Port St. Lucie Probate Attorney: Filing in St. Lucie County and the 19th Judicial Circuit

If you are looking for a Port St. Lucie probate attorney, the first thing worth knowing is that your case will not be filed in Port St. Lucie. Every estate opened for a resident of this city is filed with the Clerk of the Circuit Court in Fort Pierce, and it is heard in the Probate and Guardianship Division of Florida’s 19th Judicial Circuit. That single fact sends more families to the wrong counter, and to the wrong website, than any other in this county.

The second thing worth knowing is that the most important number in Florida probate changed on July 1, 2026. The ceiling for summary administration — the short, cheaper route that avoids appointing a personal representative — went from $75,000 to $150,000. At the time of writing, the 19th Circuit’s own probate page and at least one law firm ranking on the first page of Google for this city still publish the old figure. The St. Lucie County Clerk’s probate page has it right. If you were told last year that your parent’s estate was too large for the short route, that answer may be out of date.

I am Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr. I handle probate, guardianship and probate litigation across Florida, including St. Lucie, Martin, Indian River and Okeechobee Counties, and I do it as a solo practitioner — the attorney you speak to on the first call is the attorney who signs the petition and stands up at the hearing. This page is written to answer the questions a grieving family actually has about a Port St. Lucie probate case: where it is filed, what it costs, how long it takes, what happens to the house, and what to do when there is no will.

One definition first, because the words get used loosely. Probate is the court-supervised process of proving a will, settling what the estate owes and transferring what is left to the people entitled to it. Estate administration is the same process described from the inside: the work the personal representative actually does between the death and the discharge. Everything below is about estate administration in St. Lucie County — where it happens, what it costs, how long it takes, and where it goes wrong.

Where a Port St. Lucie Probate Case Is Actually Filed

Florida abolished its separate probate courts in 1972. Probate today sits in the circuit court, in a division the chief judge organizes by administrative order. For this city that division is part of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit — written as the 19th Judicial Circuit on nearly every document you will see — which covers four counties: St. Lucie, Martin, Indian River and Okeechobee. The same judges, the same rules and the same filing protocols apply in all four.

The practical consequence for anyone hiring a Port St. Lucie probate attorney is simple: ask where they have actually filed. Estates are filed with the St. Lucie County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, currently Michelle R. Miller. The St Lucie County probate clerk who accepts those filings sits in the main courthouse office, not in either satellite location:

Where probate is filed	St. Lucie County Clerk of the Circuit Court 201 S. Indian River Drive, Fort Pierce, FL 34950
Mailing address	Clerk and Comptroller, P.O. Box 700, Fort Pierce, FL 34954
Phone	772-462-6900
Hours	Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., excluding holidays
Court	19th Judicial Circuit, Probate and Guardianship Division
St. Lucie probate judges	Hon. Steven J. Levin and Hon. Katherine Mish

Judicial assignments rotate, so confirm the St Lucie County probate judge on your own case before you rely on any list, including this one. Parking for the Fort Pierce courthouse is in the garage on 2nd Street and in the surrounding downtown lots, where many spaces carry a two-hour limit.

One point of vocabulary that saves confusion later: the court has no standalone probate building and no probate telephone line of its own. Cases are docketed into the St Lucie County probate division of the circuit court, and everything administrative — filing, fees, copies, records — runs through the Clerk in Fort Pierce.

Can You File at the St. Lucie West Branch on Country Club Drive?

No, and this is the single most useful sentence on this page. The Clerk operates a second location — the South County Annex at 250 N.W. Country Club Drive, Port St. Lucie, FL 34986 — and it is the office most residents of this city know. It handles county civil, small claims and traffic matters, marriage licenses and payments. It does not take probate filings. There is no separate St Lucie County probate office in this city at all. There is no Port St Lucie probate court, and there is no probate counter in St. Lucie West. Your estate goes to Fort Pierce.

In practice this matters less than it used to, because e-filing is now mandatory. But it matters completely for the documents that cannot be e-filed, and it matters for anyone planning to walk paperwork in.

What Has to Be Filed on Paper

Most documents in the Florida probate process Port St. Lucie families go through are submitted through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, and the 19th Circuit expects them there. Three things are the exception and must reach the Clerk in original, physical form:

• The original will
• Any original codicil
• The original or certified death certificate

A copy will not do. A scan will not do. On the death certificate: the funeral home almost always orders the certified copies, usually within a week of the service, and it is far easier to ask them for five or ten at the outset than to order more later. You will need certified copies for the court, for every bank, for the property appraiser and for any title company. If the original will is in a safe deposit box, in a drawer in Ohio, or with the lawyer who drafted it in 1998, retrieving it becomes the first task of the case rather than an afterthought. Separately, Florida requires whoever is holding the will to deposit it with the Clerk in the county where the person lived within ten days of learning of the death, along with the date of death or the last four digits of the Social Security number. The Clerk charges $1.00 to deposit a will with no case attached.

How to Run a St. Lucie County Probate Case Search

Probate files in Florida are presumptively public, and a St Lucie County probate case search can be run from the Clerk’s public search portal without an account and without a lawyer. That is how you confirm whether anyone has already opened an estate, which is worth checking before you spend money opening a second one. Two categories are not public even in an open file: estate inventories and accountings are confidential by statute, and guardianship reports are confidential as well. An interested person can obtain them by right; anyone else needs a court order.

The same portal is where St Lucie County probate records live once a case is open: the petition, the order admitting the will, the letters, and every notice and order the judge signs. Beneficiaries who feel a personal representative is keeping them in the dark are often surprised to learn they can read most of the file themselves, today, without asking anyone.

A Port St Lucie probate search works the same way, because there is no separate city index. The county system is the only index there is, and it covers Port St. Lucie, Fort Pierce, St. Lucie Village and the unincorporated county alike. Searching by the deceased person’s last name is usually enough; searching by case number is faster if you already have one.

The Clerk also sells copies at $1.00 per page for standard sizes, charges $2.00 per year searched for a records search, and charges $7.00 plus $1.00 per page for exemplified certificates — the certified packets an out-of-state bank or title company will sometimes demand.

What It Costs to Open an Estate in St. Lucie County

The first question most families ask a Port St. Lucie probate attorney is what the court itself will charge. Filing fees are set by statute and are the same at every Florida clerk, but very few pages publish them for this county. These are the current St. Lucie figures under section 28.2401 of the Florida Statutes:

Filing	Fee
Formal administration	$400.00
Summary administration, estate valued at $1,000 or more	$345.00
Summary administration, estate valued under $1,000	$235.00
Disposition of personal property without administration	$231.00
Caveat or notice of trust	$41.00
Will for deposit only (no case opened)	$1.00
Petition and order to admit a foreign will	$231.00
Opening an estate for a single purpose (determine heirs, open a safe deposit box, approve a minor’s settlement)	$231.00
Guardianship of the person and property	$400.00
Guardianship of the person only	$235.00
Petition for determination of incapacity	$231.00
Reopening a closed case	$50.00
Service and certification of a statement of claim	$7.00

That last one is new. Effective October 1, 2025, the Clerk assesses $7.00 to verify that a statement of claim was served and to note the date of service, and the fee has to be paid before the verified statement comes back. It is a small number that creditors and personal representatives both miss.

Where St. Lucie County Probate Forms Come From, and Where They Run Out

The Clerk publishes packets for summary administration and for disposition of personal property. Anyone looking for St Lucie County probate forms for a formal administration will not find them: the Clerk states plainly that it has none, and refers people instead to the Rupert J. Smith Law Library in Fort Pierce.

That absence is not an oversight, and it is worth taking as the warning it is. A formal administration is not a fill-in-the-blank exercise. The petition has to allege the right facts about domicile, heirs and priority, the notices have to reach the right people in the right form, and the errors do not announce themselves. They surface months later, in front of a judge, when unwinding them costs several times what doing it correctly would have.

Which Type of Probate Does Your Family Need?

Most people arrive assuming there is one procedure. There are three, and choosing correctly is where a probate process in florida st. lucie county families can afford is either created or lost.

Route	When it fits	Personal representative?	Filing fee
Formal administration	The default. Real property in the decedent’s sole name, meaningful assets, creditors to handle, or any dispute	Yes — letters of administration issue	$400
Summary administration	Estate subject to administration is $150,000 or less, or the person has been dead more than two years	No — the court orders distribution directly	$345 / $235
Disposition without administration	No real property at all, and the personal property is worth no more than the final expenses someone already paid out of pocket	No	$231

What Changed on July 1, 2026

Chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida, raised four thresholds at once. The summary administration ceiling went from $75,000 to $150,000. The bank-account payout that a Florida financial institution can make to a family member with no court case at all went from $1,000 to $2,000. The intestate small-estate procedure went from $10,000 to $20,000. The federal income tax refund provision went from $2,500 to $5,000. The Florida Supreme Court conformed the corresponding probate rule to $150,000 two weeks later.

Whether the new ceiling applies to a death that occurred before July 1, 2026 is genuinely unsettled — the statute’s text keys to nothing but the effective date, and the better textual reading looks to the date the petition is filed rather than the date of death. No Florida court has decided it. Anyone telling you flatly that the old limit governs older deaths is stating a position, not a rule. It is worth asking about, because the difference between $75,000 and $150,000 is often the difference between a $345 filing and a full administration.

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

Usually not, and this surprises people. The measure is the value of the estate subject to administration, less property exempt from creditors’ claims. Protected Florida homestead is excluded on both grounds: it is constitutionally protected from most creditors, and it is not among the assets that come into a personal representative’s hands at all. An $800,000 homestead in Tradition plus a $40,000 bank account can still be a summary administration.

What If the Death Was More Than Two Years Ago?

Then the value ceiling disappears entirely. The two-year ground for summary administration carries no dollar limit — an estate of any size qualifies once the person has been dead more than two years. Families who put off a probate for a decade often discover that the delay accidentally simplified the procedure, even as it complicated the proof.

Steps to Probate a Will in Florida: St. Lucie County

What follows are the steps to probate a will in florida st. lucie county residents encounter in a typical formal administration. It is a sequence, not a menu, and each step gates the next.

1. Locate and deposit the original will. Ten days from learning of the death, with the Clerk in Fort Pierce.
2. Determine venue. A Florida resident’s estate is filed in the county of residence shown on the death certificate. If the person was not a Florida resident, it is filed where the property sits.
3. File the petition for administration. Electronically, through the state portal, with the filing fee.
4. Serve formal notice where it is required on anyone with an equal or greater right to be appointed who has not waived or joined.
5. The court admits the will and issues letters of administration. Florida gave up the phrase “letters testamentary” decades ago; all letters carry the same name here.
6. Serve the notice of administration. Interested persons then have three months to object to the will’s validity, to venue or to jurisdiction, or those objections are gone.
7. Publish the notice to creditors and serve it on creditors who are reasonably ascertainable.
8. File the inventory within sixty days of letters issuing.
9. Deal with claims, taxes and the house. This is where most of the real time goes.
10. File the final accounting, distribute what is left, and petition for discharge. Beneficiaries can waive the accounting, and where everyone is cooperative most do.

That sequence is the Florida probate process St. Lucie County families experience from the inside: long stretches of waiting punctuated by short deadlines that are unforgiving when missed. The steps for probate in florida port st. lucie families face are identical in a summary administration only up to a point — there, no personal representative is appointed, no letters issue, and no inventory is filed, but the will still has to be proved, a diligent search for creditors is still required, and everyone who receives property becomes personally liable to unpaid creditors in proportion to what they received. Summary administration is shorter. It is not consequence-free.

Three things families are rarely warned about. First, the probate bond. A personal representative is presumed to need one unless the will waives it — and even a waiver does not bind the court, which can require bond on its own motion. Second, notice comes in two flavors: formal notice, which starts a twenty-day clock to file written defenses, and informal notice, which needs no response and is the default unless a rule or statute demands the formal kind. Third, where assets are at risk before anyone is appointed, the court can install a curator to hold and protect the estate in the meantime.

One local detail nobody publishes: proposed orders in this circuit are emailed to a county-specific probate mailbox rather than filed and forgotten. For St. Lucie the address is probateslc@circuit19.org; Martin, Indian River and Okeechobee each have their own. The subject line has to carry the case number, the estate name and the document type, the proposed order goes in Microsoft Word format, and the St Lucie County probate checklist for opening or closing an estate has to be attached. Cases stall for weeks because a proposed order was e-filed and never emailed.

How Long Does Probate Take in St. Lucie County?

There is no statutory maximum. Florida sets no outer limit on how long an administration may last and no deadline by which one must be started. What sets the pace is the creditor period, the court’s calendar, and how organized the family is. The realistic florida probate process timeline st. lucie county estates follow looks like this:

Stage	Typical time	What drives it
Gathering documents and filing the petition	1 to 3 weeks	Finding the original will and a certified death certificate
Letters of administration issue	2 to 6 weeks after filing	Whether formal notice is required and whether anyone objects
Creditor period runs	3 months from first publication	Fixed by statute; it cannot be shortened
Inventory filed	Within 60 days of letters	Appraisals on real property or a business
Selling or transferring the home	1 to 6 months	Title requirements, heirs who disagree, market conditions
Accounting, distribution and discharge	1 to 3 months after claims close	Whether every beneficiary signs a waiver
Uncontested formal administration, start to finish	6 to 12 months	—
Summary administration	4 weeks to 3 months	—
Contested estate	1 to 3 years	Discovery, mediation, trial calendar

Anyone quoting a probate timeline florida st. lucie county estates will actually meet in under six months for a formal administration is quoting the paperwork, not the case. The three-month creditor window alone puts a floor under it, and that window does not begin until the notice is published.

What Happens When There Is No Will

This is the situation that brings most people to a Port St. Lucie probate attorney in the first place. An estate without a will is not harder to open; it is harder to predict. The probate process in florida without a will port st. lucie residents face runs through the same court, on the same schedule, with the same filing fee. What changes is that Florida’s intestacy statute decides who inherits and who has the first right to serve, rather than the person who died.

In broad terms: a surviving spouse takes the entire intestate estate only where every one of the decedent’s descendants is also a descendant of that spouse and the spouse has no other descendants. Children from another relationship on either side change the answer. If the decedent had children from a prior marriage, the spouse and the descendants divide the estate. Less obviously, and this is the one that catches people: even where all of the decedent’s children are also the spouse’s children, if the spouse has a child from someone else, the spouse takes only half. With no spouse, it runs to descendants, then parents, then siblings and their descendants, and outward from there. It is a formula, and it does not care what anyone was promised.

A surviving spouse also has rights that exist whatever the will says — most importantly the elective share, a percentage of the estate the spouse can claim instead of what was left to them, plus homestead protections and the family allowance. Those are set out on our pages on the Florida elective share and surviving spouse rights in Florida. If the will predates the marriage, or a spouse or child was left out of it, raise it early: the deadlines are short.

The word most families use is “executor” — or executrix, or administrator of the estate. Florida collapsed all of them: the person is called the personal representative, and the terms mean the same thing here. The same flattening applies to the people who inherit. A will calls them devisees or legatees; without a will they are heirs, sometimes described as next of kin. Different words, one question — who is entitled to what. Who may serve is a separate question from who inherits. A person who lives out of state can serve only if they fall inside a closed list of relationships: an adopted child or adoptive parent of the person who died; anyone related by lineal consanguinity, meaning a parent, grandparent, child or grandchild; a spouse, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece, or someone related by blood to one of those; or the spouse of anyone who qualifies. A close friend, a business partner or a distant connection living in New Jersey cannot be appointed, however sensible the choice would be. That single rule redirects more Port St. Lucie estates than any other, particularly in a county this full of families who moved here from somewhere else.

The House: Homestead, Deeds and Title

In this county the house is usually the estate, and it is the reason most people call a Port St. Lucie probate attorney rather than trying the Clerk’s packet. Florida homestead is not an ordinary asset. It is protected from most creditors by the state constitution, it passes at the moment of death to the surviving spouse or the heirs by operation of law rather than by any court order, and it is excluded from the personal representative’s control except to preserve and insure it.

Practically, none of that gets the deed out of the deceased owner’s name. The record still shows a dead person as the owner, a deed cannot be signed by a dead person, and no title company in Florida will insure a sale until the record is fixed. There are exactly three cures: a probate administration ending in a court order or a personal representative’s deed; a petition to determine homestead status, which can be filed on its own where the property is protected homestead; or a quiet title action. There is no self-help version, and the affidavit a relative found online is not one of them. Once title is clear, selling a house during probate has its own sequence, and where co-owners disagree the question can end up in a partition action between siblings.

Can a Port Saint Lucie Ladybird Deed Keep the House Out of Probate?

Before a death, yes — that is exactly what it is for. A Port Saint Lucie ladybird deed, more formally an enhanced life estate deed, lets an owner keep complete control during life, including the right to sell or mortgage without anyone’s permission, while the property passes automatically at death to whoever is named. Florida has no transfer-on-death deed for real property; the lady bird deed is the state’s substitute, and it is the most reliable way to keep a St. Lucie County home out of the courthouse. My St. Lucie County lady bird deed page explains the deed itself, the $675 flat fee and how it is recorded in Fort Pierce.

After a death it is a different conversation. A lady bird deed already recorded does its work without probate, but the survivors still have title steps to take, and a deed signed too late, signed by someone who no longer understood it, or signed under pressure is one of the more common reasons a family ends up in litigation instead of at a closing.

Out-of-State Owners, Snowbirds and Hutchinson Island Condos

A large share of the property in this county belongs to people who live somewhere else. When someone dies as a resident of another state or another country while owning Florida real estate, a bank account here, or a debt owed by a Florida resident, the Florida property is handled through ancillary administration — a Florida proceeding that runs alongside the estate in the home state.

Two points save families money. First, the person appointed is not automatically the executor from the other state. Florida’s order of preference puts a personal representative specifically designated in the will to handle the Florida property ahead of the foreign personal representative, and every rung of that ladder still requires someone qualified to serve in Florida. Second, there is a short-form route: where the person died with a will, the gross value of the Florida property is $50,000 or less, and the foreign personal representative files before two years have passed, the estate can be handled without appointing an ancillary personal representative at all. Note that $50,000 has not moved since 2003, so it now sits well below the $150,000 summary administration ceiling — the two numbers are frequently confused. Our full treatment of Florida ancillary probate covers the appointment ladder and the paperwork, and an inherited Florida timeshare raises problems of its own that a standard ancillary filing does not solve.

Creditors: Who Can Still Come After the Estate, and for How Long

Three clocks run in a Florida estate, and they are not the same clock.

• The objection period. Once the notice of administration is served, an interested person has three months to challenge the will’s validity, the venue or the court’s jurisdiction. After that those grounds are barred.
• The creditor claim period. A creditor must file within the later of three months after the first publication of the notice to creditors, or thirty days after being served with it. Publishing that notice is the only mechanism that closes the door in months rather than years.
• The two-year repose. Independently of everything else, claims against a Florida decedent are barred two years after the death, whether or not an estate was ever opened. It is a statute of nonclaim rather than an ordinary limitations period, and it is not subject to waiver or extension. The one carve-out is for a creditor who already filed a timely claim inside the two years and has not been paid: that claim survives.

There is a provision almost nobody uses: a summary administration may optionally publish a notice to creditors, which drops the bar for unknown creditors from two years to three months. Where a family wants to sell the house promptly, that election can be worth more than the cost of the publication.

One creditor deserves its own sentence, because it surprises people: if the person who died received Medicaid benefits, the State of Florida may assert a claim against the estate to recover what it paid. It is a claim like any other, subject to the same deadlines, and protected homestead passing to heirs is generally beyond its reach — but it should never be a surprise discovered after money has gone out the door.

What Passes Outside Probate, and What Estate Administration Actually Reaches

A great many families open an estate they never needed, because most of what people own does not pass through probate at all. A bank or brokerage account held jointly with right of survivorship goes to the survivor. So does an account with a payable on death designation (a POD account), an investment account with a transfer on death registration, a life insurance policy, and an IRA, 401(k) or annuity with a living named beneficiary. Property titled in a funded revocable trust is governed by the trust, not the court. A Florida homestead with a recorded lady bird deed passes automatically. What estate administration actually reaches is the narrower set left over: assets in the deceased person’s sole name with no beneficiary attached.

Two traps in that list. A beneficiary designation that names someone who died first, or was never updated after a divorce, can drop the asset back into the estate. And a trust that was signed but never funded controls nothing. Before assuming an estate must be opened, it is worth reading the titling on every account — the answer is often that only one asset actually requires a court. Our pages on when probate is not necessary and which assets are exempt from probate go through this in detail, and transferring a vehicle title after a death has its own rules that avoid probate entirely in defined circumstances.

Exempt Property and the Family Allowance

Separate from homestead, a surviving spouse and children are entitled to take certain property free of most creditors’ claims: household furniture, furnishings and appliances up to $20,000 in net value at the date of death; two motor vehicles under 15,000 pounds that the person used regularly; qualified tuition program accounts, including Florida Prepaid; and certain public-safety and state-employee death benefits. The right is not automatic in the sense that it takes care of itself. It is waived unless a petition to determine exempt property is filed by the later of four months after service of the notice of administration, or forty days after any proceeding involving the will or the exempt property ends — a deadline that arrives while a family is still sorting out the funeral. A family allowance of up to $18,000 is also available to support a spouse and dependent children during the administration.

What a Probate Lawyer St. Lucie County Families Hire Actually Costs

Florida law contains a fee schedule that is presumed reasonable for ordinary services in a formal administration — beginning at $1,500 for the smallest estates and stepping up through percentages of the compensable value. It is widely, and wrongly, described online as a statutory fee.

It is not. An attorney who charges on that schedule is required by statute to tell the client in writing that there is no mandatory statutory attorney fee; that the fee need not be based on the size of the estate and the presumed figure may not fit a particular administration; that the fee is negotiable; that choosing the attorney is the personal representative’s decision and the personal representative is not required to use the attorney who prepared the will; and that at the end of the representation the personal representative is entitled to a summary of the ordinary and extraordinary services performed. The client signs an acknowledgment of those disclosures. That duty is not new — it long predates the 2026 amendments, whatever a recently updated page may suggest — and the controlling text today is the version effective 1 July 2026.

Two consumer points that follow from it. The compensable value is the inventory value of the probate assets plus income earned during the administration — jointly held property, accounts with beneficiary designations and trust assets are not in the base. And the percentages decline as the estate grows, so any firm advertising a flat “3 to 5 percent” is wrong at both ends. The personal representative’s own commission is set separately.

What I do instead of posting a number is talk it through. Before you engage me I go over the specifics of your estate in detail — what is in it, whether real property is involved, whether anyone is likely to object, how much of the legwork your family can do — and then try to arrive at a flat fee, or some other arrangement that actually works for your situation. Estates are not interchangeable, and a figure advertised on a website before anyone has looked at the file is a guess dressed up as a quote. Whatever we agree on, you get it in writing before any work begins, along with the disclosures the statute requires.

If you are comparing probate attorneys in Port St Lucie Florida, three questions separate a real quote from a brochure: is the fee based on the statutory schedule or on hours, and which will it be in my case; what is not included, specifically — the deed, the ancillary filing, a contested claim; and who will actually answer the phone in month five. A firm that cannot answer all three in plain language is quoting you a category, not a case.

The Rules That Govern Your Case

Two bodies of law run a Florida estate: the statutes, in chapters 731 through 735, and the Florida Probate Rules, a fresh edition of which took effect on January 1, 2026 with roughly forty-five rules restated again on October 1, 2026. The probate laws in florida st. lucie county apply are the same statewide statutes that apply in Miami-Dade or Duval; what varies locally is procedure — how a division is organized, how proposed orders reach the judge, what a particular judge expects at a hearing.

That distinction is the answer to a question this office gets constantly. There is no separate set of florida probate rules of court st. lucie county practitioners follow. There are the statewide rules, plus the 19th Circuit’s administrative orders and each judge’s own published procedures. Anyone who tells you the county has its own probate code is confusing the local checklist with the law.

What the checklist does control is whether your filing is accepted. The florida rules probate procedure st. lucie county filings must satisfy include mandatory e-filing through the state portal, the paper originals described above, formal notice served correctly on the right people, an inventory within sixty days, and the circuit’s own opening and closing checklists attached to the proposed orders. Most rejected filings in this county fail on one of those five, not on anything substantive.

When a St. Lucie County Estate Becomes Contested

Not every case is administrative. Some estates arrive already broken. The most common patterns here are a will signed in the last months of a long illness, a second marriage with children from a first, a caregiver or neighbor who appeared late and left with a deed, a personal representative who stops communicating, and siblings who cannot agree whether to sell the family home.

A will contest is the one most people have heard of, and the one most often started too late. To contest a will in Florida you need a ground the law recognizes — lack of capacity when the will was signed, undue influence, improper execution, or fraud — and once the notice of administration is served you generally have three months to raise it. Disliking the outcome is not a ground. Being able to show that the person who benefited is the one who arranged the signing very often is.

The tools are specific. A caveat filed with the Clerk for $41 requires that you be given notice before a will is admitted or letters are issued — it is the cheapest protective step in Florida probate and it is nearly always filed too late. A petition to revoke probate challenges a will after the fact, on grounds including lack of capacity, undue influence, improper execution and fraud. A petition to remove a personal representative addresses a fiduciary who is not doing the job. Where co-owners of an inherited house deadlock, a partition action forces the question. And where a personal representative or an attorney has taken excessive compensation, the court can review it, with the burden falling on the person who took the money.

These matters are heard in the same Probate and Guardianship Division in Fort Pierce, on a much longer timeline, and they are where I spend a substantial part of my practice.

Guardianship in the 19th Judicial Circuit

Guardianship is the other half of this division’s docket in the 19th Judicial Circuit, and it arrives for the opposite reason: the person is still alive but can no longer manage their own affairs. It begins with a petition to determine incapacity, filed for $231, alongside a petition to appoint a guardian — $400 for guardianship of the person and property, $235 for the person alone. An examining committee evaluates the person, the court determines which rights, if any, they can no longer exercise, and it removes only those.

Guardianship files carry confidentiality protections that ordinary probate files do not, and the annual reporting is real: initial inventories over $25,000 draw an $85 audit fee, and annual financial returns draw audit fees scaled to the size of the estate. Contested guardianships — where family members disagree about who should serve, or whether the person is incapacitated at all — are among the most difficult matters in this division. A complete, well-drafted durable power of attorney and health care surrogate designation is the only reliable way to avoid the whole proceeding.

Working With a Probate Attorney St. Lucie County Families Can Reach Without Driving to Miami

My offices are in Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale, and the phone number on this page carries a 305 area code. It is fair to ask what that means for a family in Port St. Lucie, so here is the plain answer: almost nothing, and I would rather say so directly than bury it.

Florida probate is now conducted substantially at a distance. Filings go through the state e-filing portal from anywhere. Petitions and waivers are executed with remote online notarization. Hearings in this circuit are routinely conducted by video. Proposed orders go by email to the county probate mailbox. The documents that must travel physically — the original will, the original death certificate — go to Fort Pierce by mail, and they would have gone by mail whether my office were in Coral Gables or on U.S. 1 in Port St. Lucie.

So when someone searches for a probate attorney near me from a house in St. Lucie West, the honest answer is that proximity is no longer the variable it was ten years ago. What matters is whether the probate lawyer Port St Lucie families hire has actually filed in Fort Pierce, knows what this division expects, and answers the phone.

What you get in exchange is the thing a larger firm cannot offer. I am a solo practitioner. There is no associate the file gets handed to in month three and no paralegal who becomes your only point of contact. The same attorney takes your first call, signs your petition, argues your hearing and closes your estate. If that is not what you want, it is a reason to hire someone else, and you should know it before you call rather than after.

Estate Planning, Trusts and Asset Protection

This page is about what happens after a death. The work that prevents it is a different conversation, and it lives on its own pages: estate planning in Florida, revocable living trusts, lady bird deeds, and advance directives and health care surrogates.

It is worth naming the confusion, because it costs people time. Families searching for an estate attorney Port St Lucie FL and families searching for a probate attorney are usually looking for two different things — the first is planning, done while everyone is alive; the second is administration, done after someone has died. If a death has already occurred, planning documents are no longer the question, and reading further down a planning page will not help. Likewise, comparing estate lawyers in Port St Lucie FL for a will and comparing counsel for a contested estate are different exercises with different criteria.

Areas Served Across the Treasure Coast

I represent personal representatives, heirs, beneficiaries and trustees throughout the 19th Judicial Circuit and across Florida.

St. Lucie County — Port St. Lucie, including Tradition, St. Lucie West, Torino, Sandpiper Bay, River Park, Tesoro, Ballantrae, The Vineyards, Lake Charles, Magnolia Lakes, Cross Creek, Veranda Falls and the Becker Road corridor (34952, 34953, 34983, 34984, 34986, 34987); Fort Pierce, including Lakewood Park, Indian River Estates, White City, South Beach and Hutchinson Island (34945, 34946, 34947, 34949, 34950, 34981, 34982); and St. Lucie Village.

Within the city itself, the estates that reach this court cluster where the retirees are. Port St. Lucie’s active-adult and 55-plus communities — Del Webb at Tradition and Vitalia at Tradition, Riverland and the Valencia neighborhoods, PGA Village and PGA Verano, and Kings Isle and Cascades in St. Lucie West — account for a share of the county’s probate filings out of all proportion to their share of its rooftops. They also tend to produce the same three complications together: a Florida homestead that is the largest asset in the estate, children and grandchildren who live in another state, and a will or trust signed years ago under the law of wherever the family lived before. Each of those is manageable on its own. Meeting all three for the first time after a death, with no warning, is what turns a straightforward administration into a long one.

Martin County — Stuart, Palm City, Jensen Beach, Port Salerno, Hobe Sound, Sewall’s Point and Indiantown.

Indian River County — Vero Beach, Sebastian, Fellsmere, Wabasso and Orchid.

Okeechobee County — Okeechobee and the surrounding communities.

Because all four counties sit in the same circuit, an estate in Stuart or Vero Beach follows the same rules, reaches the same division and moves on the same schedule as one in Port St. Lucie — only the clerk’s counter changes.

Se Habla Español

Atiendo casos de sucesión en español, desde la primera llamada hasta el cierre del expediente. Si su familia perdió a un ser querido que vivía en Port St. Lucie o Fort Pierce, o que era dueño de una propiedad en el condado de St. Lucie sin residir en Florida, puedo explicarle el proceso completo en su idioma — qué se presenta, cuánto cuesta, cuánto demora y qué pasa con la casa. No hace falta que un familiar traduzca documentos legales por usted.

Frequently Asked Questions About Probate in St. Lucie County

Where is probate filed for someone who died in Port St. Lucie?

With the St. Lucie County Clerk of the Circuit Court at 201 S. Indian River Drive, Fort Pierce, FL 34950, and heard in the 19th Judicial Circuit’s Probate and Guardianship Division. Filings are made electronically through the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal; original wills, codicils and death certificates go to Fort Pierce on paper.

Is there a separate probate court in St. Lucie County?

No. What people call the St Lucie County probate court is a division of the circuit court, not a court of its own — Florida abolished separate probate courts in 1972. The distinction matters when you are looking for forms, judges or records, because everything is filed under the circuit court’s system.

Do I need a probate attorney Port St Lucie residents can meet in person?

Rarely, and it is worth deciding on purpose rather than by default. Filings are electronic, signatures are handled by remote online notarization, hearings in this circuit are commonly conducted by video, and the original documents travel to Fort Pierce by mail from any address. An in-person meeting is available if you want one; it is not something the case requires.

I searched for a Port St Lucie Florida probate court and got a Fort Pierce address. Is that right?

Yes. No courthouse in this city hears probate, so a search for a Port St Lucie Florida probate court resolves to the county courthouse at 201 S. Indian River Drive in Fort Pierce. That is the correct destination, not a mapping error.

Do I need a lawyer to go through probate in Florida?

In a formal administration, almost always. Florida’s probate rules require a personal representative to be represented by an attorney unless the personal representative is the sole interested person or is an attorney. Summary administration and disposition without administration have no personal representative at all, so the requirement does not reach them the same way — but the Clerk cannot give legal advice, and it publishes no forms for formal administration for exactly that reason.

Can I file probate myself in Florida?

You can file a summary administration or a disposition of personal property yourself, and the Clerk publishes packets for both. What you cannot do is get advice from the counter, and the mistakes that follow — the wrong route chosen, homestead handled as an ordinary asset, a creditor never noticed, an heir never served — are usually more expensive to fix than the fee would have been.

How do I contact the probate court in St. Lucie County?

Through the Clerk. The probate court St Lucie County residents deal with has no separate public line of its own, so procedural questions — what was filed, what a fee is, whether an order has been signed — go to the Clerk at 772-462-6900, or to the courthouse at 201 S. Indian River Drive, Fort Pierce. Court staff can tell you what is on the docket. They cannot tell you what to do about it.

How much does probate cost in St. Lucie County?

The filing fee is $400 for formal administration and $345 for a summary administration of $1,000 or more. Beyond that, the cost is attorney’s fees, the personal representative’s compensation, publication of the notice to creditors, certified copies, and any appraisal. Florida’s fee schedule is presumed reasonable, not mandatory, and any attorney charging on it must give you written disclosures saying so.

What does it cost to do a probate in Florida, all in?

Filing fee, publication of the notice to creditors, certified copies, any appraisal, the personal representative’s compensation, and attorney’s fees. The court’s share is the smallest and most predictable part of it — $400 to open a formal administration in St. Lucie County. Everything above that depends on what is in the estate and whether anyone objects.

What are the most common mistakes in probate?

Five, in roughly the order they show up: choosing the wrong route and having to convert the case later; distributing money to beneficiaries before the creditor period closes, which can leave the personal representative personally exposed; treating homestead as an ordinary estate asset; missing the deadline to claim exempt property; and paying the deceased person’s bills out of pocket without knowing which ones are reimbursable. Every one of them costs less to avoid than to unwind.

How much should a probate lawyer cost in Florida?

What lawyers charge to handle probate in Florida depends on the route, the assets and whether anyone objects. Ask for the basis in writing before you engage — statutory schedule or hourly, what is included, and what is billed separately. Any St Lucie County probate attorney should be able to put that on one page.

When should I call a Port St. Lucie probate lawyer?

Before anything is filed. Any St Lucie County probate lawyer will tell you the same thing, and for a reason: the route chosen in the first two weeks — formal, summary, or disposition without administration — sets the cost, the timeline and the family’s exposure to creditors, and it is far cheaper to choose correctly than to convert a case later. Call sooner still if a caveat may be needed, if a will is likely to be challenged, or if a house is about to go under contract.

How long does probate take in St. Lucie County?

Six to twelve months for an uncontested formal administration, four weeks to three months for a summary administration, and one to three years if the estate is contested. The three-month creditor period sets the floor and cannot be shortened.

What is the realistic probate timeline for a Port St. Lucie estate?

The probate timeline florida port st. lucie families should plan around starts on the day the notice to creditors is published, not on the day of death and not on the day of filing. Everything before publication is preparation; everything after it runs on a statutory clock.

Can a Florida probate be finished in 30 days?

Only a summary administration or a disposition without administration, and only when nothing needs to be sold and nobody objects. Any promise of a thirty-day formal administration is describing the paperwork, not the case.

What is the 10 day rule for probate in Florida?

Whoever holds the original will must deposit it with the Clerk in the county where the person lived within ten days of learning of the death, together with the date of death or the last four digits of the Social Security number. There is no criminal penalty for missing it, but a custodian without a reasonable excuse can be ordered to pay the costs, damages and attorney’s fees caused by the delay.

Was the summary administration limit really $75,000? What changed?

It was, until July 1, 2026, when it rose to $150,000. The Florida Supreme Court conformed the corresponding rule two weeks later. Several court and law firm pages still publish $75,000; the St. Lucie County Clerk’s probate page publishes the current figure.

Does my house count toward the summary administration limit?

Protected homestead is excluded from the calculation, on two independent grounds. A substantial home plus a modest bank account can still qualify.

My parent died more than two years ago. Is the estate too big for summary administration?

No. The two-year ground carries no value limit at all. The complication in an old estate is proof and missing paperwork, not the dollar figure.

What are the steps to probate a will if the person lived in Port St. Lucie?

Deposit the original will, file the petition for administration with the Clerk in Fort Pierce, serve formal notice where required, obtain letters of administration, serve the notice of administration, publish the notice to creditors, file an inventory within sixty days, resolve claims and the house, then account and petition for discharge. Those are the steps to probate a will in florida port st. lucie residents follow in a formal administration; a summary administration compresses the middle of that list rather than skipping it.

What are the first three steps if I have just been told I am the executor?

Secure the original will, order five to ten certified death certificates, and stop paying the deceased person’s bills out of your own pocket until you have advice — reimbursement is available in some circumstances and not in others, and the sequence matters. Those first moves shape the steps for probate in florida st. lucie county courts will expect from you for the rest of the case.

What happens if someone dies without a will in St. Lucie County?

The estate still opens; Florida’s intestacy statute simply supplies the answers the will would have. The probate process in florida without a will st. lucie county families go through uses the same court, the same fees and the same timeline, with an added step: establishing who the heirs are, usually by an affidavit of heirs.

I already filed the will. Do I still need an affidavit of heirs?

Usually yes. Depositing the will and proving who is entitled to notice are two different requirements, and the court needs the second even when the first is complete.

Who can serve as personal representative of a Florida estate?

Any qualified Florida resident, and a non-resident only if they are related to the person who died within the categories the statute allows. A friend, a partner or a distant connection who lives out of state cannot serve, no matter what the will says.

How do I search probate records in St. Lucie County?

Through the Clerk’s public search portal, free and without an account. A St Lucie County FL probate court records search will show whether a case exists, its number and its docket, but inventories and accountings are confidential by statute and will not appear even in an open file.

How do I look up Port St. Lucie probate records?

Through the county system, which is the only one there is. Port St Lucie probate records are indexed with every other estate filed in the county, searchable by name or by case number, and free to read. Inventories and accountings are the exception: those are confidential by statute and do not appear even in an otherwise open file.

Where do I get probate forms for St. Lucie County?

The Clerk publishes packets for summary administration and for disposition of personal property. It publishes none for formal administration and refers people to the Rupert J. Smith Law Library in Fort Pierce. That absence is not an oversight — a formal administration is not a form-filling exercise, and the risk of assembling one from templates found online is that the errors surface months later, in front of a judge, when they are expensive to undo.

Are there local probate rules unique to this county?

No. The florida probate rules of court port st. lucie cases follow are the statewide Florida Probate Rules, in the edition effective January 1, 2026, alongside chapters 731 to 735 of the statutes. What is local is procedure — the 19th Circuit’s administrative orders, its checklists and each judge’s own published requirements.

Which rules of procedure apply to a probate case in this circuit?

The florida rules of probate procedure port st. lucie filings must satisfy are the same rules applied in every Florida circuit, most recently restated in 2026. Where cases go wrong locally is almost never the rule itself — it is mandatory e-filing, the paper originals, formal notice, the sixty-day inventory, and the circuit’s proposed-order protocol.

How do I get a signed order from the probate judge?

In this circuit, the proposed order is emailed to the county probate mailbox in Microsoft Word, with the case number, estate name and document type in the subject line and the relevant checklist attached. E-filing a proposed order without emailing it is one of the most common reasons a St. Lucie County case sits.

What is a grant of probate, and how long does it take here?

Florida does not use the term. Anyone searching for a grant of probate timeline port st. lucie estates follow is usually looking for the point at which letters of administration issue, which in an uncontested case is roughly two to six weeks after filing. “Grant of probate” is British and Commonwealth terminology, and it appears in Florida only when a family has dealt with an estate abroad.

My parent lived in another state but owned a condo on Hutchinson Island. What do I file?

An ancillary administration in St. Lucie County, or the short-form procedure if there was a will, the Florida property is worth $50,000 or less gross, and you file within two years of the death.

How long do creditors have to file a claim?

The later of three months after the first publication of the notice to creditors, or thirty days after being served with it — all under an outer two-year bar that runs from the date of death regardless of what else happens.

What is a caveat and why would I file one?

A caveat filed with the Clerk for $41 entitles you to notice before a will is admitted or letters are issued. If you have reason to think an estate is about to be opened by the wrong person or on the wrong will, it is the cheapest protective step available — and it only works before the fact.

Can probate be avoided entirely?

Often, before a death: a funded revocable trust, a lady bird deed on the homestead, beneficiary designations kept current, and correctly titled accounts will carry most St. Lucie County families past the courthouse. After a death, the options narrow to choosing the least burdensome route that the facts allow.

Talk to a Port St. Lucie Probate Attorney

If a family member has died and you are trying to work out what to file, where to file it and what it will cost, that is a conversation worth having before anything is filed rather than after. The route you choose in the first two weeks determines the florida probate process timeline port st. lucie estates end up following, what the filing costs, whether a personal representative has to be appointed at all, and how exposed the family is to a creditor who shows up in month nine.

What I will tell you on that call: which of the three routes your facts actually support, what the Clerk in Fort Pierce will charge, what the realistic florida probate timeline st. lucie county gives you for an estate like yours, and what the fee arrangement would be, in writing. If the answer is that you do not need me — and for some small estates it is — I will tell you that too.

Whether you found this page searching for a Port St Lucie probate attorney, a St. Lucie County estate lawyer, or simply for what to do with a will you have just been handed, the first call costs nothing and usually shortens the case.

The first conversation is a free consultation, by phone or by video, with no obligation and no pressure to retain anyone. Bring the will if you have it, the death certificate if it has been issued, and any letter a bank, a title company or a creditor has already sent you.

Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Esq. · Florida Bar No. 107002 · Lorenzo Law
Call (305) 224-6811 or send a message. Consultations by phone or video; no drive to South Florida required.