Doral Probate Lawyer: When the Estate Is in Two Countries

A Doral probate lawyer asks two questions before anything else, and the second one is the expensive one. Where did the person live? And where, exactly, is everything they owned?

In most of Florida the second question is a formality. In Doral it is the case. Seven in ten Doral residents are foreign-born — 70.3 per cent, against 54.5 per cent for Miami-Dade County as a whole and 57.7 per cent for the City of Miami. More than nine in ten speak a language other than English at home. And at the same time this is the wealthiest of the three: a median household income of $94,164 and a median owner-occupied home value of $562,800.

High-value assets, held by people with deep ties to somewhere else. That combination produces a kind of estate that a Doral probate attorney sees constantly and that most probate pages never mention: an estate with a foot in two countries, where the will was signed in front of a notary in another language, the person named to run it lives abroad and legally cannot, and a federal tax return nobody has heard of is due in nine months.

This page is written around that. If the person who died was a lifelong U.S. citizen who owned a house in Doral and nothing else, most of what follows will not apply to you and you can go straight to the filing section. If any part of the estate — the person, the will, the heirs, the money — touches another country, read on, because that is where the money is lost.

The words you searched do not change the work. Probate attorney Doral, probate lawyer Doral, or simply a Doral estate lawyer — it is the same job. Our office is in Miami-Dade, and Doral is a short drive from it. Esta página también está disponible en español.

Reviewed by Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Esq. — Florida Bar No. 107002, admitted 2013. Former judicial clerk in the Probate Division of Florida’s Eleventh Judicial Circuit. Probate, guardianship and estate litigation throughout Florida, in English and Spanish. Last reviewed: 11 August 2026.

Start with where the person lived, and where the assets actually are

Section 733.101, Florida Statutes, sets venue: probate goes in the county where the decedent was domiciled. But read the subsection most Florida pages skip. Where the decedent had no domicile in this state, venue lies in any county where the decedent’s property is located. And failing even that, in the county where any debtor of the decedent resides.

Those two clauses exist for exactly the estates Doral produces. A Venezuelan or Colombian national who never became a U.S. resident but bought an apartment in Downtown Doral is not domiciled here. The estate still has to be dealt with here, because the apartment is here. Which subsection applies changes the whole shape of the file.

So the sequence is: establish domicile first, inventory second, and only then decide what kind of proceeding this is. Doing it in the other order is how families end up opening the wrong case and paying twice.

Doral in numbers, and why the files here look different

Doral incorporated on 28 January 2003 and is one of thirty-four municipalities in Miami-Dade County. It covers about fifteen square miles, bounded by the Ronald Reagan Turnpike to the west, the Town of Medley to the north, the Palmetto Expressway to the east and the City of Sweetwater to the south. City Hall — the Doral Government Center — is at 8401 NW 53rd Terrace, Doral, FL 33166.

The Census Bureau puts the population at about 81,634. Set the three geographies side by side and the picture is unambiguous.

	Doral	Miami-Dade County	City of Miami
Foreign-born	70.3%	54.5%	57.7%
Language other than English at home	93.3%	75.3%	77.2%
Median household income	$94,164	$71,753	$62,462
Median owner-occupied home value	$562,800	$463,000	$518,100
Owner-occupied rate	46.5%	52.2%	30.8%

Two things follow. First, this is the most foreign-born of the three by sixteen points and the wealthiest of the three at the same time — a profile that generates cross-border estates rather than merely international residents. Second, the owner-occupied rate is below the county average, which is why this page spends less time on homestead than you might expect and more on everything else.

One local note that is not demographic at all. Doral sits one mile from Miami International Airport, the city’s own figure, and roughly twelve miles from Downtown Miami. About 150,000 people come to work in a city of 81,634 residents. That matters later, when we get to the businesses.

Where a Miami-Dade probate is filed — and it moved in November 2025

Here is the single most out-of-date fact in this market.

The Osvaldo N. Soto Miami-Dade Justice Center, and the building it replaced

Miami-Dade probate, guardianship and mental health matters are heard at the Osvaldo N. Soto Miami-Dade Justice Center, 20 NW 1st Avenue, Miami, FL 33128. The building — twenty-three storeys, forty-six courtrooms — had its ribbon cutting on 10 November 2025, replacing the historic Miami-Dade County Courthouse that had served since 1928.

If a page you are reading sends you to the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse Center for probate, it has not been updated since 2025. That building still exists and is still a Clerk location; probate simply is not there any more.

Inside the Soto Center:

What you need	Where
Clerk’s probate counter — file, search, obtain certified copies	Suite 6.223, sixth floor
Probate courtrooms	Floors 17, 18 and 19
Probate telephone	305-349-7492 or 305-349-7502
Filings and correspondence by post	Clerk of Courts, Attn: Probate Correspondence Dept., 20 NW 1st Avenue, Suite 6.223, Miami, FL 33128

Clerk counter hours run 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; the Probate Division’s own court hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Six circuit judges and two general magistrates sit in the division, with Judge Yvonne Colodny as administrative judge in section PMH 05 and Judge Maria de Jesus Santovenia as associate administrative judge. Estate cases carry the case suffix CP-02. Attorneys request hearing time through courtMAP rather than by telephoning chambers.

Miami-Dade County is the whole of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit — section 26.021 says so in six words. One county, one circuit, one probate division, one building. People search for a Doral probate court lawyer as though the court sat in Doral. It does not; there is no Doral probate court. Every Doral estate is filed downtown, thirteen miles east.

One office does all of it: Clerk, Comptroller and County Recorder

The Miami-Dade Clerk combines functions that some Florida counties divide. Juan Fernandez-Barquin holds the office of Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, and is also County Auditor, County Recorder and ex-officio Clerk of the Board of County Commissioners. He was sworn in on 12 June 2023 and elected to continue in November 2024.

That matters twice. Practically, the office that opens your probate file is the office that records the deed at the end of it — one counter, one set of official records. And as a test of whether a page is current: any source still naming Harvey Ruvin as Clerk is four years out of date.

Our Miami-Dade probate court page is the fuller guide to filing mechanics, forms and case search, and it is where Miami Dade probate court and Miami Dade county probate questions about records and procedure are answered at length. This page is about decisions, not the counter.

What it costs to open a probate in Miami-Dade County

The Clerk publishes its own schedule, which not every Florida county does.

Filing	Fee
Formal administration, ancillary administration, curatorship, conservatorship	$401
Summary administration, estate of $1,000 or more	$346
Summary administration, estate under $1,000	$236
Opening an estate; determination of heirs; opening a safe-deposit box	$232
Petition and order to admit a foreign will	$232
Disposition of personal property without administration	$232
Caveat and notice of trust	$40
Reopening a case	$50
Certified copies	$1 per page plus $2 per document for the certification

Those figures sit above the statutory baseline in section 28.2401 because service charges are added on top. Where the two differ, the Clerk’s published number is what you will actually be asked for.

What the estate pays the lawyer

Three costs make up a Miami-Dade probate: the filing fee, publication of the notice to creditors, and the attorney’s fee, which is much the largest of the three. Section 733.6171 sets out fees presumed reasonable in formal administration, scaled to the estate — $1,500 flat up to $40,000, additions through the middle bands, then three per cent of the value between $100,000 and $1 million, tapering above that.

The statute also requires a written disclosure stating plainly that “there is not a mandatory statutory attorney fee for estate administration,” that the fee is negotiable, and that the personal representative chooses their own lawyer. An attorney who does not make that disclosure cannot be paid without court approval or the written consent of every interested party. So how much does a probate lawyer cost in Florida has an honest answer: the statute describes a presumption, not a price, and an agreed flat fee is common and frequently lower. Our page on the cost of probate in Florida works through it. On who pays probate attorney fees in Florida — the estate does, from estate assets, before anything reaches the beneficiaries.

A probate attorney Doral FL families are considering should tell you, unprompted, whether the quoted figure includes the filing fee and publication or sits on top of them.

The estate tax nobody warns a Doral family about

Now the number that justifies this whole page.

A person who dies a U.S. citizen or a U.S. domiciliary in 2026 has a federal estate tax exclusion of $15,000,000. A person who dies neither a U.S. citizen nor domiciled in the United States has an exclusion, on their U.S. assets, of $60,000.

Two hundred and fifty to one. And the thing that decides which side of that line an estate falls on is not citizenship, not a visa, not how long somebody held a green card. It is domicile at the date of death — where the person actually made their permanent home, judged on the ordinary evidence of a life.

Above $60,000 of U.S.-situated assets, the Internal Revenue Service requires the executor to file Form 706-NA. The deadline is nine months from the date of death, extendable by six months on Form 4768 — but the extension is of the time to file, not the time to pay.

Set that against the local numbers. The median owner-occupied home in Doral is worth $562,800. U.S. real estate is always U.S.-situs property. One apartment, held by one non-domiciliary, clears the filing threshold more than nine times over. This is the estate tax non citizen owners run into, and in our experience the family learns about it from a lawyer rather than from anyone at the time of purchase.

The non resident alien estate tax is not obscure law. It is simply law that probate firms do not write about, because it belongs to tax practice, and that tax practices do not localise, because they do not write city pages. It sits in the gap between the two.

What counts as a U.S. asset, and what does not

The rules on US situs assets are more particular than most people expect, and the asymmetry is worth knowing.

• U.S. real estate — always U.S.-situs. Real property and tangible personal property are situated in the United States if they are physically located there. A Doral condominium is U.S. property no matter who owns it or where they live.
• Stock in U.S. corporations — U.S.-situs. Stock of a corporation organised under U.S. law is U.S. property, and stock of any other corporation is not — regardless of where the certificate physically sits, and regardless of which brokerage holds it.
• U.S. bank deposits — generally not U.S.-situs. Deposits with U.S. banks are treated as located outside the United States unless they are effectively connected with a U.S. trade or business.

That last one surprises people, and it cuts the right way. A non-domiciliary with $400,000 in a Miami bank account and no U.S. real estate may have no filing obligation at all. The same person with a $400,000 Doral apartment certainly does. A treaty between the United States and the decedent’s country may allow a pro-rata unified credit, claimed on Form 8833 — worth checking before assuming the worst.

When the estate is already open in another country

Where the person who died was domiciled abroad and left property here, Florida runs a parallel, limited proceeding rather than a full administration.

Section 734.102 is the provision. If a nonresident of Florida dies leaving assets in this state, credits due from residents here, or liens on property here, a personal representative specifically named in the will to administer the Florida property is entitled to ancillary letters, if qualified to act in Florida. Ancillary administration is the term of art, and the Florida representative has the same rights, powers and authority as any other personal representative — within the Florida estate.

The mechanics people ask about most: the ancillary representative gives bond as representatives generally do; must serve and publish the notice to creditors unless claims are already barred under section 733.710; and after Florida expenses and claims are dealt with, the court may order what remains transferred to the foreign personal representative, or distributed directly to the beneficiaries.

What the statute does not do is coordinate the two proceedings. The foreign court runs on its own calendar, Florida’s creditor clock runs on its own, and nobody reconciles them but you. A closing scheduled off the domiciliary timetable routinely misses the Florida one. Our page on ancillary probate in Florida sets out the full statewide test — this is the term people search as ancillary probate Florida, and the Doral question is only ever how it applies to a particular parcel.

A will written in Caracas, Bogotá or Madrid

Most of Latin America and continental Europe uses a will that looks nothing like a Florida one. There are no two attesting witnesses signing in each other’s presence. There is a notary — a public official with legal training, nothing like a Florida notary public — who takes the will into official custody and keeps it.

Families arrive holding a certified copy of that document and are frequently told, wrongly, that it is worthless here.

The notarial will, and the statute written for it

Florida has a statute named for the instrument. Section 733.205 is titled “Probate of notarial will.” It provides that when a copy of a notarial will in the possession of a notary entitled to its custody in a foreign state or country, duly authenticated by that notary, is presented to the court, it may be admitted to probate if the original could have been admitted in Florida. The duly authenticated copy is prima facie evidence of its execution and of the facts stated in the certificate.

That is a purpose-built procedure for exactly the document a Venezuelan, Colombian or Spanish family walks in with. Almost nobody writes about it.

Separately, section 732.502(2) provides that a will executed by a nonresident of Florida is valid here if it was valid under the law of the place where it was executed. Read that clause carefully, because there is a trap in it: it saves the will of a nonresident. It does not save a will that a Doral resident executed abroad in civil-law form. Somebody who moved here, settled, and then signed a Spanish or Venezuelan-style will on a trip home may have a document Florida will not accept — and the family will not discover it until after the death.

One practical point on documents. Both Venezuela and Colombia are parties to the Hague Apostille Convention, so their public documents take an apostille rather than consular legalisation. Do not go looking for a consulate appointment you do not need.

Admitting a foreign will to record after two years

There is a second, quieter route that applies when no Florida administration is opened at all.

Section 734.104 — “Foreign wills; admission to record; effect on title” — allows an authenticated copy of a nonresident’s will devising Florida real property to be admitted to record in the county where the property sits, at any time more than two years after the death, or at any time after the domiciliary personal representative has been discharged, provided no Florida administration proceeding has taken place. Two conditions: the will was executed as chapter 732 requires, and it has already been admitted to probate in the proper court of the other state or country.

The petition must be accompanied by authenticated copies of the will, the petition for probate, and the order admitting it. Once admitted to record, the foreign will is as effective to pass title to Florida real property as if it had been probated here.

The foreign will Florida courts will admit to record this way is therefore a narrower instrument than a will admitted to probate here — it passes title to the real property and does nothing else. For a family that completed a probate in Caracas or Bogotá years ago and only now discovers a Doral apartment still in the decedent’s name, that is usually all they need.

Who can serve when the family lives abroad

This is the restriction that reshapes more Doral estates than anything else, and it is almost always a surprise.

Section 733.302 gives the baseline: any person who is sui juris and a resident of Florida at the time of the death is qualified to serve as personal representative. Section 733.304 then sets out the only exceptions for anyone else. A person not domiciled in Florida cannot qualify unless they are:

• a legally adopted child or adoptive parent of the decedent;
• related by lineal consanguinity to the decedent;
• 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.

Read the list for what is missing. Cousins are not on it. Neither is an unmarried partner, a close friend, a business partner, an accountant, or the trusted godparent named in a will drafted twenty years ago in another country.

In a city where seven in ten residents were born abroad, the person a family naturally nominates is very often exactly the person the statute disqualifies. A non resident personal representative who does not fit one of those four categories cannot serve, however clearly the will names them. Nothing about that invalidates the will — it simply means somebody else must be appointed and the will’s intention honoured a different way. Our page on selecting executors under Florida probate law works through the preference order. It is far better discovered in week one than in month four.

Proving a death that happened outside the United States

When the death happened abroad, the first document the family needs is not the will.

For a U.S. citizen who dies overseas, the U.S. embassy or consulate issues a Consular Report of Death Abroad — Form DS-5542 — an official Department of State report, in English, that can be used in the United States as proof of death to settle estate matters. Copies of reports filed in 1975 or later are issued to next of kin and legal representatives for exactly that purpose.

And here is the trap almost nobody knows: the Department of State does not issue a Consular Report of Death Abroad for lawful permanent residents. A green-card holder who dies while visiting family in Caracas or Bogotá gets no CRDA at all. The family must obtain the foreign death certificate, have it apostilled, and have it translated — which takes weeks, not days, and is the step that most often stalls a Doral file before it has even opened.

For deaths in Florida, certified copies come from the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County at $20 for the first and $16 for each additional copy. The Health District Center at 1350 NW 14th Street, Miami takes walk-ins Monday to Friday, and the county office holds Florida deaths from 2009 to the present. A copy showing cause of death is restricted to family members and legal representatives.

Summary administration and the $150,000 line that moved on 1 July 2026

One number decides the shape of most files, and it changed six weeks ago.

Summary administration under section 735.201 is available where the value of the estate subject to administration in Florida, less property exempt from creditors’ claims, does not exceed $150,000 — or where the decedent has been dead more than two years. No personal representative is appointed, the Miami-Dade filing fee drops from $401 to $346, and a clean case can finish in weeks rather than months.

That threshold was $75,000 until very recently. It was doubled by CS/HB 1337, enacted as chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida, effective 1 July 2026. Both official Florida statute websites still display the old figure, and so does a great deal of published material and a great deal of what an AI assistant will tell you, because it is reading those same pages. If what you are reading says $75,000 and does not cite chapter 2026-57, it predates July.

The same act moved three other thresholds: disposition of personal property without administration from $10,000 to $20,000 of non-exempt personal property, income tax refunds from $2,500 to $5,000, and family payments from qualified accounts from $1,000 to $2,000.

Formal administration runs a fixed sequence: deposit the original will, petition for administration, appointment and letters, notice to creditors, inventory at date-of-death value, payment of valid claims, then distribution and closing. If you searched how does probate work in Florida, that is the answer, and when is probate required in Florida has a shorter one: whenever an asset was titled in the decedent’s sole name with no beneficiary and no survivorship, and nothing else moves it. A Doral formal administration file follows the same path as any other in the Eleventh Circuit — what differs here is what turns up inside it. Our page on summary administration in Florida sets out the full test.

The business, the warehouse and the LLC interest

Doral is not a bedroom community, and its estates show it.

The city publishes the figures itself: over 150,000 employees come to work in Doral every day, in a city of 81,634 residents. It hosts 14 of Miami-Dade’s 30-plus business parks, more than 50 financial institutions, and Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. It is one mile from Miami International Airport, which is why so much of that space is logistics, freight forwarding, import and distribution.

Which means a meaningful share of estates here contain something other than a house: a membership interest in a limited liability company that runs a warehouse in a business park off NW 25th Street or NW 36th Street.

What happens to a membership interest when a member dies

Two provisions of the Florida Revised LLC Act do the work, and together they surprise families.

Section 605.0602(7)(a) provides that a person is dissociated as a member when the individual dies. Dissociation is not the same as the interest disappearing — but it does mean the deceased member stops being a member.

What the estate takes is the transferable interest: the right to receive distributions from the company in accordance with the operating agreement. Not, automatically, the right to vote, to manage, to see the books or to bind the company.

Section 605.0504, headed “Power of legal representative,” is the bridge. Where a member who is an individual dies, the member’s legal representative may exercise all of the member’s rights for the purpose of settling the estate or administering the member’s property — including any power the member had to give a transferee the right to become a member.

For a family that has just inherited a share of a working logistics business, that is the difference between controlling the company and merely receiving cheques from it. The operating agreement matters enormously here, and it is the first document we ask for.

Continuing the business while the estate is open

The estate does not get unlimited time to decide.

Section 733.612(22) allows a personal representative to continue any unincorporated business or venture in which the decedent was engaged at the time of death for up to four months from the date of appointment, where continuation is a reasonable means of preserving the value of the business, including its goodwill. Beyond four months, it takes a court order.

Four months goes quickly when the business has staff, leases, customs bonds and a landlord. The practical advice is unglamorous: work out in the first fortnight whether the business is being sold, wound down or continued, because the answer determines whether you need to be in front of a judge before month five.

Selling an inherited Doral property and recording the deed

A personal representative sells under the authority of the will or an order of the court. The buyer’s title company will ask for the letters of administration and, where protected homestead is involved, the order determining homestead. Marketing before those exist produces a contract nobody can close.

That is the practical answer for the family searching sell probate house in Doral FL, and for the one searching probate house buyers in Doral FL who has decided they would rather take a cash offer than manage a listing from another country. Both are reasonable; they are simply different routes, and the paperwork gate is identical. Our guide to selling a house during probate walks the sequence. The same is true for anyone searching sell house after death in Doral FL in the first raw weeks — the answer is that nothing can be sold until the estate has a representative with letters in hand.

Establish date-of-death value early. It fixes the stepped-up basis, and on a property bought before Doral’s build-out the step-up removes most of the taxable gain on a prompt sale. Reconstructing that number two years later is far harder and far more expensive than obtaining an appraisal now.

The instrument that moves the property is a personal representative deed, which recites the representative’s authority on the face of the document — which is what the title underwriter needs to see.

The Miami-Dade documentary stamp exception

One local detail that catches out lawyers from other counties, never mind families.

Documentary stamp tax on a deed is $0.70 per $100 of consideration everywhere in Florida — except Miami-Dade, where it is $0.60 per $100. Miami-Dade then adds a $0.45 per $100 discretionary surtax, which does not apply where the deed transfers a single-family residence.

For Doral that distinction is not academic. A townhouse or a condominium unit is not a single-family residence for this purpose, and neither is a warehouse bay. The surtax question turns on exactly the kind of property this city is full of. Recording itself runs at $10 for the first page and $8.50 for each additional page, with $1 per name indexed beyond four — at the same Clerk’s office that opened the estate.

Creditors, the three-month window and the two-year bar

Formal administration takes a minimum of about six months, because the creditor period has to run. Nine to eighteen months is more typical where property is being sold, and a cross-border estate takes longer still because two sets of documents have to arrive before anything can be filed. That is the honest answer to how long is probate in Florida.

Section 733.212 governs the notice of administration and gives an interested person three months from service to object to the will’s validity, to venue, or to the court’s jurisdiction. Section 733.702 sets the claim period at three months from first publication of the notice to creditors, or thirty days from service on a known or reasonably ascertainable creditor. Section 733.710 then bars most claims two years after death regardless of what was filed, leaving recorded mortgages and liens untouched.

What happens if you don’t file probate in Florida is not that the problem expires. Title does not move, the property cannot be sold or refinanced and sits in a dead person’s name, and solely held accounts stay frozen. The custodian of an original will still has the ten-day deposit duty under section 732.901. Waiting past two years bars most creditors, which sounds attractive until you find it has done nothing at all to clear title — though, as section 734.104 shows, for a foreign will it does open a simpler route.

Where the disagreement is between beneficiaries rather than with a creditor, that is a different matter and a different page: our Miami probate litigation attorney page covers contests, undue influence and removal.

Homestead and exempt property, briefly

Florida homestead does two separate jobs, and this page will not spend long on either, because Doral’s owner-occupied rate runs below the county average and the constitutional homestead story belongs to a market where it does more work.

Protected homestead under section 732.401 is generally not an asset of the probate estate, is beyond most creditors, and passes under constitutional and statutory rules rather than freely under the will — where a decedent leaves a spouse and descendants, the spouse takes a life estate or may elect an undivided half interest as tenant in common. Exempt property under section 732.402 covers household furnishings up to $20,000, two motor vehicles, qualified tuition programmes and certain death benefits.

Is homestead property exempt from probate in Florida therefore has a two-part answer: generally yes as to creditors, but an order determining homestead is usually still required before a sale can close. Our South Miami probate lawyer page goes into the homestead rules and the property-tax reset in full.

One caution specific to this city: protected homestead depends on the property having been a permanent residence. A Doral apartment owned by a non-domiciliary is not protected homestead, is not beyond creditors, and does not pass under the constitutional rules. It is an ordinary estate asset — and, as section 4 above explains, a U.S.-situs one.

Keeping the next Doral estate out of probate

A great deal of this work exists because of instruments set up in another country, or never funded, or both.

Does a will avoid probate in Florida has a one-word answer: no. A will is instructions to the probate court; it guarantees a probate rather than preventing one. How to avoid probate in Florida is a question about ownership, not documents — a properly funded revocable trust, a recorded enhanced life estate deed, live beneficiary designations, and joint ownership set up deliberately rather than by accident.

The cross-border version of that advice has one extra line. A trust drafted in another country, in another language, under another legal system, very often does not do in Florida what the family believes it does — and a Florida apartment that was never deeded into any trust is not in one, wherever the trust was signed.

The lady bird deed, and why Doral families ask about it

The enhanced life estate deed, universally called the lady bird deed, is the instrument that most reliably keeps a Florida house out of probate. Properly drafted and recorded, it moves the property at death without a proceeding, and leaves homestead protection and the Save Our Homes assessment cap intact during life.

Searches for a Doral ladybird deed are among the most common estate-related queries in this city, and the interest is well placed — though it is worth understanding the trade-offs before signing one, which our explainer on lady bird deed tax consequences sets out.

A Doral estate planning attorney, a Doral trust attorney and a Doral elder law attorney are describing overlapping work from different angles. In a city with this profile, the question that matters more than which label applies is a simpler one: which country’s law is going to govern, and has anyone actually checked?

Guardianship — where an adult loses capacity and no power of attorney exists — is a separate proceeding with its own rules, and we cover it on our Florida adult guardianship and Miami guardianship attorney pages.

Talk to a Doral probate lawyer before anything is filed

If somebody has died owning property in Doral, the useful first conversation is four questions long. Where were they domiciled on the day they died — not where the apartment is, where they were. What did they own that was in their name alone, and in which countries. Is there a will, where is it, and who holds it. And does anybody named in it live outside the United States.

Those four answers decide whether this is a Florida administration or an ancillary one, whether a federal estate tax return is due in nine months, whether the named representative can serve at all, and what the whole thing will cost.

Call us and we will work through them before anything is filed. There is no charge for that conversation and no obligation at the end of it — and sometimes the honest answer is that a family does not need a probate attorney Miami wide, because a beneficiary designation or section 734.104 will do the whole job. We handle these matters in English and in Spanish.

Doral probate FAQs: cost, courthouse and cross-border questions

What is probate in Florida?

Probate is the court process that transfers what a person owned at death to the people entitled to it, after debts and expenses are paid. For a Doral estate it is filed in the Probate Division of the Circuit Court for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, in Miami-Dade County. It is supervised paperwork rather than a trial, and in an ordinary uncontested estate the family never attends court.

Which courthouse handles probate in Miami-Dade County?

The Osvaldo N. Soto Miami-Dade Justice Center at 20 NW 1st Avenue, Miami, FL 33128. The Clerk’s probate counter is in Suite 6.223 on the sixth floor and the probate courtrooms are on floors 17, 18 and 19. The building opened on 10 November 2025, replacing the 1928 Miami-Dade County Courthouse. Probate is no longer heard at the Lawson E. Thomas Courthouse Center, although that building remains an active Clerk location. There is no probate court in Doral itself; every Doral estate is filed downtown.

Does a non-U.S. citizen pay estate tax on a Florida property?

Very possibly. A decedent who was neither a U.S. citizen nor domiciled in the United States has a federal estate tax exclusion of only $60,000 on U.S.-situated assets, against $15,000,000 for a citizen or resident dying in 2026. U.S. real estate is always U.S.-situs, so a single Doral apartment at the local median of $562,800 clears the threshold nine times over. Form 706-NA is due within nine months of death, extendable by six months on Form 4768. A treaty may allow a pro-rata credit.

What assets are exempt from probate in Florida?

Anything that passes by operation of law or by beneficiary designation: jointly held property with right of survivorship, payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts, life insurance and retirement accounts with a named living beneficiary, and property already titled in a funded trust. Protected homestead is treated separately — generally not an estate asset, though a court order determining homestead is usually still needed before a house can be sold.

How long does probate take in Florida?

Summary administration can finish in a few weeks to a couple of months. Formal administration takes at least six months because the creditor claim period under section 733.702 must run, and nine to eighteen months is more typical when real property is being sold. An estate with assets or heirs in another country takes longer, because authenticated and translated documents have to arrive before anything can be filed.

How much does probate cost in Florida?

Three separate costs. The Miami-Dade filing fee — $401 for formal or ancillary administration, $346 for a summary administration of $1,000 or more, $236 below that. Publication of the notice to creditors. And the attorney’s fee, which is the largest. Section 733.6171 sets out fees presumed reasonable in formal administration based on estate value, though an agreed flat fee is common and frequently lower.

Is a will made in another country valid in Florida?

Often, yes. Section 732.502(2) provides that a will executed by a nonresident of Florida is valid here if it was valid where it was executed. Section 733.205 provides a specific procedure for a notarial will held by a foreign notary, and an authenticated copy is prima facie evidence of its execution. Section 734.104 allows an authenticated copy of a nonresident’s will devising Florida real property to be admitted to record more than two years after death. The important exception: section 732.502(2) saves the will of a nonresident, not a will that a Florida resident executed abroad.

Who pays probate attorney fees in Florida?

The estate, not the family personally. Administration expenses, including the attorney’s fee and the personal representative’s compensation, come out of estate assets before anything is distributed. Section 733.6171 also requires the attorney to disclose in writing that there is no mandatory statutory fee and that the fee is negotiable.

Can a relative living outside the United States serve as personal representative?

Only if they fall within section 733.304. A person not domiciled in Florida may serve only as an adopted child or adoptive parent of the decedent, someone related by lineal consanguinity, a spouse, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece, someone related by lineal consanguinity to one of those, or the spouse of a person otherwise qualified. Cousins, unmarried partners, close friends and business partners are all excluded, however clearly the will names them.

Do I need a probate attorney in Florida?

In formal administration, almost always — a personal representative who is not the sole interested person is generally required to be represented. Summary administration can be filed without counsel in narrow circumstances. Once there is real property, more than one beneficiary, a creditor, a business interest, a foreign will or a representative living abroad, Florida practice effectively requires a lawyer.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from a primary source. Fees, addresses, judicial assignments, thresholds and hours change — confirm anything you are relying on before you act on it.

• Florida Statutes — chapters 731 to 735, and sections 26.021, 28.24, 28.2401, 732.401, 732.402, 732.502, 732.901, 733.101, 733.205, 733.212, 733.302, 733.304, 733.612, 733.6171, 733.702, 733.710, 734.102, 734.104, 735.201, 605.0504 and 605.0602.
• Chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida (CS/HB 1337) — effective 1 July 2026, raising the summary administration threshold to $150,000, disposition without administration to $20,000, income tax refunds to $5,000 and qualified-account family payments to $2,000. Both official Florida statute websites still display the superseded $75,000 figure.
• Internal Revenue Service — Estate tax for nonresidents not citizens of the United States and the Instructions for Form 706-NA, for the $60,000 filing threshold, the nine-month deadline, Form 4768, and the situs rules for U.S. real estate, corporate stock and bank deposits; and the 2026 inflation adjustments, for the $15,000,000 basic exclusion amount.
• Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida — Probate Division pages, the judicial directory effective 1 July 2026, and the Probate Attorney’s Corner, for the division sections, judges, case-number suffixes and courtMAP scheduling.
• Miami-Dade Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller — probate court pages for the Osvaldo N. Soto Miami-Dade Justice Center address, Suite 6.223, hours, telephone and postal filing address; the published probate fee schedule; and Official Records for recording fees and documentary stamp tax.
• Miami-Dade County — the 10 November 2025 ribbon-cutting release for the Osvaldo N. Soto Miami-Dade Justice Center.
• Florida Department of Revenue — Documentary Stamp Tax, for the Miami-Dade rate of $0.60 per $100 and the discretionary surtax.
• Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County — death certificate fees, hours, record years and cause-of-death eligibility.
• U.S. Department of State — Consular Report of Death of a U.S. Citizen Abroad, for Form DS-5542 and the rule that reports are not issued for lawful permanent residents.
• Hague Conference on Private International Law — status table for the 1961 Apostille Convention, confirming Venezuela and Colombia as parties.
• United States Census Bureau, QuickFacts — population, foreign-born share, language spoken at home, median household income, owner-occupied rate and median home value for Doral, Miami-Dade County and the City of Miami.
• City of Doral — incorporation date, boundaries, Doral Government Center address, proximity to Miami International Airport, daily workforce and business-park figures.