Duval County Probate Court: Opening an Estate in Jacksonville’s 4th Circuit

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: 8 August 2026.

In short: The Duval County probate court is the probate division of Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit, which also covers Clay and Nassau counties. Probate filings go to the Clerk at 501 West Adams Street, Room 1260, Jacksonville, FL 32202, reachable at (904) 255-1990, open 8:00 a. m. to 5:00 p. m. Formal administration costs $401; summary administration $346. Guardianship estates carry a graduated annual accounting audit fee under §744.3678 — $20 to $250 a year depending on the size of the estate, paid from the ward’s estate and almost never mentioned at the outset. And a proposed order that does not follow the circuit’s procedure is returned without docketing.

Quick reference — Duval County probate court

Circuit	Fourth Judicial Circuit — Duval, Clay and Nassau counties
Probate division	501 West Adams Street, Room 1260, Jacksonville, FL 32202
Duval County probate court phone number	(904) 255-1990
Hours	Monday–Friday, 8:00 a. m. – 5:00 p. m., excluding holidays
Formal administration	$401
Summary administration	$346 ($1,000+) · $236 (under $1,000)
Disposition of personal property without administration	$231
Guardianship — person and property	$400
Guardianship — person only	$235
Annual accounting audit fee (§744.3678)	$20 to $250 by estate size — statewide, not local
Proposed orders	Electronic, single combined PDF — returned without docketing if wrong
Will deposit	Within 10 days of death · accepted only after the testator has died
Summary administration ceiling	$150,000, effective 1 July 2026

Where the Duval County probate court is

What people search for as the Jacksonville probate court is the Duval County probate division, and there is only one of it. Probate is handled by the Clerk at 501 West Adams Street, Room 1260, and the direct line is (904) 255-1990. The counter runs a full 8:00 a. m. to 5:00 p. m., Monday to Friday.

There is no separate probate court in Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach or Neptune Beach — the Beaches are in Duval County, so a Beaches estate is filed downtown like any other. If you are searching for the probate court, Jacksonville, FL, this is it.

That full business day is worth noting if you practise across Florida. Broward’s probate counter closes at 3:30; Miami-Dade‘s Clerk windows shut at 4:00 while the courthouse stays open until 5:00. Jacksonville and Tampa give you the whole day.

Two things the Clerk will tell you if you call, and they save trips:

The Clerk cannot help you prepare anything. By law the office cannot give legal advice or assist in preparing legal forms. It can tell you what a filing costs and whether it was accepted. It cannot tell you whether you should be filing it.

Original wills travel on paper. Whatever else moves through the portal, the original will does not.

A three-county circuit: Duval, Clay and Nassau

The Fourth Judicial Circuit covers Duval, Clay and Nassau counties, and each has its own Clerk and its own courthouse — Duval in Jacksonville, Clay in Green Cove Springs, Nassau in Yulee.

This matters more in Northeast Florida than the map suggests. The Jacksonville metropolitan area spills well past the Duval line, and a family living in Fleming Island, Orange Park, Fernandina Beach or Yulee will often assume their estate is a Jacksonville matter because that is where they shop, bank and see a doctor.

It is not. Probate opens in the county where the decedent was domiciled at death. A Clay County resident’s estate opens in Clay County, at the Clay County probate court in Green Cove Springs; a Nassau County resident’s estate opens at the Nassau County probate court in Yulee. Same circuit, same judges’ rules, different Clerk, different courthouse, different counter.

If you get that wrong, you have not made a small error. You have filed in the wrong county.

Duval County probate filing fees — and the recurring one nobody mentions

Filing	Fee
Formal administration	$401
Summary administration — estate $1,000 or more	$346
Summary administration — estate under $1,000	$236
Disposition of personal property without administration	$231
Guardianship — person and property	$400
Guardianship — person only	$235
Annual accounting audit fee — §744.3678, statewide	$20 (≤$25,000) · $85 ($25,001–$100,000) · $170 ($100,001–$500,000) · $250 (over $500,000)

That last line is the one to read twice — and it is not a Duval charge. Under §744.3678, Florida Statutes, a guardian pays the clerk a graduated fee, from the ward’s estate, on filing each annual financial return, for auditing it: up to $20, $85, $170 or $250 depending on the size of the guardianship estate. It applies statewide, and the court may waive it on a showing of insufficient funds in the ward’s estate.

It is not large in isolation. It is large in aggregate, because a guardianship runs for years — and it is the sort of recurring cost nobody budgets for at the outset, in Duval or anywhere else.

On the headline numbers. Florida probate filing fees are set by statute — §28.2401 fixes a base of $395 for formal administration, $340 and $230 for summary administration, $230 for disposition, and $40 for a caveat. Counties add authorised service charges on top, which is why Duval lands at $401, $346 and $236 rather than the statutory figures. Note that Duval’s disposition fee is $231 and its guardianship fees are $400 and $235 — a dollar off what several other Florida counties charge for the same filings. The differences are trivial in amount and absolute in effect: a payment short by a dollar is a rejected filing.

Proposed orders in the 4th Circuit: “returned without docketing”

Every Florida circuit has built a gate at the front of the filing, and they are all different. The Fourth Circuit’s is about how the order arrives.

Proposed orders are submitted electronically, under the procedures governing judicial electronic filing. The circuit’s own language on what happens if you get it wrong is not hedged: failure to follow the procedures “will result in your submission being returned without docketing.” Not rejected with a note. Not held. Returned, undocketed, as though it never arrived.

Three requirements do most of the damage:

1. The submission must be a single combined PDF — the proposed order together with a cover letter or a copy of the motion. Not separate attachments.
2. The service list must be complete when the proposed order is filed. Counsel bears that obligation; nobody checks it for you.
3. The docket must reflect the current attorney of record. This is the sleeper. The court’s service of orders is auto-generated from the appearance filed by an attorney in the case — so if the docket is stale, the order is served to whoever the docket still names. Change of counsel, a lawyer leaving a firm, an appearance never updated: the order goes out, correctly, to the wrong person, and the first anyone knows is when a deadline has already run.

Compare that with what the other big circuits do. Miami-Dade requires numbered CC checklists and routes orders through Court Map. Broward moved uncontested matters into CMS behind a sworn attorney affirmation. Palm Beach demands a checklist with the petition and funnels orders through OLS. Hillsborough governs by deadline — proposed orders in 10 days, documents on file 5 days before a hearing. Jacksonville governs by the packaging. Get the PDF, the service list and the docket right and the order moves. Get any one wrong and it never existed.

Depositing the original will in Duval County

Under §732.901, Florida Statutes, the custodian of a deceased person’s original will must deposit it with the Clerk in the county where the decedent lived within 10 days of learning of the death. That duty applies whether or not anyone intends to open a probate.

Duval accepts a will only after the testator has died. There is no safekeeping deposit here for a living client’s will — the same position Broward takes. If the plan was to lodge a parent’s will with the courthouse “so it does not get lost,” that is not a service the Clerk provides. An original will belongs in a fireproof box or with the drafting attorney until it is needed.

Selling a house in probate in Jacksonville

This is the most-asked practical question in Duval estates, and the pages answering it are almost all run by companies that want to buy the house. Here is the legal answer, which is more useful.

Whether you need a court order to sell depends on the will.

Under §733.613, Florida Statutes:

• If the will confers a power of sale, the personal representative may sell the real property without authorisation or confirmation of court, and the sale need not be justified by a showing of necessity. The purchaser takes title free of the claims of creditors of the estate and the entitlements of estate beneficiaries.
• If the decedent died intestate, or the will has no power of sale — or one so limited that it cannot conveniently be exercised — the personal representative must obtain a court order before selling, where the sale is considered to be in the best interest of the estate and those interested in it.

Three consequences, and they decide whether a Jacksonville probate sale takes weeks or months:

• Read the will before you list. A power of sale clause is the difference between selling on a normal timeline and waiting on a court order. That single clause is worth checking before anyone calls a realtor.
• The buyer’s title depends on this too. Where the power of sale exists, the statute gives the purchaser title free of creditor claims and beneficiary entitlements. That is why a properly handled probate sale is financeable and a sloppy one is not.
• Letters of administration come first, always. No personal representative has any authority to sell, list or sign anything until the court has appointed them and letters have issued.

If you are researching how to sell a house in probate in Jacksonville, or whether you can sell a house in probate at all, that is the whole answer: check the will for a power of sale, get appointed, and only then talk to anyone about price. The cash-buyer sites offering to solve a probate sale in seven days are not wrong that it can be quick. They are quiet about the fact that it can only be quick if the paperwork was right first.

And a word on who is offering you Jacksonville probate real estate help. A great deal of what ranks for sell probate property in Jacksonville is written by investors whose interest is in buying the house below market, not in the estate closing cleanly. That is not necessarily a bad outcome — a fast cash sale genuinely suits some estates, particularly where the property is deteriorating, the insurance has lapsed or the heirs are scattered and want it over. But the decision should be made after you know whether a court order is required and what the property is actually worth, not before. Order a date-of-death valuation first. It drives the inventory, the accounting and the beneficiaries’ tax basis anyway, so it is not an extra step.

What happens if you don’t file probate in Florida

People ask this hoping the answer is “nothing.” Sometimes it very nearly is — and sometimes it is expensive.

If the decedent owned nothing in their sole name, there may be nothing to administer. Assets held jointly with survivorship rights, accounts with payable-on-death or transfer-on-death beneficiaries, life insurance and retirement accounts with a living named beneficiary, property in a funded trust, and property under an enhanced life estate deed all pass outside probate. No estate, no filing.

If the decedent did own assets in their sole name, not filing has consequences that compound:

• The title stays stuck. A house cannot be sold, refinanced or insured properly by heirs who have no legal title to it. Families discover this years later, usually when they try to sell.
• Nobody has authority to act. No one can access accounts, deal with a creditor, cancel a lease, file a final tax return or bring a claim on the estate’s behalf. There is no personal representative because none was appointed.
• The will still has to be deposited. The §732.901 ten-day duty is independent of whether an administration is opened. A custodian who sits on an original will can be compelled to produce it.
• Evidence gets harder. Witnesses move or die, records go missing, and an estate that would have been straightforward at the time becomes a reconstruction project.
• A creditor or another interested person can open it anyway — and then the estate is being administered by someone else’s choice, on someone else’s timetable.

Is probate required in Florida? Only where the decedent left assets in their sole name with no beneficiary designation, no surviving joint owner and no trust. It is not required because someone died, and it is not avoided by having a will. It is required by what the decedent owned and how it was titled.

Duval County probate records and case search

The Clerk maintains online access to Duval County probate records: the docket, the parties, the filing date and, for most non-confidential filings, the document images.

Three things worth knowing. Probate cases are indexed under the decedent’s name, not the petitioner’s. A case number beats a name in a county of nearly a million people. And guardianship files are confidential by statute and will not appear in a public search.

Guardianship in Duval County

The Duval Clerk publishes forms for guardian advocacy — the §393.12 route for a person with a developmental disability, which requires no adjudication of incapacity and is very often the right filing when a disabled child turns 18 and a parent’s authority ends.

The recurring cost noted above is the thing to plan for. A Duval guardianship files an annual accounting, and under §744.3678 that accounting carries an audit fee scaling from $20 to $250 with the size of the estate — every year, for as long as the guardianship lasts, paid from the ward’s estate and waivable by the court where the estate cannot bear it.

When a Duval estate becomes litigation

Not every Jacksonville estate is uncontested, and the triggers are consistent: a will signed late in life while someone was ill and dependent on the person who benefited; a personal representative who has stopped accounting or stopped answering; a second marriage where the children of the first are told there is nothing left; a house sold to a relative at a number nobody can justify.

Three things worth knowing before anyone files.

The circuit’s procedural rules bite harder here, not less. The single-PDF requirement, the complete service list and the current-attorney-of-record obligation all matter more when there is an opponent who will point out that you missed one. Jacksonville probate litigation lawyers who have had an order returned without docketing in a contested matter tend to remember it.

A contested estate still has to be administered. Creditor claims run, tax returns come due and property still needs insuring while the fight proceeds. Jacksonville probate litigation attorneys who treat the dispute as the whole file leave the estate itself unattended.

Most of these settle. Anyone promising a trial result at the outset is selling something. What changes the settlement number is the quality of the accounting, the paper trail around the will’s execution, and whether the property valuations will survive scrutiny.

Choosing counsel in Jacksonville

Searching for a probate attorney in Jacksonville, FL returns a long list. Three questions sort it.

“Which county is this estate actually opening in?” A Jacksonville probate attorney serves a metro that crosses three county lines. A firm that files in Duval, Clay and Nassau routinely will ask where the decedent was domiciled before anything else. One that assumes Jacksonville will find out later.

“Does the will contain a power of sale?” If there is real property, this is the first question that matters. A probate administration lawyer in Jacksonville who asks it in the first conversation is reading the file the way §733.613 asks them to.

“How do you handle the circuit’s proposed-order procedure?” A probate lawyer in Jacksonville, FL who files here weekly has the single-PDF, service-list and attorney-of-record requirements built into their process. The consequence of not having them is not a scolding — it is an order returned without docketing while everyone waited.

A last point on comparing quotes. Jacksonville probate lawyers — and Jacksonville Florida probate lawyers advertising statewide — price the same estate very differently depending on what they have assumed about it: whether there is real property, whether homestead has to be determined, whether an heir is out of state, whether anyone is likely to object. A number given before those are known is not a quote, it is a guess. And in a Florida formal administration, attorney’s fees are paid from the estate under §733.6171, not personally by whoever agreed to serve as personal representative.

Frequently asked questions

What happens if you don’t file probate in Florida?

If the decedent held assets in their sole name, title stays stuck, nobody has authority to act on the estate’s behalf, and the problem usually surfaces years later when someone tries to sell. The will must still be deposited with the Clerk within 10 days under §732.901 regardless.

Is probate required in Florida?

Only where the decedent left assets in their sole name with no beneficiary designation, no surviving joint owner and no trust. A will does not avoid probate; titling does.

Where is the probate court in Duval County?

The Clerk’s probate division at 501 West Adams Street, Room 1260, Jacksonville, FL 32202. The phone number is (904) 255-1990 and the office is open 8:00 a. m. to 5:00 p. m., Monday to Friday. There is no separate probate court, Duval County location for the Beaches — Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach and Neptune Beach estates all file downtown.

How do I find a probate attorney in Duval County?

Ask three questions before anything else: which of the three circuit counties the estate opens in, whether the will contains a power of sale if there is real property, and how the firm handles the circuit’s proposed-order procedure. Any probate attorney in Jacksonville who answers those precisely files here regularly.

Can I sell a house in probate in Jacksonville?

Yes, once a personal representative has been appointed and letters have issued. Whether a court order is also needed depends on the will: under §733.613 a power of sale in the will lets the personal representative sell without court authorisation, while an intestate estate or a will without that power requires an order.

How much does it cost to file probate in Duval County?

$401 for formal administration, $346 for summary administration of an estate worth $1,000 or more, $236 below that, and $231 for disposition of personal property without administration. Guardianship is $400 for person and property and $235 for person only, plus the statewide §744.3678 annual accounting audit fee of $20 to $250 depending on estate size.

Does the Fourth Judicial Circuit cover more than Jacksonville?

Yes — Duval, Clay and Nassau counties. Probate opens in the county where the decedent was domiciled, so a Fleming Island or Fernandina Beach estate is not a Duval filing.

Talk to a Florida probate attorney

Lorenzo Law is a Coral Gables firm devoted to probate, estate planning, guardianship, and trust and estate litigation throughout Florida, in English and Spanish. Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr. clerked in the probate division of Florida’s Eleventh Judicial Circuit before founding the firm.

(305) 224-6811 · 2850 S Douglas Rd, Suite 303, Coral Gables, FL 33134

General information about the Duval County probate court, not legal advice; reading it creates no attorney-client relationship. Fees, forms and local procedures change — confirm current requirements with the Clerk or the Fourth Judicial Circuit before filing.

Sources

• Duval County Clerk of the Circuit Court — Probate division, fees and will deposit
• Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida — proposed orders eFiling procedures; circuit composition and courthouse locations
• §§ 28.2401, 393.12, 732.901, 733.613, 733.6171, 735.201, 744.3678, Florida Statutes
• Chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida (CS/HB 1337), effective 1 July 2026