Tampa Probate Lawyer: One County, Two Courthouses, Twenty-Five Miles Apart

A Tampa probate lawyer working in Hillsborough County starts with a question that sounds trivial and is not: what was the home address of the person who died? Not the city on the envelope, not where the family lives now — the street address on the day of death. In this county that one fact decides which courthouse takes the file, which judge hears it, and where everyone has to drive.

Most people assume the answer is downtown. Hillsborough is a single county with a single circuit, so what is there to decide? But a probate attorney Tampa families reach for the first time will usually explain, somewhere in that first call, that the Thirteenth Circuit runs its probate work out of two courthouses, and that an address in the eastern half of the county goes to the second one.

This page is written around that, because it is the thing most often got wrong, and because everything downstream — the judge, the hearing calendar, the drive, the clerk you telephone — follows from it. If you already know the address was inside the City of Tampa, skip to the filing section. If the address was in Brandon, Valrico, Riverview, FishHawk, Plant City or anywhere east of about I-75, read the next three sections first.

The wording you searched does not change the work. Probate lawyer Tampa, probate attorney Tampa FL, probate lawyer Tampa FL — the job is identical, and any Tampa probate attorney who tells you the distinction between lawyer and attorney matters is inventing a difference. There is one distinction that does matter: a Tampa estate lawyer may mean somebody who arranges a transfer before death or somebody who carries it out afterwards. Only one of those can still save you money.

We take probate matters across the State of Florida. A probate lawyer Tampa Bay families call and a probate attorney Tampa Bay families call are, in this office, the same person — the region is one market, and much of the work here comes from outside the city limits.

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

Start with the address of the person who died, not the city on the envelope

Section 733.101, Florida Statutes, puts probate “in the county in this state where the decedent was domiciled.” That is the statewide rule and it settles the county. In Hillsborough it does not settle the courthouse.

Hillsborough is unusual in Florida for being a single-county circuit. Section 26.021 provides that the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit is composed of Hillsborough County — one county, one circuit, no shared clerk with anyone else. Sarasota sits in a three-county circuit; Orange County shares its circuit with Osceola. Hillsborough shares with nobody.

Which is exactly why the split inside it catches people out. Every competitor page in this market treats venue as a non-issue, because on paper it is.

The 5:3 assignment rule in Administrative Order S-2024-013

The operative document is Administrative Order S-2024-013, “Probate Proceedings.” It provides that the Clerk assigns all proceedings under the Florida Probate Code — chapters 731 through 735 — to Probate, Guardianship, Mental Health and Trust Divisions “A” and “B” on a 5:3 ratio, “unless the decedent was domiciled in the East Division boundaries.”

Read that clause slowly, because it is doing a great deal of work. Two things follow from it.

First, for a decedent domiciled in the western part of the county, the division is assigned by rotation. You do not choose your judge and neither does anyone else. Second — and this is the part that costs people a morning — if the domicile was inside the East Division, the rotation does not apply at all. The file goes east.

The same order carries a deadline worth knowing before your first hearing: any petition, pleading, motion or other document that is the subject of a hearing “must be filed with the clerk no later than five days before the hearing.” Hearing time itself is obtained through the circuit’s Judicial Automated Workflow System, or through the division’s email address, rather than by telephoning chambers.

The Clerk’s division lookup, and the addresses worth checking

You do not have to interpret the boundary yourself, and you should not try. The Clerk publishes an official Judicial Division Lookup — a lookup of a Hillsborough County street address that returns which division, East or Tampa, a case should be filed under.

It is a small tool and almost nobody in this market points at it. Put the decedent’s last home address into it before anything else happens, and the venue question is settled in thirty seconds with an authoritative answer rather than a guess.

The addresses most worth checking are the ones people are most confident about. Brandon, Valrico, Riverview, FishHawk and the communities out towards Plant City all carry ordinary Hillsborough mailing addresses, and families in them routinely assume their probate is a downtown Tampa matter. Some are; some are not. The point is not to memorise a line on a map — it is to stop assuming.

What actually changes when a file goes to Plant City

Quite a lot, and none of it is catastrophic.

The circuit is the same. The Clerk is the same office. Florida law is identical. What changes is the building, the judge and the drive. A file assigned east is heard at the Plant City Courthouse by one of three judges sitting in the East Division — Judge Michael S. Williams, Judge Cory L. Chandler or Judge James S. Moody III — rather than downtown. That is roughly twenty-five miles from the Edgecomb Courthouse, and on a weekday morning it is not a twenty-five-minute drive.

For a family already handling a death, an unnecessary trip to the wrong courthouse is a small cruelty. It is also entirely avoidable.

Filing a probate in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit

With the division settled, the mechanics are straightforward. Hillsborough County probate runs through the Clerk’s Probate, Guardianship and Trust department, and the two filing counters are as follows.

What you need	Where
File a petition, search a case, obtain certified copies, record a deed	George Edgecomb Courthouse, 800 E. Twiggs Street, Tampa — Room 204
The same, for an East Division file	Plant City Courthouse, 301 N. Michigan, Room 1071
Filings by post	P.O. Box 3360, Tampa, FL 33601-3360
Probate department telephone	(813) 276-8100

Counter hours at both locations run 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday.

One building downtown: the counter and the courtroom

Here Hillsborough is kinder than its neighbours. Downtown, the Clerk’s probate counter and the probate courtrooms are in the same building. The counter is Room 204 of the George Edgecomb Courthouse; Judge Catherine M. Catlin sits in Division A in Room 445 and Judge Caroline Tesche Arkin in Division B in Room 442. Counter, courtroom, one lift.

That is worth saying because it is not how every Florida county works, and the contrast is instructive. In Orange County the case file and the deeds live with two different elected offices in two different buildings, which we set out on our Orlando probate lawyer page. In Sarasota the clerk’s counter and the courtrooms sit a block apart on different streets, which we cover on the Sarasota probate attorney page. Tampa’s version of the problem is not counter-versus-courtroom. It is east-versus-west.

The Plant City courthouse and its three probate divisions

The East Division is not a satellite counter with limited hours. It is a working probate venue with three divisions of its own — O, U and W — and its own Clerk’s counter in Room 1071.

An East Division estate is opened there, heard there, and closed there. Nothing about the substance differs. A family in Plant City is not getting a lesser process; they are getting the same process in a nearer building, which is the point of having it.

One office does both jobs: Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller

Hillsborough combines two functions that some Florida counties split. The office is styled the Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, and the current officeholder is Victor D. Crist, who took office in January 2025. Many secondary sources — directories, older law firm pages, AI answers trained on stale data — still name his predecessor. If a page tells you otherwise, it has not been updated in over a year.

Practically, it means the office that opens your probate file is also the office that records the deed at the end of it. One counter, one set of official records, one telephone number. That is a genuine convenience, and it is why the recording step in a Tampa estate is less confusing than in some markets.

For case searching, records and forms — the navigational side of all this — our Hillsborough County probate court page is the fuller guide, and it is where probate court Tampa questions about addresses and hours are answered in more detail. It also answers, at length, how to file probate in Hillsborough County step by step. This page is about the decisions, not the counter.

What it costs to open a probate in Hillsborough County

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

Filing	Fee
Formal administration	$400.00
Ancillary administration	$400.00
Trusts	$400.00
Summary administration, estate of $1,000 or more	$345.00
Summary administration, estate under $1,000	$235.00
Disposition of personal property without administration	$231.00
Foreign will	$231.00
Guardianship	$231.00
Caveat	$41.00
Notice of trust	$41.00

Those figures sit slightly above the statewide statutory schedule at section 28.2401, which is normal — the statute sets a base and service charges are added on top. Where the two disagree, the Clerk’s published number is the one you will actually be asked for.

Three costs make up a Tampa probate: that filing fee, publication of the notice to creditors in a newspaper of general circulation in the county, and the attorney’s fee, which is much the largest of the three. Our page on the cost of probate in Florida works through the arithmetic, and it is the right place to look if what you want is how much is probate in Florida in general terms rather than in Hillsborough specifically.

What the estate pays the lawyer, and what it pays the executor

Two different fees, frequently confused, and both come out of the estate rather than out of anyone’s pocket.

Section 733.6171 sets out attorney compensation presumed reasonable in formal administration, scaled to the value of the estate: a flat $1,500 up to $40,000, additions through the middle bands, then 3% of the value between $100,000 and $1 million, tapering above that. The statute also requires a written disclosure stating plainly that “there is not a mandatory statutory attorney fee for estate administration,” that the fee is subject to negotiation, and that the personal representative chooses their own lawyer. An attorney who fails to make that disclosure may not be paid without court approval or the written consent of every interested party. So when people ask how much does a probate lawyer cost in Florida, the honest answer is that the statute describes a presumption, not a price, and an agreed flat fee is common and frequently lower.

The representative’s own compensation is separate. Executor fees in Florida — or, in the statute’s own vocabulary, Florida personal representative fees — follow a comparable graduated schedule, and Florida executor compensation is likewise a presumption that can be varied by the will or by agreement. How much does an executor get paid in Florida therefore has the same shape of answer as the lawyer’s fee: a default, not a rule. Where the representative is also the sole beneficiary, they frequently waive it, since taking a fee converts an inheritance into taxable income.

On who pays probate attorney fees in Florida — the estate does, out of estate assets, before anything is distributed to beneficiaries. Families are rarely asked to fund administration personally.

One thing worth asking any probate lawyer Tampa FL residents are considering: whether the quoted figure includes the filing fee and the publication cost or sits on top of them. The two answers differ by several hundred dollars.

Three cities, and everywhere else is unincorporated Hillsborough County

Hillsborough has only three incorporated municipalities: Tampa, Temple Terrace and Plant City. Everything else — Brandon, Riverview, Valrico, FishHawk, Ruskin, Apollo Beach, Sun City Center, Lutz, Gibsonton, Thonotosassa — is unincorporated Hillsborough County.

For an estate this simplifies things considerably. There is no separate municipal process to worry about in an unincorporated community; the estate is administered by the county’s circuit court either way. Where the distinction does bite is in code enforcement, permitting and short-term rental rules on a property the estate is trying to sell — those follow the municipality if there is one, and the county if there is not.

It is also why probate attorneys in Tampa end up handling files from communities that have nothing to do with the city. A probate lawyer Hillsborough County families find through a search for the city name will spend a good deal of time on addresses twenty miles from downtown, and Tampa probate lawyers as a group draw most of their work from outside the city limits.

Sun City Center, Kings Point and the south-county estate

Down at the southern end of the county the demographics change so sharply that the files change with them.

Fifty-eight per cent aged sixty-five and over

On Census Bureau figures, the Sun City Center census designated place has a population of about 30,952 and 58.4 per cent of it is aged 65 and over. Against Hillsborough County at 16.5 per cent and the City of Tampa at 13.7 per cent, that is a concentration of roughly three and a half times the county rate. Just 7.2 per cent of the population is under 18.

Two more numbers matter for a probate practice. Owner-occupancy in Sun City Center runs at 84 per cent, against 61.5 per cent countywide and 50.3 per cent inside the city. And the median value of an owner-occupied home there is about $317,000, against $371,500 for the county.

Put those together and you have a community where nearly every estate involves a house the decedent owned outright, where homestead and exempt property are live in almost every file, and where the $150,000 summary administration threshold is genuinely decisive rather than academic. Add Kings Point, the large condominium community within it, and a Tampa elder law attorney will tell you that south Hillsborough produces a different file from north Hillsborough almost every time.

Manufactured homes are titled, not deeded

Here is the mechanic that catches families out, and almost no probate page in this market explains it.

A Florida mobile or manufactured home is not real property in the ordinary case. It is titled through the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, exactly like a vehicle. There is no deed. There is a certificate of title. And the lot underneath it is very often rented rather than owned, governed by the mobile home park tenancy rules in chapter 723.

That changes the answer to a question families ask constantly. The mobile home title transfer after death Florida law provides for is handled at a motor vehicle service centre, not at a courthouse, and in two common situations it does not require a probate at all.

Where the manufactured home was jointly titled and one owner has died, section 319.32 allows the surviving co-owner to have the deceased owner removed from the mobile home title at no fee, on a form, a death certificate and identification.

Where there is no will and the heirs agree, section 319.28 is more remarkable still: heirs of an intestate decedent need produce no probate court order at all, provided they file affidavits stating that the estate is not indebted and that the surviving spouse, if any, and the heirs have “amicably agreed among themselves upon a division of the estate.”

If the estate was probated, the transfer runs on the letters of administration and an assignment executed by the personal representative. But a family in Ruskin or Apollo Beach being told they must open a formal probate to move a mobile home should ask, first, whether either of those two routes applies. Often one does.

Condominium transfers and the estoppel certificate clock

Where the home is a condominium rather than a manufactured home, a second organisation joins the file.

Section 718.116 does the work. Subsection (8) requires the association to issue an estoppel certificate within ten business days of a written request, and caps what it can charge: up to $250 where nothing is delinquent, a further $100 for three-business-day expedited delivery, and a further $150 where delinquent amounts are owed. The certificate is binding for thirty days if delivered by hand or electronically, thirty-five if posted — and an association that understates the debt “waives the right to collect any moneys owed in excess of the amounts specified in the estoppel certificate from any person who in good faith relies upon” it.

The provision that bites hardest is subsection (1): a new owner is jointly and severally liable with the previous owner for assessments that accrued before the transfer. Which means the arrears do not die with the decedent. They travel with the unit, to the beneficiary or the buyer.

Request the certificate early. Ten business days is a deadline the association will use in full, and it sits inside your closing timetable rather than beside it.

Who can serve as personal representative of a Tampa estate

This is where more Hillsborough estates go sideways than anywhere else, and it is almost always a surprise.

Executor, personal representative: the same job, two words

Florida law does not use the word executor. The statutory term is personal representative, and the two mean the same thing — the person appointed by the court to gather the assets, deal with creditors, and distribute what is left. The executor of estate Florida families talk about in conversation and the personal representative Florida courts appoint on the order are one office under two names.

The appointment is evidenced by the letters of administration Florida courts issue on qualification. Banks, brokerages, title companies and the DHSMV will all ask to see them, and none of them will move without them. Very often the whole purpose of opening an estate is to obtain that one document.

Priority is set by statute rather than by agreement among the family. Under section 733.301 the person nominated in the will comes first. Section 733.302 then sets the baseline qualification: “any person who is sui juris and is a resident of Florida at the time of the death of the person whose estate is to be administered is qualified to act as personal representative in Florida.” Our page on selecting executors under Florida probate law works through the preference order in full.

Whether a Florida executor bond is required is a separate question, decided by the court and frequently waived by the will itself. It is worth checking the will’s wording before assuming a bond is needed, because obtaining one takes time.

MacDill, and the family that lives somewhere else

Now the restriction. Section 733.304 provides that a person not domiciled in Florida cannot qualify as personal representative unless they are a close relative — an adopted or adoptive child or parent, a spouse, a sibling, a lineal ascendant or descendant, or someone related by lineal kindred. A daughter in Georgia can serve. The trusted family accountant in Georgia cannot. Nor can the old friend named in a will drafted in Ohio in 1997.

In this county that provision does real work, because of the base. MacDill Air Force Base reports roughly 7,608 military personnel, 8,147 civilians and 11,147 military dependents, and — the number that matters here — approximately 37,900 military retirees and 34,600 surviving spouses and dependents in the surrounding region, against some 240,000 TRICARE beneficiaries.

That is a very large population whose adult children are frequently stationed, or settled, in another state entirely. The named executor is often exactly the person section 733.304 disqualifies. Nothing about that invalidates the will; it simply means somebody else has to be appointed and the will’s intention has to be honoured a different way. It is far better discovered in week one than in month four.

Two related points, since they come up in the same conversation. Survivor benefits — SBP annuities, Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation — generally pass by designation and are not estate assets at all, so they are not held up by the probate. And surviving spouses of service members frequently hold benefits under a designation made years before a later marriage or divorce, which is a paperwork problem worth checking early rather than a legal one.

The full Florida executor requirements, including the residency rule, are in sections 733.302 and 733.304. If you want the statutory language itself, the Florida personal representative statute is chapter 733, part III. And how to become executor of estate in Florida has a short procedural answer: you petition for administration, the court determines preference and qualification, and the letters issue.

When there is no will at all

Who becomes executor if there is no will in Florida is answered by section 733.301 in order: the surviving spouse first, then the person selected by a majority in interest of the heirs, then the heir nearest in degree. Intestate shares themselves come from sections 732.102 and 732.103, and the residency rule in 733.304 applies just the same.

Where the only asset is a homestead and the family is in agreement, an affidavit of heirship Florida title companies will accept sometimes resolves the title question without a full administration. It is not a universal shortcut and title underwriters differ on when they will take one — but it is worth asking about before opening a file that may not be needed.

Once appointed, the representative is a fiduciary and personally accountable for what they do with estate assets. The role is not honorary.

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

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

Summary administration under section 735.201 is available where the value of the estate subject to administration in Florida, less property exempt from creditors’ claims, does not exceed $150,000 — or where the decedent has been dead more than two years. No personal representative is appointed, the filing fee drops from $400 to $345, and a clean case can finish in weeks rather than months.

That threshold was $75,000 until very recently. It was doubled by CS/HB 1337, enacted as chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida, approved on 29 April 2026 and effective 1 July 2026.

Here is the practical warning. Both official Florida statute websites still display the old $75,000 figure. So does a great deal of published legal material, and so does a great deal of what an AI assistant will tell you, because it is reading those same pages. If something you are reading says $75,000 and does not cite chapter 2026-57, it predates July and it is wrong.

The same act moved three other thresholds. Disposition of personal property without administration under section 735.304 went from $10,000 to $20,000 of non-exempt personal property; income tax refunds from $2,500 to $5,000; and family payments from qualified accounts from $1,000 to $2,000.

The phrase that decides most files is “less property exempt from creditors’ claims,” because in a county where so many decedents owned their home outright, protected homestead is frequently excluded from the computation — which can move an estate from the long route to the short one on paper alone. Our page on summary administration in Florida sets out the full test.

Formal administration follows a fixed sequence: deposit the original will, petition for administration, appointment and letters, notice to creditors, inventory at date-of-death value, homestead determination where there is a house, payment of valid claims, then distribution and closing. If you searched how does probate work in Florida or what is the probate process in Florida, that list is the answer, and when is probate required in Florida has a shorter one: whenever an asset was titled solely in the decedent’s name with no beneficiary and no right of survivorship, and nothing else moves it.

Two related questions, briefly. Do all wills go through probate in Florida — no; a will only governs assets that were going through probate anyway. And how to probate a will in Florida begins not with a petition but with the deposit obligation in the next section.

The first two weeks, and the ten-day duty nobody is told about

Most of what matters in the first fortnight is administrative rather than legal, and a Hillsborough County probate checklist for those two weeks is shorter than people fear.

Certified death certificates in Hillsborough County

Certified copies of a Florida death come from the Department of Health in Hillsborough County. The walk-in vital statistics office is at 13601 N. 22nd Street in Tampa; postal requests go to the Vital Statistics office at a separate post office box, and the telephone number is 813-307-8002.

The published fee is $10.00 per certificate, with a $3.00 protective cover and a $10 expedite charge for fax or mail service. Walk-in requests are processed while you wait; postal requests take five to ten business days. The county office holds Florida deaths from 2009 to the present — anything earlier comes from the state Bureau of Vital Statistics in Jacksonville.

A copy showing cause of death is restricted. You must be the spouse, parent, child, grandchild or sibling of the decedent, of legal age, or provide documentation of an interest in the estate or authorisation from an eligible relative — and a legible copy of a valid driver’s licence, passport, state-issued identification or military identification must accompany every request.

Order more than you think you need. Every bank, insurer, pension administrator and title company keeps its own copy, and ask for at least one without cause of death for institutions that have no business seeing it.

Where an original will usually turns out to be

Section 732.901 requires the custodian of a will to deposit it with the clerk of the court having venue within ten days of learning that the testator has died. The signed original, not a copy. Whether or not anybody intends to open an estate. The clerk must then retain it for at least twenty years.

Almost nobody knows this duty exists, and it is the commonest quiet default in Florida probate. In Hillsborough the deposit goes to Room 204 downtown or to Room 1071 in Plant City — and yes, that is the East Division question again, arriving on day one.

Look properly before concluding there is no will. Safe deposit boxes, the drafting attorney’s file, the back of a filing cabinet, and — in a county with this much migration into it — a lawyer’s office in another state, often one that closed years ago. Our checklist of what to do when someone dies in Florida covers the rest of the fortnight, including bank accounts: an institution that learns of a death restricts the account, joint and payable-on-death accounts usually pass straight through, and a solely held account will not release until letters of administration exist.

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

Formal administration takes a minimum of about six months because the creditor period has to run its course. Nine to eighteen months is more typical where property is being sold. Summary administration can finish in weeks. That is the honest answer to how long is probate in Florida, and the range is wide because the variable is rarely the court.

Section 733.212 governs the notice of administration and gives interested persons three months from service to object to the will, the venue or the court’s jurisdiction. Section 733.702 sets the claim period — three months from first publication of the notice to creditors, or thirty days from service on a known or reasonably ascertainable creditor, whichever is later for that creditor. Section 733.710 then bars most claims two years after death regardless of what was or was not filed, subject to timely-filed claims and recorded mortgages.

What happens if you don’t file probate in Florida is not that the problem expires. Title does not move, the house cannot be sold or refinanced and stays in a dead person’s name, and solely held accounts stay frozen. The ten-day deposit duty survives regardless. Waiting past the two-year mark bars most creditors, which sounds attractive until you discover that it has done nothing at all to clear title.

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

Homestead, exempt property and the Tampa family home

Florida homestead does two separate jobs and confusing them causes real damage.

There is the property tax exemption, administered by the county property appraiser. And there is constitutional protected homestead, which shields the home from most creditors and dictates who inherits it under section 732.401 — where a decedent is survived by a spouse and one or more descendants, the spouse takes a life estate, or may elect a half interest as tenant in common, and the will cannot override it.

Alongside it sits exempt property under section 732.402: household furniture, furnishings and appliances in the decedent’s usual place of abode up to a net value of $20,000, two motor vehicles under 15,000 pounds gross weight, qualified tuition programmes, and certain death benefits.

Protected homestead is generally not an asset of the probate estate. That does not mean nothing has to be done — an order determining homestead is normally still required before a sale can close, and in a county where owner-occupancy runs at 61.5 per cent that order is a routine part of the work rather than an exception.

Selling an inherited Tampa house and recording the deed

A personal representative sells under the authority of the will or an order of the court. The buyer’s title company will ask for exactly those documents plus the letters of administration, and marketing a property before they exist produces a contract nobody can close.

That is the practical answer to sell house in probate Tampa, and to selling a house in probate Tampa FL, and to the cash-buyer version people search as sell my probate house in Tampa Bay. Our guide to selling a house during probate walks the sequence in order.

Families selling an inherited house in Florida usually ask about tax before procedure, and the answer is normally reassuring. Establish date-of-death value early — it fixes the stepped-up basis, and on a Seminole Heights or Hyde Park bungalow held since the 1980s the step-up removes most of the taxable gain on a prompt sale. An appraiser for probate Tampa FL work will accept should be instructed near the date of death, not two years later when reconstructing the value is far harder and far more expensive. Whether to sell inherited house Florida families have just received, or keep it, is a decision worth making with that number in hand rather than without it.

The personal representative’s deed, and where it is recorded

The instrument that actually moves the property is a personal representative deed Florida title underwriters will accept precisely because it recites the representative’s authority on the face of the document. It is not a warranty deed and it is not a quit claim deed — a Hillsborough County quit claim deed has its own uses between family members, but it is the wrong instrument for a transfer out of an estate.

Recording runs at $10.00 for the first page, $8.50 for each additional page and $1.00 per name indexed beyond four, with documentary stamp tax at $0.70 per $100 of consideration, under section 28.24 and as published by the Clerk. And because Hillsborough combines the offices, it records at the same counter that opened the file.

Storm damage, an open insurance claim and the estate

This is current, local, and routinely missed.

Hillsborough County received $709 million from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for recovery from the 2024 hurricanes, of which roughly $211 million is dedicated to homeowner assistance under the county’s Rebuilding for Tomorrow Homeowner Repair and Reconstruction Program, which opened applications on 1 May 2026 and runs until the funding is obligated. Assistance runs to $350,000 for replacement or reconstruction, $10,000 to $50,000 in reimbursement for completed permitted work, and up to $150,000 for repairs not covered elsewhere, subject to income limits.

For an estate, three things follow. An open insurance claim is an estate asset — it does not lapse because the owner died, and the representative has both the authority and the duty to pursue it. Unpermitted or half-finished repair work is a title problem that will surface at closing, not before. And the question of inherited house repairs before selling in Florida is, in this county right now, frequently a question about whether an existing claim or an assistance application transfers with the property. Establish where the claim stands before agreeing a price.

Keeping the next Tampa estate out of probate

A great deal of this work exists because of instruments set up badly, set up in another state, or never funded at all.

The single most useful thing to understand is that does a will avoid probate in Florida has a one-word answer: no. A will does not avoid probate. It is instructions to the probate court, which means it guarantees a probate rather than preventing one. How to avoid probate in Florida is a question about ownership, not about documents: a properly funded revocable trust, a recorded enhanced life estate deed, live beneficiary designations, and joint ownership set up deliberately rather than by accident.

Does a trust avoid probate in Florida is very nearly yes, with one enormous caveat — only for the assets actually retitled into it. A trust drafted in Michigan by somebody who then moved to Tampa and never deeded the house into it will not avoid a thing. Unfunded trusts are among the most common expensive mistakes we see.

The instrument that most reliably keeps a Florida house out of probate is the enhanced life estate deed, the lady bird deed. Properly drafted and recorded it moves the property at death without a proceeding, and leaves homestead protection and the Save Our Homes assessment cap intact during life. Our explainer on lady bird deed tax consequences covers the trade-offs. This is what people are really asking about when they search avoid probate Tampa FL.

A Tampa estate planning attorney and a Tampa trust attorney are describing the same drafting work from different angles, and a Tampa estate attorney may be doing either. In a county with Hillsborough’s age profile the layer that matters most is often neither — it is the health care surrogate designation and the durable power of attorney, executed to Florida’s requirements, which prevent more litigation than any trust. Our page on the Florida health care surrogate sets out what execution actually requires.

Hillsborough County, Florida — not Hillsborough County, New Hampshire

A short note, because it costs people real time.

There are two Hillsborough Counties in the United States. The other is in New Hampshire, and its probate work runs through a Circuit Court Probate Division under an entirely different statutory scheme. Search results, directory listings and AI answers mix the two constantly.

The quick test: if what you are reading does not cite Florida Statutes chapters 731 to 735, it is not about your case. Florida’s Hillsborough County probate court sits in the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, at 800 E. Twiggs Street and at 301 N. Michigan in Plant City. If the page you are on mentions Nashua or Manchester, close it.

Talk to a Tampa probate lawyer before anything is filed

If somebody has died owning property in Tampa, Temple Terrace, Plant City, Brandon, Riverview, Valrico, Sun City Center or anywhere else in Hillsborough County, the useful first conversation is four questions long. What was their address on the day they died. What do they own that was in their name alone. Is there an original will, and where is it. And is anyone in the family living outside Florida.

Those four answers decide the courthouse, the route, the representative and the timeline. Call us and we will work through them before anything is filed. There is no charge for that conversation and no obligation at the end of it — and sometimes the honest answer is that a family does not need a probate attorney Tampa wide at all, because a mobile home title or a beneficiary designation will do the whole job.

We work across the region and across the state. Whether you searched for Tampa Florida probate lawyers, for probate estate lawyers Tampa families can actually reach, or simply for Tampa probate, the first call is the same and it is free. Families searching Tampa Bay probate from Pinellas or Pasco are welcome too, though the venue analysis on this page is Hillsborough-specific.

Tampa probate FAQs: cost, timing and which courthouse

What is probate in Florida?

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

Which courthouse handles probate in Hillsborough County?

Both of them, depending on the decedent’s address. Administrative Order S-2024-013 assigns probate cases to Divisions A and B at the George Edgecomb Courthouse, 800 E. Twiggs Street in Tampa, on a 5:3 ratio — unless the decedent was domiciled inside the East Division boundaries, in which case the case is assigned to Division O, U or W at the Plant City Courthouse, 301 N. Michigan, about twenty-five miles east. The Clerk publishes a Judicial Division Lookup tool that returns the correct division for any Hillsborough street address.

What assets are exempt from probate in Florida?

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

How long does probate take in Florida?

Summary administration can finish in a few weeks to a couple of months. Formal administration takes at least six months, because the creditor claim period under section 733.702 must run, and nine to eighteen months is more typical when real property is being sold. An estate with a contested issue, an unfunded trust or an out-of-state personal representative problem takes longer.

How much does probate cost in Florida?

Three separate costs. The Hillsborough County filing fee — $400 for formal administration, $345 for a summary administration of $1,000 or more, $235 below that. Publication of the notice to creditors. And the attorney’s fee, which is the largest. Section 733.6171 sets out fees presumed reasonable in formal administration based on the value of the estate, though an agreed flat fee is common and frequently lower.

Who pays probate attorney fees in Florida?

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

Is homestead property exempt from probate in Florida?

Protected homestead is not an asset of the probate estate and is beyond the reach of 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 in section 732.401 rather than freely under the will.

Who becomes executor if there is no will in Florida?

Section 733.301 sets the order: the surviving spouse first; then the person selected by a majority in interest of the heirs; then the heir nearest in degree. Florida calls the role personal representative rather than executor. A person who is not a Florida resident cannot serve unless they are a close relative by blood, marriage or adoption under section 733.304 — which disqualifies a great many named executors in a military community like Tampa’s.

How do you transfer a mobile home after the owner dies in Florida?

Through the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, not through the probate court, because a mobile home is titled rather than deeded. A surviving co-owner can have the deceased owner removed from the title at no fee under section 319.32(7). Where there is no will, section 319.28(1)(b) allows the heirs to transfer the title without any probate court order if they file affidavits that the estate is not indebted and that they have agreed on the division of the estate. If a probate is running, the transfer uses the letters of administration and an assignment by the personal representative.

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. A summary administration can be filed without counsel in narrow circumstances, which is what people are looking for when they search how to file probate in Florida without an attorney. Once there is real property, protected homestead, more than one beneficiary, a creditor, a condominium association or a non-resident representative involved, Florida practice effectively requires a lawyer.

Sources

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

• Florida Statutes — chapters 731 to 735, and sections 26.021, 28.24, 28.2401, 319.28, 319.32, 718.116, 732.102, 732.401, 732.402, 732.901, 733.101, 733.212, 733.301, 733.302, 733.304, 733.6171, 733.702, 733.710, 735.201 and 735.304, together with chapter 723 on mobile home park lot tenancies.
• Chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida (CS/HB 1337) — approved 29 April 2026, effective 1 July 2026, raising the summary administration threshold to $150,000, disposition without administration to $20,000, income tax refunds to $5,000 and qualified-account family payments to $2,000. Both official Florida statute websites still display the superseded $75,000 figure.
• Thirteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida — Administrative Order S-2024-013, “Probate Proceedings,” for the 5:3 division assignment, the East Division exception and the five-day filing deadline; the circuit’s divisional directory for the current probate judges; and its court locations page for the courthouse addresses.
• Hillsborough County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller — the Probate, Guardianship and Trust department pages for counter locations, room numbers, hours, the postal filing address and the probate telephone line; the published fees schedule for filing and recording fees and documentary stamp tax; and the Judicial Division Lookup tool for determining East or Tampa Division by street address.
• Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles — procedure TL-18, on titling a mobile home following the death of a registered owner.
• Florida Department of Health in Hillsborough County — death certificate fees, record years held, cause-of-death eligibility and identification requirements.
• United States Census Bureau, QuickFacts — population, age-65-and-over share, owner-occupancy rate and median home value for Hillsborough County, the City of Tampa and the Sun City Center census designated place.
• MacDill Air Force Base — official fact sheet, for personnel, dependant, retiree and surviving-spouse figures for the region.
• Hillsborough County government — the Rebuilding for Tomorrow Homeowner Repair and Reconstruction Program, for the HUD allocation, the assistance bands and the 1 May 2026 application opening.