Orlando Probate Lawyer: The Courthouse, the Comptroller and the County Line

Most of what goes wrong in an Orange County estate has nothing to do with the law. It has to do with the fact that the courthouse holds your case file and a separate elected office three blocks away holds your deeds, and that five Orlando ZIP codes quietly cross into a different county with a different court. An Orlando probate lawyer who knows those two things saves you months. One who does not will find out the expensive way.

This page is written for the person holding a death certificate and a stack of paperwork, not for another lawyer. If you searched for a probate attorney Orlando families can actually reach, start with the venue section below — it answers the question most people call about.

What an Orlando probate lawyer does in an Orange County estate

Probate is the court process that moves what someone owned at death to the people entitled to it, after debts and expenses are paid. In Orange County it runs through the Circuit Court, it is mostly paperwork, and in an ordinary uncontested file the family never sets foot in the courthouse.

An Orlando probate attorney does four things. Works out what is actually in the estate and what passes outside it. Gets a personal representative appointed. Handles creditors and the statutory notices. And closes the transfer with a deed or a distribution that a title company will insure.

That is the whole job, and it does not change depending on what you typed to find it. Lawyer or attorney, Orlando or Orlando FL, singular or plural — the work is identical. Do not read anything into the wording of a firm’s page title.

We take probate cases from all over the State of Florida. Orange County is simply where a great many of them are filed, because Orlando is where a great many people live and where a great many people from somewhere else own property.

Two distinctions do matter, though.

The first is between administration and litigation. An orlando probate administration attorney moves an uncontested estate through the court — the four steps above, and nothing adversarial. Litigation is a separate practice with different economics, and it is not what this page is about. Most families need the first and are quietly terrified they need the second.

The second is between planning and administration. An orlando estate attorney may mean either: someone who sets up the transfer before death, or someone who executes it after. Both are worth having. Only one of them can still save you money.

One caution on vocabulary. Orlando probate specialists is a phrase clients use and lawyers avoid, because in Florida “specialist” is a regulated term — the Bar certifies lawyers in wills, trusts and estates, and nobody should imply that certification who does not hold it.

Where your case is filed: the Ninth Judicial Circuit and the Orange County Courthouse

Under section 733.101(1), Florida Statutes, probate belongs “in the county in this state where the decedent was domiciled.” For someone who lived in Orlando, Winter Park, Maitland, Apopka, Ocoee, Winter Garden, Windermere or Lake Nona, that county is Orange, and the circuit is the Ninth.

Orange County probate court, Division 5, and the clerk’s probate line

There is no separate probate courthouse in Florida. Probate is a division of the Circuit Court, and orange county probate matters are heard at the Orange County Courthouse, 425 N. Orange Avenue, Orlando, FL 32801, a few blocks north of Lake Eola in the middle of downtown. The building is open Monday to Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Practical contact details, current as of this writing:

Orange County Clerk of Courts, Probate and Mental Health — 407-836-2057. Phone hours are 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.; the office itself runs 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Main clerk call centre — 407-836-2000, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Branch locations in Apopka, Ocoee and Winter Park for counter business

Under Ninth Circuit Administrative Order 2025-13, signed by Chief Judge Lisa T. Munyon and effective 1 January 2026, Orange County Circuit Division 5 is the division that hears probate and trust matters. Three judges sit in it: Mark S. Blechman in sub-division 01-5, Heather L. Higbee in 02-5, and Alicia L. Latimore in 09-5. Which sub-division your file lands in affects scheduling practice more than most families expect.

One caution before you read further afield. There is another Orange County, in California, and it is larger and louder online than ours. A great deal of what Google returns for an orange county probate lawyer describes California procedure, which shares almost nothing with Florida’s beyond the word probate. The quick test: if the page you are reading does not cite Florida Statutes chapters 731 to 735, it is not about your case.

Almost none of this requires you to appear. Attorneys file through the statewide Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, and a self-represented filer can e-file, walk the papers in to any Orange County location, or post them.

That is worth saying plainly, because most people searching for the orange county probate court are bracing for a hearing. In an ordinary uncontested administration there isn’t one. You will not be cross-examined, there is no jury, and the odds are you will never see the inside of 425 N. Orange Avenue. The work happens on paper.

The clerk holds the file, the comptroller records the deed

This is the single most common wasted trip in an Orange County estate, and it is worth two minutes.

Orange County is one of the Florida counties with a separately elected Comptroller, and the two offices split work that most counties keep under one roof:

What you need	Which office	Where
Probate case file, petitions, orders, certified copies of court documents	Clerk of Courts	425 N. Orange Avenue
Deeds, mortgages, liens, satisfactions, declarations of domicile, official records	Orange County Comptroller	109 East Church Street, Suite 300, 407-836-5115, 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

So the order determining homestead comes out of the courthouse on Orange Avenue, and the deed that transfers the house gets recorded three blocks away on Church Street. Personal representatives turn up at the wrong counter with the right paperwork all the time. (Compare Osceola County next door, where the Clerk is also the Comptroller and one counter does both — we set that out on our Kissimmee probate lawyer page.)

Mail for official records goes to Attn. Official Records, PO Box 38, Orlando, FL 32802.

Orlando ZIP codes that cross the Orange County line

An Orlando mailing address is not proof of an Orange County domicile, and this catches families out.

Start with the good news: unlike some Florida markets, there is no ZIP code in Seminole County that mails as “Orlando.” Every Seminole ZIP says Longwood, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Winter Springs, Oviedo, Sanford or Lake Mary on the envelope. If the address says Orlando, the odds are strongly that the county is Orange.

The trap is narrower. Five Orange County ZIP codes physically extend across the county line, and a parcel on the far side belongs to a different circuit and a different recorder:

32792 (Winter Park, alias Aloma), 32703 (Apopka, alias Forest City), 32751 (Maitland) and 32712 (Apopka) all reach into Seminole County. A Seminole parcel is filed in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit at the Seminole Civil Courthouse, 301 N. Park Avenue, Sanford, and the deed records with the Seminole County Clerk.
34787 (Winter Garden, covering Horizon West) reaches into Lake County — the Fifth Judicial Circuit.
In reverse, 34747 mails as “Kissimmee” and carries “Celebration” as an alias, but it spans Osceola and Orange. A Kissimmee mailing address can belong to an Orange County decedent.

And one that is never a domicile at all: 32830, the Lake Buena Vista and Walt Disney World ZIP, is PO Box only. There is no street delivery, so no one lives there, and it can never support a homestead claim.

The Disney corner has a further wrinkle worth knowing. The old Reedy Creek Improvement District, renamed the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District in 2023, covers roughly 25,000 acres across both Orange and Osceola counties and contains two genuine incorporated cities — Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista. Property inside it can fall either side of a county line.

The rule is simple and we apply it before anything is filed: the envelope does not decide venue, the parcel does. We pull the folio from the property appraiser first.

Winter Park, Maitland, Apopka, Lake Nona and the rest of Orange County

Orange County has thirteen incorporated cities: Orlando, Apopka, Bay Lake, Belle Isle, Eatonville, Edgewood, Lake Buena Vista, Maitland, Oakland, Ocoee, Windermere, Winter Garden and Winter Park. Everything else is unincorporated county — including Horizon West, which Orange County describes as the fastest-growing area in unincorporated Orange at roughly 20,700 acres, and including Dr. Phillips, Hunter’s Creek and Pine Hills.

Two places people assume are separate cities are actually inside Orlando’s own limits: Lake Nona, which sits in the City’s Southeast Orlando Sector Plan alongside Medical City and East Park, and Baldwin Park, built on the old Naval Training Center and governed by a City planned-development ordinance. MetroWest is a City of Orlando neighbourhood too.

The law is the same in all of them. What changes is the property. A 1950s bungalow in Colonialtown is a different file from a Lake Nona house bought three years ago with a mortgage larger than the estate, and both are different again from a Horizon West lot that changed county lines on paper twice while it was being platted.

Orange County has reached roughly 1,528,002 residents as of July 2025, up 6.9 per cent since the 2020 census, with the City of Orlando at about 333,888 and growing faster at 8.4 per cent. Owner occupancy tells you something about the estates that arrive: 56.8 per cent across the county, but only 39.5 per cent inside the city. More than a third of the county — 35.4 per cent — is Hispanic or Latino, and 38.5 per cent of residents over five speak a language other than English at home.

What Orange County probate filing fees actually cost

Orange County publishes its own probate fee schedule, which not every Florida clerk does. As published:

Filing	Fee
Formal administration, ancillary administration, curatorship	$400.00
Summary administration, estate over $1,000 (and ancillary summary)	$345.00
Summary administration, estate of $1,000 or less	$235.00
Disposition of personal property without administration	$231.00
Foreign will admission, transcript of record, miscellaneous probate petitions	$231.00
Caveat or notice of trust	$41.00
Reopening a case	$50.00
Certified copy	$2.00 plus $1.00 per page
Will deposit / safekeeping receipt	$6.00

Three separate costs make up an Orlando probate: that filing fee, publication of the notice to creditors in a newspaper of general circulation in Orange County, 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 value of the estate, though an agreed flat fee is common and frequently lower. Our page on the cost of probate in Florida breaks the arithmetic down.

So how much is probate in florida has two halves: a fixed, published, knowable court cost, and a fee that depends on the estate. When people ask how much does a probate lawyer cost in florida, the statutory schedule in section 733.6171 is the ceiling most families are quoted against, not the floor.

Ask any orlando probate law attorney you speak to for the fee arrangement in writing before you engage them, and ask specifically whether the quoted figure includes the filing fee and publication or sits on top of them. The two answers differ by several hundred dollars.

Call the clerk on 407-836-2057 before you write a cheque, and note that a personal cheque is not always accepted.

The first two weeks after a death in Orlando

Most of what decides whether an estate runs smoothly happens before a lawyer is involved.

Ordering certified death certificates in Orange County

Certified copies of a Florida death are issued by the Florida Department of Health in Orange County, Vital Statistics, Central Health Center Building 2, 807 West Church Street, Orlando, FL 32805, on 407-858-1460, Monday to Friday 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. As published, the fee is $10.00 per certificate.

Two limits worth knowing before you drive over. The county office holds Florida deaths from 2009 to the present — anything earlier comes from the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Jacksonville. And a copy showing cause of death is restricted: you have to be a family member or a legal representative to get one.

Order more than you think you need. Every bank, insurer, pension administrator, title company and transfer agent wants its own certified copy and none of them gives it back. Six to ten is normal for an estate with a house in it. Ask for at least one copy without cause of death for the institutions that have no business seeing it.

Most Orlando deaths are certified out of one of a handful of hospitals, and the funeral home usually files the certificate for you: Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center, 52 W. Underwood Street; AdventHealth Orlando, 601 East Rollins Street; Orlando Health Dr. P. Phillips Hospital, 9400 Turkey Lake Road; AdventHealth East Orlando, 7727 Lake Underhill Road; the Orlando VA Medical Center, 13800 Veterans Way in Lake Nona; and Orlando Health Horizon West Hospital, 17000 Porter Road, Winter Garden.

The ten-day rule for depositing an original will

If you are holding the signed original will, section 732.901, Florida Statutes, requires it to be deposited with the clerk of the court having venue within ten days of learning of the death. The original, not a photocopy, and not kept in a drawer while the family decides what to do about it. This is what people are asking about when they search for the ten-day probate rule, and it applies whether or not anyone intends to open an estate.

Look properly before concluding there is no will: safe deposit boxes, the drafting attorney’s file, the clerk’s own will-deposit records — Orange County charges $6.00 to take a will for safekeeping, and people do use it. Our checklist of what to do when someone dies in Florida runs through the rest of the first fortnight in order, including what happens to accounts. A bank that learns of a death restricts the account; a joint account with right of survivorship and a payable-on-death account usually pass straight to the survivor or beneficiary, while a solely held account generally will not release until letters of administration exist. Meanwhile the mortgage, the taxes, the insurance and the utilities on the Orlando house keep falling due. Decide early who covers them and keep the receipts.

The steps in a Florida probate administration, in order

The sequence rarely varies, and knowing it removes most of the anxiety:

Determine venue and domicile — the parcel and the address, per the county-line section above.
Deposit the original will with the clerk within ten days.
Petition for administration and, where there is a will, to admit it.
Appointment. The court issues letters of administration to the personal representative, and this is the document banks and title companies actually want to see.
Notice to creditors, published and served on known creditors under section 733.212.
Inventory of estate assets at date-of-death value.
Homestead determination, where a house is involved, so the sale can close.
Pay valid claims, sell what needs selling, resolve what is disputed.
Distribute and close.

If you searched how does probate work in florida, that list is the answer. And when is probate required in florida has a short one: whenever an asset was titled solely in the decedent’s name with no beneficiary and no survivorship, and nothing else moves it.

This is deliberately brief because it is the same everywhere in Florida. What is not the same everywhere is which building, which county and which deed — which is why this page spends its length there instead.

Summary administration in Orange County and the $150,000 small estate limit

Florida offers a short route and a long one, and one number decides most Orlando files.

Summary administration under section 735.201 is available where the value of the entire estate subject to administration in Florida, less the value of 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 filing fee is $345 rather than $400, and a clean case can conclude in weeks. This is what people mean when they look for an orlando small estate attorney or a small estate attorney orlando, and it is what a summary administration lawyer orlando florida handles.

Two things about that number. First, it was raised from $75,000 by House Bill 1337, chapter 2026-57, approved 29 April 2026 and effective 1 July 2026 — and the Legislature’s own online statute pages still display the 2025 compilation with the old figure, because the annual edition has not been republished. The higher number is the law. If a website quotes you $75,000, check its date.

Second, the phrase that decides most files is “less the value of property exempt from creditors’ claims.” Protected homestead is exempt, so an Orlando house that qualifies as protected homestead does not automatically push an estate over the limit however much Orange County values it at. Our page on summary administration in Florida sets out the full test.

Formal administration is required where the estate is larger, where creditors need handling properly, or where somebody needs real authority — to sign a listing agreement, deal with an insurer, chase a pension or bring a claim. People searching for orlando probate alternatives lawyer or a probate alternatives lawyer orlando are usually looking for exactly this decision: summary administration, disposition of personal property without administration, or nothing at all because everything passed by beneficiary designation.

Inheriting a timeshare in Orlando, and how to refuse one

Here is the section no other Orlando probate page writes, and it is the one that brings the most phone calls.

Orlando is the centre of the American timeshare industry. Estates here routinely include one, and the family reaction is almost never “wonderful.” An inherited timeshare usually arrives with annual maintenance fees, a special assessment nobody warned you about, and a resort management company that would very much like the heirs to keep paying. Timeshare inheritance is a real problem with a real legal answer, and searches for timeshare inheritance refusal, refuse inheritance of timeshare, exit inherited timeshare and inherited timeshare exit are people looking for it.

Timeshare estates, right-to-use plans, and which one goes through probate

Sometimes. It depends on what was actually bought.

Florida regulates these interests under chapter 721, the Florida Vacation Plan and Timesharing Act, which covers every timeshare plan offered or existing in the state with a term of at least three years. A timeshare estate conveyed by a recorded timeshare deed is an interest in real property, and it passes like other Florida real estate — through probate if it was owned solely, outside probate if it was held jointly with right of survivorship or in a trust. A right-to-use or points-based membership, by contrast, is contractual personal property and moves differently.

So the answer to whether is a timeshare considered real estate is: read the deed. If there is one, it is real property and can a timeshare estate be sold has the ordinary answer — yes, with the same court authority any other estate real property needs. Orange County’s own zoning treats timeshares as a commercial use alongside hotels and motels, not a residential one, which is a useful reminder that this is a business asset, not a second home.

Disclaiming an inherited timeshare under chapter 739

You are not obliged to accept an inheritance. Florida’s Uniform Disclaimer of Property Interests Act, chapter 739, lets a beneficiary refuse an interest in whole or in part, and the disclaimed interest then passes as though the person disclaiming had died first.

That is the honest answer to can you refuse to inherit a timeshare and to do i have to inherit a timeshare: yes, if it is done properly and in time. The practical points that decide whether it works:

A disclaimer has to be in writing, describe the interest, declare the refusal, and be signed and delivered to the right person — usually the personal representative.
Timing matters. People searching how long do you have to disclaim an inheritance are asking the right question. Wait too long, or take any benefit from the interest first, and the right is gone.
Accepting a benefit bars a disclaimer. Using the week, renting it out, or paying the maintenance fee from estate funds can all count as acceptance. This is the trap.
You can disclaim part — the answer to can you disclaim part of an inheritance is generally yes, and a disclaim inheritance form filed without thought about which part is a common own goal.
Disclaiming is not a way to defeat your own creditors, and it interacts with Medicaid eligibility. Get advice before you sign.

If you searched how to disclaim an inheritance, how to disclaim inheritance or simply disclaim inheritance, the mechanics above are the whole of it — but the order of operations is where these go wrong.

What the personal representative has to do about the timeshare

Everything above is about whether the interest comes into the estate. This is what happens once it has.

The maintenance fee does not pause because someone died. It keeps accruing against the interest while the administration runs, and an estate that sits unopened for a year arrives at distribution with an arrears problem and sometimes an assessment lien. Deal with it in the first month, not the ninth.

The resort will not discuss the account with anybody until it sees letters of administration. That is the same document the bank wants, so it is rarely a separate delay — but it does mean nobody can negotiate anything before a personal representative is appointed.

And where the resort sits outside Orange County, which in this market it very often does, the deed that eventually transfers the interest records where the property is, not where the decedent lived. An Orlando estate holding a week on Irlo Bronson in Osceola County records that deed in Kissimmee.

The wider question of what to do with an unwanted week — selling it, surrendering it to the resort, transferring it to a relative who wants it — is a subject in its own right, and we cover it properly on our page about inheriting a Florida timeshare. What belongs on this page is the probate half: whether it is in the estate, how to refuse it, and what it does to the administration.

How to become personal representative of an Orlando estate

The personal representative is the person the court gives authority to. Sections 733.301, 733.302 and 733.304 set out who has priority and who may serve.

Where there is a will, the person it names has first claim. Where there is not, the surviving spouse comes first, then the person a majority of the beneficiaries select, then the nearest heir. An individual who is not a Florida resident may serve only if they are a close relative by blood, marriage or adoption — a point that decides a great many Orlando estates, because so many Orange County decedents have children living somewhere else. A person who has been convicted of a felony, or who is not mentally or physically able to do the job, cannot serve.

Once appointed, the representative holds a fiduciary role under section 733.608 and is personally accountable for getting it right. That is the reason Florida practice effectively requires counsel in formal administration.

When there is no will: intestate succession and the affidavit of heirship

Roughly half the Orange County estates that come to us have no will, and the first question is always the same — who inherits.

Section 732.103 sets the order: descendants first, then parents, then siblings and their descendants, then grandparents and their descendants. A surviving spouse’s share depends on whether there are descendants and whether they are also the spouse’s, under section 732.102. None of it can be varied by what the family agreed at the funeral.

Which brings us to the document families are most often pointed at and most often misled about.

An affidavit of heirship is a sworn statement identifying who a person’s heirs are. Somebody at a bank or a title company usually mentions it, in a tone suggesting it will make the problem go away, and people arrive looking for an orlando affidavit of heirship attorney expecting a one-page fix.

It is not one. An affidavit can support a chain of title, and an underwriter may accept it alongside other evidence — particularly on older property where a probate was opened decades ago and closed badly. What it cannot do is transfer Florida real property on its own. It binds nobody who did not sign it, and no careful underwriter will insure a sale on the strength of it.

If the asset is a house, the reliable route is a court proceeding: summary administration where the estate qualifies, formal administration where it does not. An orlando heirship attorney who tells you otherwise is selling you a document, not a result.

Creditor claims and how long probate takes in Orange County

Formal administration takes a minimum of about six months because the creditor period has to run, and nine to eighteen months is more typical where a house is being sold. Summary administration can finish in weeks.

Three sections do most of the work. Section 733.212 requires the notice to creditors. Section 733.702 sets the claim period — three months from first publication, or thirty days from service on a known or reasonably ascertainable creditor. And section 733.710 bars most claims two years after death regardless of whether anything was ever filed.

That two-year backstop is why families sometimes ask whether they can simply wait. You can, and the claims do fall away — but nothing about the delay clears title, and the paperwork gets harder as witnesses move and records go missing.

Florida homestead and the Orlando family home in probate

If the Orlando house was the decedent’s protected homestead, it generally is not an asset of the probate estate at all. Article X, section 4 of the Florida Constitution and section 733.608 shield it from most creditors, and it passes under section 732.401 to the people the constitution and statute designate rather than necessarily to whoever is named in the will.

Two consequences follow. The credit card company and the hospital generally cannot reach the house. And the personal representative cannot simply sell it and divide the money, because in the ordinary case it is not theirs to sell — the estate petitions the court to determine homestead status, and that order is what a title company wants before it insures a sale. Household furnishings up to a statutory limit, two vehicles and qualifying education savings are also exempt, under section 732.402.

The exemption itself is administered by the Orange County Property Appraiser, 200 S. Orange Avenue, Suite 1700, Orlando, FL 32801, on (407) 836-5044, and the filing deadline is 1 March of the year claimed. Missing it waives the exemption for that year, which is a live risk in the year of a death when nobody is thinking about the tax roll.

Selling an inherited Orlando house, step by step

Most Orange County estates end in a sale, and the order of operations decides whether it closes on schedule.

Court authority to sell an inherited Orlando house

A personal representative sells under the authority of the will or an order of the court, and where protected homestead is involved the order determining homestead normally comes first.

That order of operations is the entire answer to selling a house in probate orlando, and it is where most of these files go wrong. The buyer’s title company will ask for exactly those two documents. Marketing the property before they exist produces a signed contract nobody can close, a buyer who walks, and a family who blames each other for six weeks. List after the paperwork, not before. Our guide to selling a house during probate walks through the full sequence.

Recording the deed with the Orange County Comptroller

The deed does not go back to the courthouse. It goes to the Comptroller’s Official Records office at 109 East Church Street.

Recording charges follow section 28.24, Florida Statutes: $10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each additional page, and $1.00 per name indexed where an instrument contains more than four names. Documentary stamp tax on a deed runs at $0.70 per $100 of consideration.

A word on the wrong tool, because the search history on this one is unmistakable. People type quit claim deed orange county florida looking for a form they can download, sign at a notary on the way home, and be finished with. The instinct is understandable and in an estate it usually costs more than it saves.

A quit claim conveys whatever the signer happened to own and warrants nothing about it. Sign one before the estate has authority and you have transferred a question mark. The recorded document looks fine; the title search two years later does not. Read our Florida quit claim deed explainer before you sign anything.

One practical note for anyone searching how to sell probate house orange county fl rather than in the city proper: the procedure is identical, but the recording office is not always the one you expect, for the reasons set out in the ZIP code section above. Check the parcel before you check the calendar.

Two more things that matter on an Orlando sale. Establish date-of-death value now — it fixes the stepped-up basis, and on a house held for decades the step-up removes most of the taxable gain on a prompt sale. And expect the usual older-housing-stock surprises in Colonialtown, Audubon Park and College Park: a deed with a name never corrected, an heir nobody has spoken to in fifteen years, an open permit from a re-roof, a lien nobody knew about. These files go wrong at the title search far more often than in the courtroom.

Short-term rental and vacation homes in an Orlando estate

If the inherited property was being rented short-term, check the rules before the estate keeps doing it.

Inside the City of Orlando, the published rule is narrow: home sharing only, the owner or tenant must live on site permanently, and no more than half the bedrooms may be rented for 1 to 29 days, with annual registration. The City states plainly that an individual homeowner may not rent the entire home short-term — whole-home rentals require leases of 30 days or more. A dead owner cannot live on site, so an estate continuing a home-share listing in the City is very likely out of compliance from the date of death.

Outside the city limits, unincorporated Orange County zones transient rentals separately from residential use, and the rules differ again in the Disney corridor and in Osceola County next door. The safe answer for a personal representative is to pause the listing, deal with the forward bookings and guest deposits deliberately, and find out which rules the parcel actually sits under.

Out-of-state families and Orlando ancillary administration

Orlando has more non-resident property owners than almost anywhere in Florida, and two situations recur.

The first: a Florida resident dies owning property in another state. The Florida probate is the domiciliary proceeding and the other state runs its own ancillary case.

The second, and far more common here: someone who lived elsewhere dies owning an Orlando condominium, a Winter Garden vacation house or a Disney-area timeshare. Section 734.102 governs ancillary administration — the Florida proceeding that transfers Florida property when the decedent was domiciled somewhere else. That is what people mean by orlando ancillary probate and orlando ancillary administration, and it is a great deal more routine than it sounds. The foreign will is admitted, a Florida personal representative is appointed, Florida creditors get their notice, and the Florida asset transfers.

We handle these regularly, including where the family has never set foot in Orange County. Nothing about it requires anyone to fly in.

Speak with an Orlando probate lawyer about your estate

If someone has died and there is a house, an account, a business or a timeshare involved, the useful first conversation is short: where were they domiciled, what parcel is it, is there an original will, and is anything in the estate somebody does not want. Those four answers decide the procedure, the timeline and the cost.

You do not need a large orlando probate law firm for most of this. You need someone who will answer those four questions honestly, and who will tell you when the answer is that you do not need a lawyer at all — which happens more often than the profession likes to advertise.

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. If you have been searching probate attorney orlando free consultation and wondering what the catch is, that is the catch: sometimes we tell people to go and file a disposition of personal property themselves for $231 and save the fee.

If it turns out you do need an Orlando probate lawyer, you will at least know why.

Orlando probate FAQs: cost, timeline and timeshare 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 an Orlando resident it is filed in the probate division of the Circuit Court for Orange County — Division 5 of the Ninth Judicial Circuit, at 425 N. Orange Avenue. It is supervised paperwork, not a trial, and most families never attend court.

What assets are exempt from probate in Florida?

Anything passing by operation of law or 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 the 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 must run, and nine to eighteen months is more typical when a house is being sold. An estate containing a timeshare or an out-of-state asset takes longer, because the transfers have to be sequenced.

How much does probate cost in Florida?

Three separate costs. The Orange County filing fee — $400 for formal administration, $345 for a summary administration over $1,000. 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 often lower.

What is the 10 day rule for probate in Florida?

Section 732.901, Florida Statutes, requires the custodian of an original will to deposit it with the clerk of the court having venue within ten days of learning of the death. It applies whether or not anyone intends to open an estate, and it applies to the signed original rather than a copy. In Orange County the deposit goes to the Clerk of Courts at 425 N. Orange Avenue.

Can you refuse to inherit a timeshare?

Yes. Chapter 739, Florida Statutes — the Uniform Disclaimer of Property Interests Act — lets a beneficiary disclaim an interest in whole or in part, and the disclaimed interest then passes as though that person had died before the decedent. The disclaimer has to be in writing, signed, and delivered to the personal representative, and it has to happen before you take any benefit from the timeshare. Using the week, renting it, or paying the maintenance fee out of estate funds can all count as acceptance and destroy the right.

Who pays probate attorney fees in Florida?

Ordinarily the estate, not the family personally. Administration fees are paid from estate assets before anything is distributed to beneficiaries. Where a beneficiary hires their own lawyer for their own benefit, that is usually their own cost unless the work benefited the estate as a whole.

Is homestead property exempt from probate in Florida?

Protected homestead is not an asset of the probate estate and is beyond most creditors. That does not mean nothing has to be done: the homestead character normally has to be established by court order before a sale can close, and the property passes under the constitutional and statutory rules rather than freely under the will.

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

Assets stay stuck. Title cannot transfer, so the Orlando house cannot be sold or refinanced and stays in a dead person’s name, and banks will not release solely held accounts. Anyone holding an original will still has the ten-day deposit duty. Section 733.710 bars most claims two years after death, but waiting does not clear title — it usually makes the paperwork harder and more expensive.

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. You can file a summary administration yourself in narrow circumstances, which is what people are asking about when they search how to file probate in florida without an attorney, but once there is a house, protected homestead, more than one beneficiary, a creditor or a timeshare, Florida practice effectively requires counsel.