Lee County Probate Court and Collier County Probate Court: Fort Myers, Naples and Florida’s 20th 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: Lee County and Collier County, Florida — not Lee County, Alabama or Georgia — both sit in Florida’s Twentieth Judicial Circuit, which also covers Charlotte, Hendry and Glades. One circuit, five counties, and only Lee County has formal probate case management. In Lee, a completed and signed checklist must accompany your petition, and the circuit’s own language on what happens otherwise is blunt: proposed orders are deleted and not processed. In Collier, Charlotte, Hendry and Glades there is no case management at all — proposed orders go directly to the assigned judge through the e-portal. Two counties, one circuit, opposite workflows.
Quick reference — Lee and Collier probate
| Lee County (Fort Myers) | Collier County (Naples) | |
|---|---|---|
| Probate division | 2075 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 2nd Floor, Fort Myers, FL 33901 | 3315 Tamiami Trail East, Suite 102, Naples, FL 34112 |
| Phone | (239) 332-9572 | (239) 252-2646 |
| Mailing | P.O. Box 2469 / P.O. Box 9346, Fort Myers, FL 33902 | — |
| Case management | Yes — mandatory checklists | None — orders go direct to the judge |
| Formal administration | see fees below | $400 |
| Summary administration | see fees below | $345 ($1,000+) · $235 (under $1,000) |
| Disposition without administration | $231 | $235.75 |
| Caveat / notice of trust | — | $41 each |
| Original wills | Cannot be e-filed — coversheet required | Deposit within 10 days |
| Circuit | Twentieth Judicial Circuit — Lee, Charlotte, Collier, Hendry, Glades |
One circuit, five counties — and only one of them has case management
This is the fact that shapes every probate filing in Southwest Florida, and it is almost never explained.
The Twentieth Judicial Circuit covers Lee, Charlotte, Collier, Hendry and Glades counties. The same judges, the same statutes, the same Florida Probate Rules. And within it, only Lee County operates formal probate case management.
For Charlotte, Collier, Hendry and Glades, the circuit’s position is stated plainly: there is no formal case management for probate cases, and orders are submitted directly to the assigned judge via the e-portal system.
So a Fort Myers estate and a Naples estate — forty minutes apart, same circuit, same bench — run on different rails from the first filing. In Lee your petition passes through a case-management gate. In Collier it goes to the judge.
Neither is better. They fail differently. Lee tells you what is missing, in writing, before a judge sees it. Collier does not, which means a defective Collier petition can sit on a judge’s desk looking complete. If you practise in both — and any Southwest Florida probate attorney does — you are running two workflows over one circuit, and the mistake is assuming that what worked in one county will work in the other.
Lee County’s checklists: deleted, not rejected
Lee County requires a completed and signed checklist to accompany the petition. There are three:
- Petition for Formal Administration Checklist
- Petition for Summary Administration Checklist
- Petition for Discharge Checklist
They must be filed prior to or simultaneously with the corresponding petition — not afterwards, not on request.
And here is the sentence every practitioner filing in Lee should have memorised. Failure to file the appropriate completed and signed checklist “will result in proposed orders being deleted and not processed for review by the Court.”
Deleted. Not returned with a note, as in Jacksonville. Not rejected with leave to refile, as in Palm Beach. Deleted, and not put in front of the judge. Of the six Florida circuits in this series, Lee County uses the harshest language, and it means what it says.
Two practical points that follow:
- Pull the Lee County probate checklist before you draft the petition, not after. The checklist is the court telling you in advance exactly what it will look for. Working backwards from it is faster than drafting and then reconciling.
- A small technical trap worth knowing. The checklists open as documents that must be unlocked before they can be completed — you have to click “Enable Editing” in the yellow banner when the file opens, or it stays locked. People fill in a locked form, save nothing, and file a blank checklist. That is an unsigned, incomplete checklist, and the consequence is the one above.
Collier County: no case management, straight to the judge
Collier County probate has no case-management layer. Proposed orders go directly to the assigned judge through the e-portal.
For an experienced practitioner that is an advantage — nothing sits in a queue, and a clean petition can move quickly. For anyone else it removes the safety net. In Lee, an incomplete filing is caught before a judge reads it. In Collier, the judge reads it.
The practical consequence for Collier County probate is that the discipline has to come from you. There is no Collier County probate checklist to work backwards from — no published, per-petition certification of the kind Lee, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach all require. The statutory requirements for your petition type, in Chapters 733 and 735, are the checklist. Collier County probate lawyers who file here regularly build their own; it is the only way to get the same protection Lee provides by rule.
Where to file in Fort Myers and Naples
Lee County. The Lee County probate office — the probate division of the Clerk of Court — is at 2075 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 2nd Floor, Fort Myers, FL 33901, and the direct line is (239) 332-9572. That is the Lee County probate court counter for filings, records requests and original wills. Mail goes to P.O. Box 2469 or P.O. Box 9346, Fort Myers, FL 33902. Lee County covers Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Bonita Springs, Estero, Sanibel, Lehigh Acres and Fort Myers Beach.
Collier County. The probate division is at 3315 Tamiami Trail East, Suite 102, Naples, FL 34112, reachable at (239) 252-2646. Collier covers Naples, Marco Island, Immokalee, Golden Gate and Everglades City.
Probate opens in the county where the decedent was domiciled at death. A Bonita Springs resident files in Lee; a Naples resident files in Collier; the two towns are twenty minutes apart on the same road. Estero and Bonita Springs sit close enough to the county line that this genuinely catches families out.
Filing fees in Lee and Collier
Florida probate filing fees are set by statute — §28.2401 fixes a base of $395 for formal administration, guardianship, ancillary administration, curatorship or conservatorship; $340 and $230 for summary administration above and below $1,000; $230 for disposition of personal property without administration and for guardianship of the person only; and $40 for a caveat. Counties then add authorised service charges.
Collier’s published schedule:
| Filing | Fee |
|---|---|
| Formal administration, guardianship, ancillary, curatorship or conservatorship | $400 |
| Summary administration — $1,000 or more | $345 |
| Summary administration — under $1,000 | $235 |
| Disposition of personal property without administration | $235.75 |
| Petition and order to open an estate, access a safe-deposit box, determine heirs | $231 |
| Guardianship of the person only | $235 |
| Veterans Administration guardianship | $235 |
| Petition to determine competency | $231 |
| Petition to admit a foreign will | $231 |
| Caveat | $41 |
| Notice of trust | $41 |
| Reopening a formal administration | $50 |
Lee County’s disposition of personal property fee is $231. For the rest, confirm the current Lee County probate filing fee with the Clerk before filing.
Now look at the spread across Florida. Formal administration is $401 in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Duval, and $400 in Collier. Disposition of personal property is $232 in Miami-Dade, $231 in Duval and Lee, and $235.75 in Collier — the only Florida probate fee in this series quoted in cents. A caveat is $40 in Miami-Dade, $41 in Palm Beach and Collier, $42 in Broward.
The amounts are trivial. The effect is not: a filing paid short by seventy-five cents is a rejected filing, and nothing about county fee schedules carries across a county line by assumption.
The guardianship audit fee — and this one is statutory
If a guardianship is on the horizon, this is the recurring cost to plan for, and unlike the filing fees it is the same everywhere in Florida.
Under §744.3678, the guardian pays the clerk from the ward’s estate, on filing the annual financial return, a graduated fee for auditing it:
| Guardianship estate | Annual audit fee |
|---|---|
| $25,000 or less | up to $20 |
| $25,001 – $100,000 | up to $85 |
| $100,001 – $500,000 | up to $170 |
| Over $500,000 | up to $250 |
Collier also charges $85 to audit an inventory exceeding $25,000.
Two things worth knowing. It comes out of the ward’s estate, not the guardian’s pocket. And the court may waive it on a showing of insufficient funds in the ward’s estate — which is worth asking about in a small guardianship where $250 a year is not a rounding error.
In Naples in particular, where guardianship estates routinely exceed $500,000, this is a $250 annual line for the life of the guardianship. Over a fifteen-year guardianship that is real money, and it is never mentioned at the outset.
Lee and Collier probate records and case search
Both Clerks publish online case access, and both work the same way in the respects that matter.
Lee County probate records are searched through the Clerk’s Court Records Inquiry System — the docket, the parties, the filing date and, for most non-confidential filings, the document images. A Lee County, Florida probate records search run under the decedent’s name is the usual route; a case number is faster if you have one. Collier County probate records are available through the Collier Clerk’s own records search on the same basis.
Three points apply on both sides of the county line:
- Probate cases are indexed under the decedent’s name, not the petitioner’s. Searching your own name returns nothing.
- Guardianship files are confidential by statute and will not surface in a public probate search.
- The Clerk cannot tell you what any of it means. Both offices are barred from giving legal advice or helping prepare filings. They can confirm what was filed, what it cost and whether it was accepted.
One search note specific to Southwest Florida: a decedent who owned property in both counties may have an estate in one and an ancillary or property-related filing in the other. If a search in Lee comes back empty for someone you know owned a Fort Myers property, check Collier — and check the home state too.
Depositing the original will
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. Both counties apply it.
Lee County adds a specific procedure. Original wills cannot be e-filed — the original must go in person or by mail, accompanied by the Clerk’s “Coversheet – Will Submitted for Safekeeping.” A will arriving without that coversheet is not a complete deposit.
In Collier, the custodian deposits the original with the Clerk on the same ten-day timetable. No attorney is required to file a will, though whether an administration then needs to be opened is a separate question and a different kind of advice.
How to avoid probate in Florida
This is the most-asked question in Southwest Florida, and in a region built on second homes and retirement purchases it is usually asked too late. The honest answer is that probate is avoided by titling, and every method has a cost.
What actually keeps assets out of probate:
- A funded revocable trust. Does a trust avoid probate in Florida? Yes — for the assets actually transferred into it. The failure mode is not the trust document; it is the funding. A trust signed and never funded avoids nothing, and it is the single most common estate-planning failure we see.
- Joint ownership with rights of survivorship. Effective and blunt. It also gives the joint owner present rights in the property and exposes it to their creditors and their divorce.
- Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death designations on bank and brokerage accounts.
- Beneficiary designations on life insurance and retirement accounts. Free, immediate, and routinely out of date — check them after every marriage, divorce, birth and death.
- An enhanced life estate deed, commonly called a lady bird deed, which passes Florida real property automatically at death while the owner keeps full control and the homestead exemption during life.
What does not avoid probate: a will. A will directs how the probate estate is distributed. It is the instruction manual for probate, not an alternative to it.
And is Florida a probate state? Yes — Florida has a full probate code in Chapters 731 to 735 and a probate division in every circuit. What Florida also has is a wide set of non-probate transfer tools, which is why so many Florida estates never open an administration at all.
The Southwest Florida wrinkle. A great many Lee and Collier properties are second homes owned by people domiciled in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois or Ontario. If the owner dies domiciled elsewhere, the Florida property still requires a Florida proceeding — ancillary administration — alongside the home-state probate. A lady bird deed or a properly funded trust on the Florida property avoids that second proceeding entirely, and it is the single highest-value piece of planning available to a snowbird owner.
Naples estates are different, and the difference is not just the number
Collier County has among the highest property values in Florida, and that changes the shape of the work rather than only its size.
Homestead determinations matter more. Where the residence qualifies as protected homestead and passes to heirs, its value comes out of the §735.201 calculation — so a homestead determination can be the difference between a formal administration and a summary one, even at Naples prices, now that the ceiling has risen to $150,000 effective 1 July 2026 under Chapter 2026-57.
Trusts are the norm, so trustee questions are too. Where most of the wealth sits in a trust, the probate estate can be small while the real dispute is about the trustee’s accounting. Those are different proceedings with different rules.
Out-of-state and non-citizen owners are common. Ancillary administration, domicile disputes and — for non-citizen owners — federal estate tax exposure at a far lower threshold than a US citizen’s are routine here in a way they are not in most Florida counties.
And guardianship estates here are large, which is precisely why the §744.3678 audit fee sits at the top tier so often in Collier. A Naples guardianship over a $2 million estate pays the same $250 a year as one over $600,000 — the schedule tops out — but it pays it every year, and the guardian’s and attorney’s fees scale with the work rather than with the schedule.
What happens after the estate is opened
Neither county’s front-end system tells you anything about the middle of the case, so here is the shape of it.
The creditor period sets the floor. In a formal administration, the notice to creditors opens a three-month claim period, and no estate closes before it runs. That is statutory and it applies in Fort Myers, Naples and everywhere else in Florida.
The inventory comes early. A verified inventory of the estate’s assets, at date-of-death values, is filed within the period the rules require. In Lee and Collier, where the principal asset is almost always real property, that means a date-of-death valuation — not a current-market appraisal — and ordering the wrong one wastes weeks.
Then the accounting and discharge. Lee requires its Petition for Discharge Checklist at this stage, with the same consequence as the others if it is missing. Collier does not, which means the statutory requirements for a final accounting and petition for discharge are what you are working to.
Every case is different and we do not promise dates. As a working expectation in Southwest Florida: a summary administration is a matter of months rather than weeks, a formal administration typically runs the better part of a year, and a contested file is measured in years.
Choosing counsel in Southwest Florida
“Do you file in both Lee and Collier?” The counties run on opposite workflows. A Southwest Florida probate attorney who files in both has one process for Lee’s checklists and another for Collier’s direct-to-judge submissions. Collier County probate attorneys who never file in Lee will not have the checklist discipline; Lee practitioners who rarely cross into Naples may expect a safety net that is not there.
“Where was the decedent domiciled?” Not where the house is. For a second-home owner the answer decides whether this is a Florida administration or an ancillary one, and the two are not interchangeable.
“What does the will say about selling real property?” If there is a house — and in Lee and Collier there almost always is — a power of sale in the will determines whether a court order is needed before it can be sold.
Collier County probate lawyers and Lee County practitioners price the same estate differently depending on what they have assumed about these three. In a Florida formal administration attorney’s fees are paid from the estate under §733.6171, not personally by whoever agreed to serve.
Frequently asked questions
How do you avoid probate in Florida?
Through titling: a funded revocable trust, joint ownership with survivorship, payable-on-death and transfer-on-death designations, beneficiary designations on insurance and retirement accounts, and an enhanced life estate (lady bird) deed for real property. A will does not avoid probate.
Does a trust avoid probate in Florida?
Yes, for assets actually transferred into it. An unfunded trust avoids nothing — funding is where this fails.
Is Florida a probate state?
Yes. Florida has a full probate code and a probate division in every judicial circuit. It also has broad non-probate transfer options, which is why many Florida estates never open an administration.
Where is the probate court in Lee County, Florida?
The Lee County Clerk’s probate division is at 2075 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 2nd Floor, Fort Myers, FL 33901, phone (239) 332-9572. This is Lee County, Florida — not Lee County, Alabama or Lee County, Georgia.
Where is the Collier County probate court?
The Collier County Clerk’s probate division is at 3315 Tamiami Trail East, Suite 102, Naples, FL 34112, phone (239) 252-2646.
What is the Lee County probate checklist and do I have to file one?
Yes. Lee County requires a completed and signed checklist — for formal administration, summary administration or discharge — filed before or with the petition. Without it, proposed orders are deleted and not processed by the court.
Does Collier County have probate checklists?
No. Collier has no formal probate case management; proposed orders go directly to the assigned judge through the e-portal. The statutory requirements are your checklist.
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 Lee and Collier County probate courts, not legal advice; reading it creates no attorney-client relationship. Fees, forms and local procedures change — confirm current requirements with the Clerk or the Twentieth Judicial Circuit before filing.
Sources
- Lee County Clerk of Court — Probate
- Collier Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller — Probate; Probate Fees
- Twentieth Judicial Circuit — Civil Case Management, Probate
- §§ 28.2401, 732.901, 733.6171, 735.201, 744.3678, Florida Statutes
- Chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida (CS/HB 1337), effective 1 July 2026