannot be considered exclusive, and a contestant need not establish all of them.

One point is frequently published incorrectly, including by law firms. As Carpenter was decided, the presumption shifted only the burden of coming forward with an explanation, then vanished. That is no longer the law. Section 733.107(2), added in 2002, provides that the presumption of undue influence implements public policy against abuse of fiduciary or confidential relationships and is therefore a presumption shifting the burden of proof. Hack v. Janes, 878 So. 2d 440 (Fla. 5th DCA 2004), confirmed the effect, holding that the statute supersedes Carpenter to the extent it prohibited shifting the burden of proof, and ensures the presumption does not vanish when the will’s proponent produces rebuttal evidence. Once the presumption arises, the proponent must establish the nonexistence of undue influence by a preponderance of the evidence. That shift is the single most valuable thing a probate litigation lawyer can establish early in a Florida will contest.

The baseline allocation still comes from section 733.107(1): the proponent must first establish prima facie formal execution and attestation, after which the contestant carries the burden on the grounds asserted — until a presumption shifts it back.

Can You Block a Will Before It Is Admitted to Probate?

Yes — through a caveat under section 731.110, and it is the most underused tool in Florida probate. An interested person who is apprehensive that an estate will be administered or a will admitted may file one. The effect is procedural but decisive: the court may not admit a will to probate or appoint a personal representative until formal notice of the petition has been served on the caveator and the caveator has had an opportunity to participate.

Two rules govern timing. An interested person other than a creditor may file before or after death; a creditor may file only after death. And a caveat filed before death expires two years after filing — so it is a watch, not a permanent hold, and it must be renewed to stay effective. A nonresident caveator without Florida counsel must designate a resident agent.

For a family that suspects a vulnerable relative is being isolated — a real risk where an elderly parent lives alone in a Celebration house and one adult child has moved in — a caveat is often the difference between litigating to undo an appointment and simply being heard before it happens. It is also the cheapest thing a contested probate attorney can do for you, and it has to happen early. See our guide to caveats in Florida probate.

How Do You Remove a Personal Representative in Florida?

To remove a personal representative in Florida you need a statutory ground, and section 733.504 sets them out specifically: adjudicated incapacity; physical or mental incapacity preventing discharge of duties; failure to comply with a court order not superseded on appeal; failure to account for a sale of property or to produce estate assets when required; wasting or maladministration of the estate; failure to give bond or security; conviction of a felony; insolvency or receivership of a corporate personal representative; holding or acquiring conflicting or adverse interests that will or may interfere with administration; revocation of the probate of the will that designated the appointment; removal of domicile from Florida where domicile was required for appointment; and being qualified at appointment but no longer entitled to it.

Removal is not the only remedy, and often not the most useful one. Section 733.609 provides that a personal representative’s fiduciary duty is the same as that of a trustee of an express trust, and that the representative is liable to interested persons for damage or loss resulting from a breach. The section then does something Florida families should understand clearly: in all actions for breach of fiduciary duty or challenging the exercise of — or failure to exercise — a personal representative’s powers, the court shall award taxable costs as in chancery actions, including attorney’s fees. The court may direct that the award be paid from the party’s interest in the estate, from that party’s other property, or both.

That fee provision changes the economics of a Celebration estate dispute. A beneficiary who is right about mismanagement is not necessarily funding the fight out of an inheritance that is shrinking while the fight continues — which is why it is worth talking to a Celebration probate dispute attorney before the estate has been drained rather than after. Our Florida probate litigation page covers these claims in more detail.

What Happens When Families Disagree About Guardianship?

Contested guardianship is a distinct proceeding with its own venue rule, and the difference catches families out. Probate venue under section 733.101 follows the decedent’s domicile at death — a fact fixed forever on one date. Guardianship venue under section 744.1097 follows a living person. Proceedings to declare incapacity are brought where the alleged incapacitated person resides or is found; appointment venue for a Florida resident is the county of residence; and when a ward moves within Florida, the guardian is required to petition to change venue to the county of the new residence.

For Celebration families whose parent splits the year between Osceola County and another state — or who moved a parent closer to a caregiving sibling — that rule determines which courthouse hears the case, and it can change.

A petition to determine incapacity under section 744.3201 may be executed by any adult. It must be verified and must state the factual basis for the belief of incapacity, the names and addresses of people with personal knowledge, and which specific rights enumerated in section 744.3215 the person is alleged to be incapable of exercising — the statute is built around removing particular rights, not conferring a blanket status.

Section 744.331 then requires the court, within five days, to appoint a three-member examining committee. One member must be a psychiatrist or other physician; the others are drawn from a defined list including psychologists, gerontologists, physicians, advanced practice registered nurses, registered nurses and licensed social workers. At least one of the three must have knowledge of the type of incapacity alleged. Committee members may not be related to or associated with one another, the petitioner, counsel for the petitioner or proposed guardian, or the alleged incapacitated person; a petitioner may not serve on the committee; and a member who examines the person cannot later be appointed guardian. Where family members are on opposite sides of a petition, those disqualification rules are frequently the first battleground, and they are usually why a family ends up needing a Celebration guardianship dispute attorney rather than sorting it out among themselves. See our Florida guardianship litigation page.

What Is the Elective Share and When Must a Surviving Spouse Claim It?

A surviving spouse of a person who died domiciled in Florida has a statutory right to a share of the elective estate under section 732.201 — and the amount comes from section 732.2065: 30 percent of the elective estate. The elective estate is broader than the probate estate; it reaches assets that pass outside of probate, which is precisely why the claim generates litigation.

The deadline is in section 732.2135. The election must be filed on or before the earlier of six months after service of a copy of the notice of administration on the surviving spouse, or on an attorney in fact or guardian of the property of the spouse, or two years after the decedent’s death. The statute also provides for court-granted extensions and for withdrawal of an election, so a spouse who has missed the six-month mark should not assume the right is gone without advice.

Second and third marriages, common in a community with Celebration’s demographics, make elective share claims one of the most frequent sources of dispute between a surviving spouse and adult children from an earlier marriage. Where the money sits in a trust rather than an estate, that is a Celebration trust attorney question and the deadlines still run.

Osceola County Probate Checklist

This is the Osceola County probate checklist we work from — what an administration actually requires, in order. Print it.

1. Deposit the original will with the Osceola County Clerk within 10 days of learning of the death.
2. Order death certificates — both versions, six or more.
3. Settle the threshold facts: domicile at death, what is in the Florida estate, whether there is a will, whether the Florida property was a primary residence or a second home.
4. Choose the route: summary administration, formal administration, ancillary administration, or disposition without administration.
5. File the petition through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal; serve formal notice where required.
6. Post bond if the court requires it — a will’s waiver does not bind the court.
7. Obtain letters of administration.
8. Serve the notice of administration. The three-month objection clock starts here.
9. Publish and serve the notice to creditors after a diligent search.
10. Secure and insure the property; tell the carrier it may be unoccupied.
11. File the inventory within 60 days of letters, with protected homestead and exempt property described separately.
12. Petition to determine exempt property before the section 732.402(6) deadline.
13. Deal with the property: HOA estoppel, CDD status, rental licenses, bookings, mortgage.
14. Resolve creditor claims; object within the time allowed.
15. Sell or distribute — checking the will’s power of sale first.
16. File the final accounting and petition for discharge.

How to Keep the Next Family Out of This

If you own a Celebration, Reunion or ChampionsGate property yourself, most of this page is avoidable, and an hour with a Celebration estate planning attorney is the cheapest hour in it. Florida gives owners several ways to keep a second home out of probate entirely:

• a revocable trust holding title, so the property passes by the trust’s terms with no administration at all — the usual answer for an out-of-state or foreign owner, because it also removes the ancillary proceeding;
• a living trust paired with a pour-over will, for owners who want one instrument covering everything;
• a Florida land trust, which is common among corridor investors and keeps ownership off the public record while still directing what happens at death;
• an LLC where the property is genuinely a rental business, so what passes is a membership interest rather than real estate; and
• an enhanced life estate (Lady Bird) deed, though it is a much better fit for a homestead than for a rental — see my Osceola County lady bird deed page.

Which one is right turns on where you live, whether you are a US citizen, whether the property earns income, and who you want it to go to. Once a trust holds the property, what follows at death is a trust administration attorney‘s work rather than a probate at all — no court file, no notice to creditors, no nine months. If you want to avoid probate on a Florida vacation home, that is an hour’s conversation now instead of a nine-month administration later. See our guide to living trusts in Florida.

Osceola County and Four Corners Communities We Serve

As an Osceola County probate law firm we handle estate administration, heirship and probate litigation throughout Osceola County, Florida — Celebration (34747), Kissimmee, St. Cloud, Poinciana, Buenaventura Lakes, Campbell, Harmony, Intercession City, Narcoossee, Kenansville and the Four Corners area.

Families reach us as an Osceola County estate lawyer for an administration, an Osceola County estate attorney where the question is a deed or a beneficiary designation, and for Osceola County estate planning where the work is a will, a trust or a joint will for a married couple. That includes the resort and vacation-home corridor specifically: Reunion and Reunion Resort, Reunion West, ChampionsGate, Solterra Resort, Windsor Island Resort, Windsor at Westside, Encore Resort, Margaritaville Resort Orlando, Storey Lake, Emerald Island and Formosa Gardens. Where a property sits over the county line in Polk — Davenport, Loughman, Haines City, Citrus Ridge, Ridgewood Lakes — the case belongs in the Tenth Judicial Circuit at Bartow, and we handle those too.

We also serve Orange County across the northern line, including Lake Nona, Hunter’s Creek, Horizon West, Windermere and Dr. Phillips. Statewide practice from our offices in Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale.

Talk to a Celebration Probate Lawyer

To speak with a Celebration probate lawyer about an Osceola County estate, the useful first conversation is short. Where were they living? What is in the estate? Is there an original will? Is the Florida property a primary home or a second home? Those four answers set the procedure, the timeline and the cost, and we can usually give you all three on the phone.

There is no charge for that conversation and no obligation at the end of it. If a summary administration will do, we will say so. If the estate does not need probate at all, we will say that too.

We take the whole range of Celebration and Osceola County work — ordinary administrations, estates where the real question is a house or a beneficiary designation, contested files where the family cannot agree, and the planning that keeps the next generation out of court.

Most people looking for a Celebration probate law firm are really looking for someone who files in Kissimmee, because that is where the case actually goes. Either way it is the same call, and it is free.

People describe this work in a dozen different ways — a probate administration attorney, an estate litigation attorney, a probate alternatives lawyer when the honest answer is that no administration is needed at all. They reach the same desk. If you are not sure which of those describes your situation, that is fine; working it out is the first thing the call is for.

We also hear regularly from families overseas looking for a solicitor for probate in Florida. The Florida equivalent is a probate attorney, the Florida proceeding for a non-Florida owner is ancillary administration, and we run those alongside counsel in the home country.

How We Handle Osceola County Cases

Lorenzo Law is a Florida firm with offices in Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale, and we take Osceola County probate matters remotely. It is worth saying plainly what that does and does not mean, because families reasonably wonder.

Florida probate is filed and litigated electronically. Petitions, inventories, accountings and orders all move through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, notices are served by email, and hearings in the Ninth Judicial Circuit are routinely held by video. Most families never set foot in the courthouse at all, whether their lawyer is in Kissimmee or Coral Gables. The two things that genuinely have to be physical — depositing the original will with the Clerk, and recording a deed — are handled the same way from anywhere.

What actually decides an Osceola case is knowing the county: which procedure the estate belongs in, how the Ninth Circuit’s Division B runs, what the Clerk requires, and where the local traps are — the Polk County line at Four Corners, the CDD arrears, the homestead order the title company will insist on. That knowledge does not depend on a street address, and neither does responsiveness. You will have a direct line to the attorney handling your file — and it will be the same attorney from the first call to the order of discharge. Nothing gets handed off to someone you have never spoken to.

If you would rather work with someone whose office you can walk into, that is a completely fair preference and we will say so honestly on the first call.