The Villages Probate Lawyer

A probate case for someone who lived in The Villages is filed in Sumter, Lake or Marion County — three different clerks, three different courthouses, one judicial circuit. Which one depends on where the house physically sits, and a great many families get that wrong on the first try because a Villages mailing address is not a reliable guide to the county line.

That is the first thing a Villages probate lawyer should tell you, and it is the first thing this page does. What follows is the rest of it: which procedure your estate actually needs, what it costs, what happens to the bond and the amenity fee while the house sits empty, how to sell an inherited home from Ohio without flying down, and what to do when a will surfaced three months before your father died that nobody in the family had heard of.

There is no charge for the first conversation. Call (305) 224-6811.

The Short Version

• Three counties, one circuit. Sumter, Lake and Marion are all in Florida’s Fifth Judicial Circuit. Same circuit, same rules — but three separate clerks of court, in Bushnell, Tavares and Ocala. You file where the property and the decedent’s residence are, not where the mail went.
• Which appellate court governs is not academic. Section 35.043, Florida Statutes, places the Fifth Judicial Circuit in the Fifth District Court of Appeal. Fifth DCA decisions are binding here — while the same decisions are only persuasive an hour away in Orlando, which the 2023 redistricting moved into the Sixth District.
• Most estates do not need the expensive procedure. Summary administration, disposition without administration and non-probate transfers each cost a fraction of a formal administration. The most expensive mistake in this area is filing the wrong one.
• The summary administration ceiling changed in 2026. Chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida, raised it from $75,000 to $150,000 effective 1 July 2026. Whether that applies to a death before that date is an open question no Florida court has answered. Do not assume either figure.
• The estate usually pays the lawyer, not you. Attorney’s fees in a Florida probate are ordinarily paid from estate assets, not out of the personal representative’s (executor’s) pocket.
• The bond and the amenity fee do not stop when the owner dies. They keep running against an empty house for as long as the file stays open, and the first anyone hears about it is usually days before a closing.
• You can serve as personal representative from out of state — if you are related. Florida restricts who may serve when they live elsewhere, and the rule catches families by surprise.
• You probably do not have to come to Florida. Most Villages administrations can be handled remotely from start to finish.

Which County Is Your Villages Home In — Sumter, Lake or Marion?

The Villages is not a single municipality sitting inside a single county. It is a development that grew north to south across a county line, and then across another one. The original section sits in Lake County around Lady Lake. The Villages of Marion sits in Marion County. The large majority of the community — everything built south of County Road 466, and all of the newer development running south past State Road 44 — sits in Sumter County.

None of that is obvious from an address. A house with a 32162 zip code can be in any of the three. Neighboring homes on either side of a boundary road can belong to different clerks of court. So the answer to “where do we file?” is not a matter of general knowledge, it is a matter of pulling the parcel and reading it.

Where Is a Villages Probate Case Filed?

Under section 733.101, Florida Statutes, venue for the administration of an estate is in the county in Florida where the decedent was domiciled. If the person who died was a Florida resident living in The Villages, the case belongs in whichever of the three counties their home was actually located in. If they were not a Florida resident — the snowbird problem discussed further down this page — venue is where their property is, and the procedure is a different one entirely.

The practical consequence of getting this wrong is not catastrophic but it is expensive in the currency families care about most, which is time. A petition filed with the wrong clerk does not simply get forwarded. It gets rejected, refiled and re-queued, and you lose two to four weeks at the front of a case where the creditor clock and the sale of the house are both waiting on the letters of administration.

Sumter, Lake and Marion: Three Clerks, One Circuit

County	Where the case is filed	Which parts of The Villages
Sumter County	Bushnell — Sumter County Clerk of the Circuit Court, 215 E. McCollum Avenue, Bushnell, FL 33513. Clerk (352) 569-6600; court administration (352) 569-6950. Official Records is a separate building at 316 E. Anderson Avenue. There is also a Villages Annex at 8033 E. CR 466, The Villages, FL 32162, (352) 689-4625, and a Sumterville office at 215 Gloria Rowe Hayward Way. Both are marked limited services — do not assume a probate filing can be completed at either. Call first.	Most of The Villages — everything south of CR 466, the Southern Oaks and Middleton areas south of SR 44, plus Wildwood and Oxford
Lake County	Tavares — Lake County Clerk of the Circuit Court, Lake County Judicial Center, 550 W. Main Street, Tavares, FL 32778.	The original Villages around Lady Lake, plus Fruitland Park and Leesburg to the south-east
Marion County	Ocala — Marion County Clerk of the Circuit Court, 110 NW 1st Avenue, Ocala, FL 34475. Clerk (352) 671-5604; court administration (352) 401-6700. Mailing address is P.O. Box 1030, Ocala, FL 34478.	The Villages of Marion, plus Summerfield and Belleview to the north

If you have been searching for a Sumter County probate attorney, a Marion County probate lawyer or an Ocala probate attorney and getting three different sets of results, this is why. They are three counties. They are also, for every purpose that affects how your case is decided, one court system.

Are Sumter, Lake and Marion in the Same Judicial Circuit?

Yes. All three are in Florida’s Fifth Judicial Circuit, together with Citrus and Hernando counties. One circuit, one chief judge, one set of administrative orders governing how probate matters are assigned and heard.

This is worth stating plainly because it is commonly reported the other way. What differs between Sumter, Lake and Marion is the clerk — the filing office, the counter, the local fee schedule and the local queue. What does not differ is the substantive law, the rules of procedure or the circuit whose judges decide your case.

Which Appellate Court Decides a Villages Probate Appeal?

The Fifth District Court of Appeal. Section 35.043, Florida Statutes, provides that the Fifth Appellate District is composed of the Fourth, Fifth, Seventh and Eighteenth Judicial Circuits. Sumter, Lake and Marion are in the Fifth Judicial Circuit, so the Fifth DCA hears their appeals and Fifth DCA decisions are binding on the courts that will decide your case.

That is worth a sentence more than it usually gets, because Florida’s appellate map changed on 1 January 2023. Chapter 2022-163 created a new Sixth Appellate District, and section 35.044 composed it of the Ninth, Tenth and Twentieth Judicial Circuits — which moved Orange and Osceola counties out of the Fifth District. The practical result is that a Fifth DCA probate decision is controlling authority in The Villages and merely persuasive authority in Orlando and Kissimmee. Two of the most useful cases on this page — Harrell v. Snyder on selling a homestead, and Hack v. Janes on who carries the burden in an undue influence case — are Fifth DCA decisions, and they carry their full weight here.

Do the Three Counties Handle Filings the Same Way?

Not entirely. The substantive law is identical across Sumter, Lake and Marion, but each clerk and each division has its own filing conventions — how proposed orders are submitted, what has to accompany them, and what gets returned. Those conventions change from time to time, and a package that does not follow them costs the estate weeks for no substantive reason.

We confirm and follow the current local procedure in whichever of the three counties your case belongs to, before anything is filed.

How Do I Look Up a Villages Probate Case?

Each of the three clerks maintains its own online case search, and a probate case will not appear in the other two counties’ systems. If you do not know which county a relative’s estate was opened in — a common situation for an out-of-state child who was not told a case had been filed — you may have to search all three. Florida probate records are generally public, though certain filings within them are confidential by rule.

What Is a Restricted Depository in the Fifth Circuit?

An order that puts the estate’s money somewhere the personal representative cannot reach it without the court’s permission.

Section 69.031, Florida Statutes, lets a court with jurisdiction over an estate in administration order some or all of the estate’s personal property placed with a designated bank, trust company or savings and loan — typically where the bond that would otherwise be required is burdensome, or for other cause. The institution files a receipt in the name of the estate and holds the funds subject to instructions authorised by court order. Accountings are made at reasonably frequent intervals. The designated institution may accept or decline the designation.

Two practical points a personal representative should know. First, the depository is an alternative to bond, not an addition to it: in probate proceedings, section 69.031 expressly requires the court, in accordance with section 733.402, to allow the personal representative to elect at any time to post and maintain bond instead — whereupon the court vacates or terminates the depository order. If a restricted depository is making the administration unworkable, that election is available.

Second, it changes the rhythm of the case. Money that would otherwise move on the personal representative’s signature now moves on a court order, and that has to be built into the timeline for anything that needs funds — paying the carrying costs on a house, funding a closing, making a partial distribution.

Which Probate Route Will a Villages Estate Need?

What Is Probate, and Is Probate Required in Florida?

Probate is the court process that transfers what a person owned in their own name to whoever is entitled to it. How probate works in Florida is that a court in the county where the person lived supervises the transfer, confirms the will if there is one, gives creditors a defined window to come forward, and then authorises distribution.

None of that changes if there was no will. An estate is still administered; what changes is who inherits, because Florida intestate succession supplies the answer instead of a document. Probate is required in Florida only for assets that were in the decedent’s sole name with no other mechanism attached. It is not required for everything, and it is not always required at all — which is why the first useful question is not “how do I start probate” but “how much of this actually has to go through it.” Not all wills go through probate either: a will governs only the probate estate, so a will can exist and still be irrelevant to most of what the person owned.

Before anything else, then, the estate has to be sorted into a procedure. Families often assume there is one thing called probate that everyone goes through. There are several, they differ enormously in cost and duration, and choosing correctly is where most of the money is saved.

Route	When it fits	Rough shape
No administration at all	Everything passed outside probate — a funded revocable trust, jointly held property with survivorship, payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts, retirement accounts and life insurance with living named beneficiaries, an enhanced life estate (Lady Bird) deed	Nothing is filed. Assets are collected on beneficiary paperwork. Separately, section 735.303 lets a financial institution pay a family member up to $2,000 from the decedent’s accounts — no court proceeding, no order — on a sworn affidavit, beginning 6 months after the death. (The 2026 act doubled that from $1,000.) See Florida non-probate assets and when probate is not necessary.
Disposition without administration	Very small estates, essentially final-expense reimbursement	Section 735.301 — no fixed dollar cap; the ceiling floats, limited to non-exempt personal property not exceeding preferred funeral expenses plus reasonable and necessary medical expenses of the last 60 days. Handled by informal application, not a full proceeding. Section 735.304 is the intestate cousin: for a decedent dead more than a year with no administration pending, non-exempt personal property up to $20,000 (raised from $10,000 by the 2026 act) plus those same expenses.
Summary administration	Estate value under the statutory ceiling, or the death was more than two years ago	No personal representative is appointed. An order of distribution transfers the assets. Weeks to a few months. See below on the 2026 ceiling change.
Formal administration	Everything else — a personal representative is needed to sell property, deal with creditors, or resolve a dispute	Letters of administration issue, the creditor period runs, an inventory is filed, and the estate closes on discharge. Commonly six months to well over a year.
Ancillary administration	The person who died was not a Florida resident but owned the Villages home	Section 734.102. Runs alongside the home-state estate. See Florida ancillary probate.

What Happens If There Was No Will? Florida Intestate Succession

Dying intestate in Florida simply means dying without a valid will. It does not mean the state takes the property, which is the fear people arrive with and it is almost never true. What happens instead is that the Florida intestate laws set a fixed order of who inherits, and that order replaces the will. Intestate succession in Florida is statutory, not discretionary — the court does not choose, it applies the schedule.

Two statutes do the work. Section 732.102 sets the surviving spouse’s share, and section 732.103 distributes whatever does not go to the spouse.

The Surviving Spouse’s Share — § 732.102

The situation	The surviving spouse takes
No surviving descendant of the decedent	The entire intestate estate
All of the decedent’s descendants are also descendants of the surviving spouse, and the spouse has no other descendant	The entire intestate estate
One or more of the decedent’s surviving descendants are not lineal descendants of the surviving spouse	One-half
All of the decedent’s descendants are also the spouse’s, but the spouse has one or more descendants who are not the decedent’s	One-half

Read those last two rows twice if this is a second marriage, because they are the whole ballgame in a retirement community. A stepchild on either side — his children from a first marriage, or hers — cuts the surviving spouse from the entire estate to one-half. It does not matter how long the marriage lasted or how close the family is. The statute looks only at whose descendants exist.

Everyone Else — § 732.103

Whatever does not pass to the spouse — or the entire estate where there is no spouse — descends in this order:

1. To the decedent’s descendants.
2. If no descendant, to the decedent’s father and mother equally, or to the survivor of them.
3. If none of the foregoing, to the decedent’s brothers and sisters and the descendants of deceased brothers and sisters.
4. If none of the foregoing, the estate is divided in half — one half to the paternal kindred and one half to the maternal — in this order: grandfather and grandmother equally or the survivor; then uncles and aunts and the descendants of deceased uncles and aunts. If there is kindred on only one side, that side takes the whole estate in the same order.
5. If there is no kindred on either side, to the kindred of the decedent’s last deceased spouse, as if that spouse had survived and then died intestate.

Notice how far that ladder reaches before it runs out. Property escheating to the State of Florida is the outcome people fear and it sits below every one of those rungs, including the deceased spouse’s family. It is genuinely rare.

Who Becomes Executor If There Is No Will in Florida?

The court appoints someone, and Florida sets an order of preference rather than leaving it open. The surviving spouse has first preference; after that, preference goes to the person selected by a majority in interest of the heirs, and then to the heir nearest in degree. In practice, in a Villages estate, that usually means the surviving spouse or whichever adult child the others agree on.

Two things surprise families here. First, agreement matters — where the heirs can agree on one person, the court will normally appoint them, and where they cannot, the fight is over the appointment itself before anyone has touched an asset. Second, the residency rule still applies: an out-of-state child can serve, an out-of-state family friend generally cannot, and no will exists to say otherwise.

How Long Does Probate Take in The Villages?

How long probate takes in Florida depends almost entirely on which route the estate is in. A summary administration can be measured in weeks to a few months. A formal administration commonly runs six months to well over a year, because the creditor period alone accounts for three months from first publication and nothing closes until it has run. Add a will contest, a missing heir or a homestead question and the honest answer is longer still.

What lengthens a Villages case specifically is rarely the court. It is the house — waiting on an out-of-state family to agree, waiting on a sale, or waiting on paperwork nobody started for two months. Florida sets no deadline by which probate must be commenced after a death, so a file can also sit for years before anyone opens it.

Can Probate Be Avoided?

For the person who has already died, largely no — the planning window has closed, and what is left is choosing the cheapest procedure that fits. For everyone else reading this, how to avoid probate in Florida is a planning question with well-established answers: a funded revocable trust, beneficiary designations kept current, jointly held property, payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts, and an enhanced life estate deed. See Florida non-probate assets.

Can I File Probate Myself in Florida?

Only in the narrow circumstances described below — and the practical answer is usually no, because the situations where a personal representative may proceed without counsel are limited. Florida probate forms exist and the clerks publish self-help material, but the forms are not the hard part. Choosing the wrong procedure is what costs money, and no form catches that. Probate records in Florida are also presumptively public, so an administration is not a private process, though inventories and accountings are treated as confidential.

Does Mom’s Villages House Count Toward the Summary Administration Limit?

This is the question that decides which procedure you are in, and the answer turns on a distinction most families have never encountered: whether the house was protected homestead.

If the Villages home was the decedent’s homestead, it is generally not counted as an asset of the probate estate for this purpose and does not sit in the value calculation. That is what makes summary administration available to estates that, on paper, look far too large for it.

But that turns on the home actually being homestead. A Villages home that was the person’s permanent residence usually is. A second home — kept for the winter while the real domicile stayed in Pennsylvania or Michigan — is a different analysis with a different answer, and a family that assumes otherwise files the wrong petition and loses months. If you have seen a page telling you that a Florida home is simply excluded, understand that the general statement is doing a great deal of work that may not apply to your facts.

What Is the Summary Administration Limit in Florida Right Now?

Chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida (CS/HB 1337), section 7, raised the summary administration ceiling in section 735.201 from $75,000 to $150,000, effective 1 July 2026, with companion thresholds updated to match.

What is not settled is which estates the new figure reaches. The act’s effective-date provision is one sentence, and it is worth reading in full, because it is the whole of what the Legislature said on the subject:

Section 14. This act shall take effect July 1, 2026.

That is all of it. There is no clause saying the change applies “to all decedents dying on or after” a date — which is the formula the Legislature uses elsewhere when it means to tie a change to a date of death. Its absence here is notable, but absence is not an answer.

So the honest position is that no Florida court has decided whether the $150,000 ceiling reaches a person who died before 1 July 2026. Eligibility for summary administration is generally measured at the time the petition is filed, which is why many practitioners will file post-July petitions under the higher figure. A date-of-death argument remains available and has not been tested. Anyone telling you this is settled, in either direction, is telling you something no court has said.

A practical note. Court self-help materials, clerk handouts and law-firm pages across Florida still display $75,000, and will for some time. That is lag, not authority. Verify the figure against the current statute before you rely on it, and expect to explain the change to people who have not seen it yet.

Do I Need a Lawyer to Probate an Estate in Florida?

In most cases, yes, and the rule is narrower than people assume. Florida Probate Rule 5.030(a) requires every personal representative to be represented by an attorney admitted to practice in Florida, with exactly two exceptions: where the personal representative remains the sole interested person in the estate, and where the personal representative is themselves a Florida-admitted attorney, in which case they may represent themselves in that capacity.

"Sole interested person" is a genuinely narrow category. One child among three is not it. A surviving spouse who is the only beneficiary and the only heir may be. If more than one person stands to receive anything, the exception does not apply.

The more useful question is not whether the rule requires it but whether the estate needs it, and for that see do I need a Florida probate attorney.

How Much Does Probate Cost in The Villages?

In a typical Villages estate the two real numbers are the attorney’s fee and the hard costs — the clerk, the newspaper, the certified copies and the recording. The attorney’s fee is ordinarily paid from estate assets rather than by the personal representative personally, and Florida has a statutory schedule that gives you a benchmark before you call anyone.

What Do Florida Probate Lawyers Charge?

Section 733.6171, Florida Statutes, sets out a schedule of attorney’s fees that are presumed reasonable for ordinary services in a formal administration, calculated against the inventory value of the estate plus income earned during administration.

Two things about that schedule are routinely misunderstood, and both work in your favor to know:

• It is a presumption, not a mandate. The schedule can be departed from in either direction. It is a safe harbour, not a price list, and nothing obliges an estate to pay the scheduled amount.
• The statute requires written disclosure to you before you agree. You are entitled to see how the fee is calculated and what it does and does not cover, in writing, before you commit to anything.

Value of the estate	Fee presumed reasonable — § 733.6171(3)
$40,000 or less	$1,500
More than $40,000 up to $70,000	an additional $750
More than $70,000 up to $100,000	an additional $750
Over $100,000	3% of the next $900,000
Above $1 million up to $3 million	2.5%
Above $3 million up to $5 million	2%
Above $5 million up to $10 million	1.5%
Above $10 million	1%

Section 733.6171(4) allows further reasonable compensation for extraordinary services — a will contest, a contested claim, an elective share proceeding, tax work, or any adversarial litigation by or against the estate. Those are separate from the schedule above, and they are the reason a contested estate costs more than an uncontested one of the same size.

What Is the Attorney Required to Tell Me Before I Agree to a Fee?

More than most people are ever told. Before charging a fee based on the statutory schedule, section 733.6171(2)(b) requires the attorney to disclose to you in writing:

• that there is no mandatory statutory attorney’s fee for estate administration;
• that the fee is not required to be based on the size of the estate, and the presumed reasonable fee in the schedule may not be appropriate in all estates;
• that the fee is subject to negotiation between you and the attorney;
• that you choose the attorney, and you are not required to use the attorney who prepared the will; and
• that you are entitled to a summary of the ordinary and extraordinary services rendered, at the conclusion of the representation.

Section 733.6171(2)(c) requires the attorney to obtain your timely signature acknowledging those disclosures. And section 733.6171(2)(d) supplies the consequence: if the attorney does not make the disclosures, the attorney may not be paid for the legal services.

The plain translation: anyone describing the section 733.6171 figures to you as "the statutory fee" is describing them wrongly. It is a presumption, not a price. An agreed fee is common and is frequently lower than the schedule.

That fourth bullet is also worth pausing on. A great many families assume they are obliged to use the lawyer who drafted their parent’s will. The statute says the opposite, in writing, and requires that you be told so.

Does the Personal Representative Get Paid Too?

Yes, and almost no family knows it. Under section 733.617, a personal representative is entitled to a commission from estate assets without a court order, computed on the compensable value of the estate:

Compensable value	Commission presumed reasonable — § 733.617(2)
First $1 million	3%
Above $1 million up to $5 million	2.5%
Above $5 million up to $10 million	2%
Above $10 million	1.5%

So how much an executor gets paid in Florida is not a matter of negotiation with the beneficiaries — it is a statutory schedule, and section 733.617(3) allows additional compensation for extraordinary services on top of it. In practice a family member serving as personal representative often waives the commission — but that should be a decision made knowingly, not one made because nobody mentioned it. If one sibling is doing all the work of an administration while the others wait for a distribution, this is the provision that recognizes it.

What Does a Sumter County Probate Cost All-In?

Beyond the attorney’s fee, a formal administration carries hard costs that do not vary with who you hire:

• Clerk’s filing fee — set by statute, so it does not vary meaningfully between the three counties. As published by the Sumter County Clerk:
  

  Proceeding	Clerk’s filing fee
  Formal administration	$400.00
  Summary administration — estate over $1,000	$345.00
  Summary administration — estate under $1,000	$235.00
  Disposition of personal property without administration	$231.00

  These are the standard Florida probate filing fees and they are the figures the Sumter County Clerk publishes. Lake and Marion do not post a probate fee schedule online — Lake’s probate section can be reached at (352) 742-4122 and Marion’s clerk at (352) 671-5604 — so confirm the current amount with the clerk for your county before you budget on it.

• Newspaper publication of the notice to creditors — required in a formal administration, and it runs twice, a week apart. In this corridor The Villages Daily Sun carries probate legal notices for both Sumter and Lake County cases, which is convenient in a market where most families already read it. Marion County notices have run in the Ocala papers.

  Publication is priced by the newspaper rather than set by statute, so the cost varies between papers and between counties, and rates can go up. Treat any figure you are quoted as current-as-of-that-day and confirm it when the notice is actually placed.

• Certified copies of the letters of administration — you will need several; every bank and title company wants its own.
• Recording fees for any deed transferring the home.
• Bond premium, if the court requires the personal representative to post one.
• Appraisal, where the estate needs a supported value for the home.

For a fuller treatment across Florida generally, see the cost of probate in Florida.

Who Pays the Probate Attorney — Me or the Estate?

In the ordinary case, the estate. Attorney’s fees for administering a Florida estate are paid from estate assets, not from the personal representative’s own money. The adult daughter in Ohio who is about to be appointed is generally not writing a personal check out of her savings.

That single fact resolves most of the anxiety behind the cost question, and almost nobody says it out loud on the first call. There are exceptions — litigation between beneficiaries changes the analysis, and so does an estate with no assets to pay from — but the default is the estate.

Do Florida Probate Attorneys Work on Contingency?

Administration work — opening the estate, dealing with creditors, selling the house, distributing and closing — is not contingency work. There is no recovery to take a percentage of; the assets already exist and the job is to move them correctly.

Contested matters can be different. Where the work is litigation to recover something that is not currently in the estate — setting aside a transfer procured by undue influence, pursuing a personal representative who has taken money — alternative fee arrangements are sometimes possible depending on what is at stake and how strong the case is. That is a conversation about the specific facts, not a policy.

How I Approach Fees

If you have been searching for an affordable probate attorney in The Villages, this is the section you came for. Almost everyone asks some version of it in the first two minutes of a call, usually apologetically. There is nothing to apologize for. It is the right question.

I am not going to quote you a number on a web page, because a number published without knowing the estate is a number that is wrong for most of the people who read it. What a Villages probate actually costs turns on things nobody can know before we talk: whether the estate qualifies for summary administration or needs a formal one, whether there is a house, how many beneficiaries there are and whether they agree with each other, whether there are creditors, and whether anything sits outside Florida.

What I can tell you is how I work.

I listen first, and in detail, before quoting anything. That is not a courtesy — it is where the money actually is. The largest savings in a probate almost always come from choosing the right procedure at the very beginning, not from shaving an hourly rate later on. A significant share of Villages estates never require a formal administration at all, and the most expensive mistake in this area is filing one for an estate that did not need it.

I offer flat fees wherever the scope of a matter allows it, so you know what the case costs before it starts instead of watching a bill accumulate and wondering. Where a matter genuinely cannot be scoped that way, I will explain why before you commit to anything.

Where an estate is asset-rich and cash-poor, say so early. It is the very common Villages situation — the only real asset is the house and there is nothing liquid to pay anyone with — and it is a conversation I have regularly rather than an awkward one. There are ways to handle it, and they work better when raised at the start than at the end.

If a summary administration will do, I will say so. If the estate does not need probate at all, I will tell you that too — even though it is worth less to me. That conversation is often the most valuable one I have with anybody.

Two things reassure most families. Fees are ordinarily paid from the estate rather than out of your own pocket, before anything is distributed to the beneficiaries. And the personal representative is separately entitled to a commission, though a family member serving in that role very often waives it.

The first conversation costs nothing and carries no obligation.

What If the Only Asset Is the House and There Is No Cash?

This is the defining fee problem in a retirement community, and it is worth naming because families find it genuinely frightening. A person dies owning a paid-off Villages home worth several hundred thousand dollars, a car, some furniture, and a checking account with under two thousand dollars in it. Meanwhile the taxes, the insurance, the amenity fee and the utilities keep coming due on a house nobody lives in.

The estate is not poor. It is illiquid, which is a different problem with different solutions. Options that come up regularly include structuring the legal fee to be paid at the closing on the house rather than up front; having an heir advance carrying costs and be reimbursed from the estate; and, where it fits, moving quickly to a sale rather than letting the property sit accruing costs for a year while everyone deliberates.

What does not work is waiting. Every month an empty Villages house stays open costs the estate money in charges that do not pause for grief.

What Do I Do This Week?

If someone has just died and you are the one holding the paperwork, this is the practical sequence. Very little of it requires a lawyer, and doing it early makes everything afterwards cheaper.

1. Order certified death certificates — more than you think. Six to ten. Every institution wants an original. Order some with the cause of death shown and some without; certain filings need one and some institutions should not have the other.
2. Find the original will and deposit it within 10 days. Under section 732.901, Florida Statutes, the custodian of a will must deposit it with the clerk of the court having venue — Sumter, Lake or Marion — within 10 days after receiving information that the testator has died, supplying the date of death or the last four digits of the Social Security number. This is not optional: a custodian who fails without just cause is liable for costs, damages and a reasonable attorney’s fee. The clerk keeps the original for at least 20 years.

   It is the original, not a copy, that matters; a photocopy raises a presumption problem that is expensive to fix. If you cannot find it, look where retirees actually keep documents: the bedroom safe, the filing cabinet, the safe deposit box, and the drafting attorney’s office. If there genuinely is no will — and a great many Villages estates arrive that way — the estate is not stuck; it is simply intestate, and Florida statute supplies what the will would have. Depositing the will is not the same as opening a probate case — it is a separate step, it comes first, and the 10 days run whether or not anyone has decided what to do next.

3. Secure the house. Lock it, change the code, stop the mail forwarding to a family member, and check that the homeowner’s insurance carrier knows the property is now vacant. Vacancy clauses are real, and an unreported vacant home can be an uninsured one.
4. Locate the safe deposit box, but do not expect to open it yet. Under section 655.933 the lessor must allow access to a person acting as personal representative who presents a copy of the letters of administration — so in most cases the box waits until someone is appointed. Once there is a personal representative, section 655.936 requires the lessor to deliver the contents and, as amended in 2026, to let the personal representative or their attorney pay the accumulated charges and terminate the lease. That last part matters: an unterminated box keeps billing an estate that has nothing left in it.
5. Keep the carrying costs paid. Taxes, insurance, utilities, the amenity fee, any HOA dues, and the bond installment on the tax bill. Do not let them lapse while you work out who is in charge. Keep receipts — these are usually reimbursable from the estate.
6. Gather the paper, do not liquidate anything. Deed, tax bill, mortgage statement if any, bank and brokerage statements, retirement account statements, life insurance policies, vehicle and golf cart titles, and the last two years of tax returns. Do not close accounts, cash checks, sell the car or clear out the house yet. It is far easier to distribute assets correctly than to unwind a distribution that was made too early.
7. Find out which county the house is in. Pull the parcel from the property appraiser for Sumter, Lake or Marion. This determines where everything gets filed.
8. Work out what is actually in the probate estate. Anything with a living named beneficiary, anything jointly held with survivorship, and anything titled in a funded trust is generally not in it. What is left is the estate, and the size of that number decides which procedure you are in — and therefore what this is going to cost.

Do those seven things and a first conversation with a lawyer takes twenty minutes instead of three appointments.

The Bond, the CDD Assessment and the Amenity Fee

Every Villages home carries three separate recurring charges that buyers confuse constantly and heirs confuse even more: the bond, the CDD maintenance assessment and the monthly amenity fee. There is an entire industry explaining these to people buying a house here. There is essentially nothing explaining what happens to them when the owner dies, which is the situation you are in.

They do not pause because the owner died, they do not stop because nobody is living there, and they are not all the same kind of obligation. Some of what accrues against an empty Villages house is a charge against the land itself that travels with the property regardless of who owns it. That difference decides whether a closing goes through.

Is the CDD Assessment a Creditor Claim Against the Estate?

No — and this is the part that surprises families most, because it is better news than they expect and worse news than they hoped, at the same time.

A community development district is a unit of local government created under chapter 190, Florida Statutes, and its assessment appears as a separate line on the property tax bill rather than as an association invoice. Section 190.021(9) provides that benefit special assessments and maintenance special assessments constitute a lien on the property against which assessed, from the date of imposition until paid, coequal with the lien of state, county, municipal and school board taxes. They may be collected by the tax collector in the same manner as other non-ad valorem assessments. The Second District confirmed that coequal status in Villages of Avignon Community Development District v. Burton, 215 So. 3d 127 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017) — a decision from a different appellate district, so persuasive rather than binding here, but squarely on the point.

Because the assessment is a lien on the land rather than a personal debt of the person who died, it is not a creditor claim that has to be filed in the probate case. Section 733.702(4)(a) expressly provides that the creditor-claim machinery does not affect or prevent a proceeding to enforce a mortgage, security interest or other lien on the decedent’s property. So the three-month claims period does not extinguish it, and the two-year bar in section 733.710 does not either.

What it is instead is a carrying cost, payable from estate funds as part of managing and preserving the property — and section 733.612(16) authorises the personal representative to pay taxes, assessments and expenses incident to administration without a court order. That is the authority to keep it current while the estate is open.

Do the Heirs Inherit Unpaid CDD Assessments?

In substance, yes. Because the assessment is a lien on the parcel from the date of imposition, heirs and devisees take the property subject to every accrued and unpaid CDD assessment lien — whether or not anyone filed anything in the probate case, and whether or not the estate ever knew about them.

That is why the arrears surface at the closing table rather than in the probate file. Nobody is opening the mail at the Villages house. The charges keep posting. The estate sits for a year while an out-of-state heir is located or a will contest is resolved, and the first anyone hears of it is when the title company produces an estoppel figure with four digits on it, days before a scheduled closing, with a buyer who will not extend.

Two things prevent that. Ask for the estoppel figures early, not when the property is under contract. And budget the assessments as a carrying cost from the first week alongside the taxes and insurance, because that is exactly what they are.

Does the Bond Have to Be Paid Off Before the House Can Be Sold?

This is the question every Villages family asks, and the honest answer is that no Florida court has decided it.

Here is what can be said. Section 190.021(9) makes CDD special assessments liens on the parcel from the date of imposition, and on its face that language would reach a bond-related assessment as much as a maintenance assessment. But whether a particular Villages bond assessment operates as a special assessment lien or as a personal covenant in the deed of conveyance turns on the district’s bond resolution, the trust indenture and the recorded deed restrictions — and none of those are statutes. They are documents, they differ between districts, and no reported Florida decision construes them.

So the practical answer is not a legal one. Pull the payoff figure for the specific parcel from the district early, read the documents that govern that district, and treat the balance as a number that has to be resolved at closing one way or another — paid off, assumed by the buyer, or priced in. Anyone who tells you flatly that the bond must always be paid off, or that it never must, is telling you something no court has said.

Who Pays the Amenity Fee While the House Is in Probate?

Someone has to, and it should be budgeted from the first week. Whether the monthly amenity fee is a covenant running with the land — which would put it in the same category as the assessments above rather than in the queue with ordinary creditors — is a question no Florida court has answered. There is no decision to cite in either direction.

What is not in doubt is that it keeps coming due, that it escalates, and that letting it lapse against a house you are trying to sell is a bad plan regardless of how it is eventually characterized. Keep it current, keep the receipts, and treat reimbursement from the estate as the question to sort out later.

Manufactured and Mobile Homes in a Villages Estate

The older sections of The Villages include a great deal of manufactured housing, and a manufactured home raises a question no site-built home does: is it real property or is it personal property? The answer changes how it transfers, whether it is in the probate estate, and which procedure the estate needs.

Is a Manufactured Home Part of the Florida Probate Estate?

It depends on one thing: whether the title was ever retired.

Section 319.261, Florida Statutes, provides a process by which the owner of a mobile home permanently affixed to real property owned by the same person may permanently retire the title. It requires recording the original title in the county’s official records along with the other documents the statute lists, and an application to the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. (A recorded leasehold of 30 years or more counts as owning the land for this purpose.)

• Title retired. The home is real property for all purposes, including probate. It is conveyed by deed, and only together with the land it is affixed to. Section 319.261(7) goes further: once the title is retired, no separate security interest in the home can exist — it can only be encumbered as part of the real property.
• Affixed but title never retired. The home remains personal property, titled under chapter 319, even though it is physically attached to the land. It transfers through the DHSMV certificate of title process, not by deed.

One terminology note, because it causes real confusion: people in this market talk about an "RP decal." That phrase does not appear in section 319.261. The statute deals with retiring the title certificate; "RP" is an administrative notation in the DHSMV record indicating the title has been retired. The decal is evidence of the thing, not the thing itself — and its absence from a window proves very little. Check the county records and the DHSMV record, not the sticker.

Does a Manufactured Home Get Florida Homestead Protection?

Yes, in both cases — which is the answer families least expect.

Where the title has been retired, the home and the land are a single parcel of real property, and homestead under article X, section 4 of the Florida Constitution reaches it if the owner resides there.

Where the title was never retired, homestead protection still applies. In Gold v. Schwartz, 774 So. 2d 879 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001), the Fourth District held that a mobile home permanently affixed to real estate and resided in by the head of household qualified as homestead under the Florida Constitution notwithstanding the separate certificate of title. That is a Fourth District decision, so persuasive rather than binding in Sumter, Lake and Marion — but it is directly on point and there is no Fifth District decision going the other way.

The consequence matters: if the home is homestead, it is not an asset of the probate estate, it is generally excluded from the summary administration calculation, and the personal representative cannot sell it — all for the reasons set out above.

How Do I Transfer a Mobile Home Title After the Owner Dies?

Where the title was never retired, section 319.28 handles it as a transfer by operation of law, and in several situations no probate court order is required at all:

• Intestate — the heir applies to DHSMV with an affidavit that the estate is not indebted and that the surviving spouse, if any, and the heirs have amicably agreed on a division of the estate.
• Testate, will probated — the application is accompanied by a certified copy of the will and an affidavit that the estate is solvent with sufficient assets to pay all just claims.
• Testate, will not probated — a sworn copy of the will and an affidavit that the estate is not indebted.
• Attorney affidavit. Where the previous owner died testate and the application is made with an affidavit attested by a Florida-licensed attorney in good standing with The Florida Bar, that affidavit establishes a presumption of ownership and right of possession without a copy of the will.

That last route is worth knowing about. It is a materially simpler path than opening an administration to move a single titled asset, and it is available in exactly the situations that arise most often here. See also the Florida quit claim deed for how the real-property side is handled once a title has been retired.

Golf Carts, Vehicles and What the Deed Restrictions Allow

How Do I Transfer Dad’s Golf Cart After He Dies?

In most of Florida a golf cart is a curiosity. In The Villages it is a vehicle with real value, and estates here regularly include one or two worth more than the car. Whether it transfers like furniture or like a car depends on a line drawn by top speed.

• A golf cart is defined in section 320.01(22) as a motor vehicle designed and manufactured for operation on a golf course for sporting and recreational purposes, not capable of exceeding 20 miles per hour. Golf carts are not titled or registered in Florida. Section 316.212 governs where they may be driven.
• A low-speed vehicle is defined in section 320.01(41) as a four-wheeled vehicle with a top speed greater than 20 but not greater than 25 miles per hour, meeting the federal safety standards in 49 C.F.R. § 571.500. Section 316.2122(1)(c) is explicit: a low-speed vehicle must be registered and insured and titled under chapter 319.

So the estate treatment splits cleanly. A golf cart is untitled personal property, transferring by affidavit or court order like any other tangible item. A low-speed vehicle is a titled motor vehicle, transferring under section 319.28 the same way a car does. Two carts sitting in the same driveway can fall on opposite sides of that line, and the paperwork is different for each.

One wrinkle that catches people: where a low-speed vehicle has been converted into a golf cart, DHSMV cancels the title under section 319.14(11)(a)3. If you are holding a title for a cart that no longer qualifies as an LSV, that is why the record may not match the document in the drawer.

Do Deed Restrictions Affect Selling an Inherited Villages Home?

They affect the timeline more than the price, and an estate house that has sat empty for a year is the exact scenario in which that timeline bites. The districts enforce deed compliance, and an application to the Architectural Review Committee is required before exterior work — which the districts define broadly enough to reach landscaping and re-painting, not just structural changes.

The one thing worth knowing is that there is no such thing as “the Villages deed restrictions.” Each unit has its own recorded Declaration of Restrictions, published by district and lot number. So the question for an estate is never what the rules are in The Villages — it is what the declaration recorded against this parcel says. Pull it early, and deal with anything obvious before listing rather than during the inspection period.

The Mortgage, the Reverse Mortgage and the Tax Questions

Two more things run against an inherited Villages house while everyone decides what to do, and one more set of questions arrives at the closing table. None of this is exotic, but families are rarely told about it in the first month, which is when it matters.

What Happens to a Mortgage When Someone Dies?

It does not disappear, and it is not forgiven. The loan stays secured against the property, and the lender’s lien survives the death of the borrower regardless of what the will says or who inherits. Payments continue to come due, and a missed run of them puts the house at risk while the estate is still open.

The practical instruction is short: keep it current if you can, tell the servicer that the borrower has died, and do not assume that inheriting the house means inheriting a payment holiday. Keep the receipts — carrying costs paid by an heir are usually reimbursable from the estate.

What Happens to a Reverse Mortgage After Death in Florida?

This is the one that catches Villages families hardest, because reverse mortgages are common in a community of retired homeowners and the clock on them is short.

A reverse mortgage is designed to come due when the last borrower dies or permanently leaves the home. Once that happens, the loan is repayable and the lender expects to hear from someone.

What happens next depends on who holds the mortgage. Deadlines, notice requirements, what counts as an acceptable response and how much time an estate gets to sell or refinance all vary between lenders and loan programs. There is no single answer that fits every reverse mortgage, and anyone who gives you one without looking at the loan documents is guessing. What is consistent is the direction of travel: the clock starts at the death, not at the appointment of a personal representative, and it does not pause while a family works out who is in charge.

Why This Cannot Wait

If there is a reverse mortgage on the house, contact a probate attorney immediately — that day if you can. This is the one item on this page where a few weeks of delay can change the outcome permanently, and it is the reason to make a phone call before you have finished reading.

The problem is structural. Nobody is living at the house, so nobody is opening the mail. The letters that matter arrive early and look like every other piece of mortgage correspondence. Meanwhile the family is doing the things families do after a death — the funeral, the out-of-state relatives, the sorting out — and nobody has been appointed yet, which means nobody has legal authority to deal with the lender at all. By the time an estate is opened and someone finally reads the file, the correspondence can be months old and the estate’s realistic choices have narrowed to whichever ones are still on the table.

What being early actually buys you is options. An estate that engages at the start usually still has all of them: pay off the balance and keep the home, refinance it into the heir’s own name, sell it and keep whatever equity sits above the loan, or hand it back and walk away deliberately rather than by default. Villages homes often carry real equity above the loan balance, and that equity is the family’s — but it is only recoverable through a sale the estate actually controls. An estate that engages late can lose the chance to sell on its own terms, and a foreclosure takes the choice away entirely.

What to do this week, before anyone is appointed. Get the mail. Find the loan documents and the servicer’s name and number. Do not ignore anything that arrives from the lender, and do not throw it away. Keep the taxes and insurance current, because a lapse in either is itself a default under most reverse mortgages regardless of the balance. And call a probate attorney, because the fastest way to protect the options is to get someone appointed with authority to speak to the servicer — which is a probate step, not a mortgage step, and it is the bottleneck.

Foreclosure on a reverse mortgage after a death is very often avoidable. It is avoidable by acting early. It becomes much harder to avoid once the estate has spent four months silent, and at that point the question shifts from what the family wants to do with the house to what is still possible.

What About a Timeshare?

The Villages home is often not the only property. Retirees here frequently own a timeshare somewhere else in Florida, and heirs are routinely told — incorrectly — that they simply inherit it along with its maintenance fees for life. Timeshare probate in Florida has its own rules, its own transfer mechanics and, importantly, its own disclaimer options. If a timeshare is in the estate, deal with it deliberately rather than by default: what you do first can determine whether you are stuck with it. See inheriting a Florida timeshare.

Do We Pay Tax When We Sell the House?

Usually far less than families fear, and the reason is the stepped-up basis. Inherited property generally takes a new tax basis measured at the date of death rather than what the parent originally paid. So a Villages home bought years ago and sold by the estate shortly after death often produces little or no taxable gain, because the gain is measured from the stepped-up figure and not from the 1998 purchase price.

Where capital gains on inherited property in Florida do arise, it is normally because the house was held for a while after the death and appreciated further, or because it was rented in the meantime. Florida itself imposes no state income tax, so the question is a federal one.

I am not a tax attorney, and this is a federal tax question rather than a Florida probate one, so treat the above as the reason to ask rather than the answer. Get a date-of-death value documented early — an appraisal, not a guess — because that number is what the basis rests on, and it is much harder to establish two years later. Then confirm the treatment with a CPA before the sale closes, not after.

Selling an Inherited Home in The Villages

For most families this is the whole point. The parent has died, the children live in four different states, nobody wants a house in Florida, and the question is how quickly it can be sold and the proceeds divided. When inheriting a house you did not plan for and cannot easily visit, the practical questions arrive in a fixed order — who has authority to sell it, when, and what it costs to hold it in the meantime.

Can We Sell the House Before Probate Is Finished?

Usually yes — but not before probate has started, and not by whoever feels most in charge. Until a personal representative is appointed and letters of administration issue, nobody has authority to sign a deed on behalf of the estate. A contract signed by a family member with no appointment is not a contract the estate can close on, and title companies catch it every time.

What that means in practice is that the sale timeline is gated by the appointment timeline, which is gated by getting the petition filed in the right county. Everything in the first-week list above is really about shortening that gate.

Can the Executor Sell a Homestead Property?

This trips up more Villages estates than any other single issue, so it is worth being precise.

Short answer: no — and not even if the will says so.

Section 733.607(1), Florida Statutes, gives the personal representative the right to take possession of the decedent’s property — except the protected homestead. The only possession the statute allows is the narrow, discretionary custody in section 733.608(2): where a homestead appears unoccupied, the personal representative may take possession for the limited purpose of preserving, insuring and protecting it pending a determination of homestead status. Preserve, insure, protect. Not sell.

In Harrell v. Snyder, 913 So. 2d 749 (Fla. 5th DCA 2005), a personal representative took possession of the decedent’s homestead under section 733.608(2) and sold it, relying on a will that gave her authority to dispose of all or any part of the assets of the estate. The Fifth District held she had no such authority — because homestead is not property of the probate estate at all, a will’s power of sale over estate assets does not reach it. The court relied on McKean v. Warburton, 919 So. 2d 341 (Fla. 2005), where the Florida Supreme Court held that protected homestead in those circumstances is not part of the probate estate.

Harrell is a Fifth District decision, which means it is binding in Sumter, Lake and Marion. It is not a cautionary example here. It is the law.

What that leaves is this: where the homestead has descended to heirs, a sale needs the agreement of everyone holding an interest, or a court order. And the point generalises beyond homestead — section 733.612(5) excludes real property from the personal representative’s power to acquire or dispose of assets without a court order, so even ordinary non-homestead real estate is not something a personal representative simply lists on their own authority.

This is the most common reason a Villages sale stalls after the estate is opened, and it is entirely avoidable if it is identified in week one rather than after a contract has been signed.

How Long Before an Inherited Villages House Can Be Sold?

The realistic sequence: petition filed, letters issue, property listed, contract, closing. The gap between death and listing is usually a matter of weeks rather than months if the paperwork is in order and there is no dispute about who serves. Where a summary administration fits, it can be considerably faster. Where there is a will contest, a missing heir or a homestead question that has to be resolved, it is longer, and the carrying costs run the whole time.

Do All the Children Have to Agree to Sell?

If the property has already passed to them as co-owners — which is what happens with homestead descending to heirs — then in practical terms yes, a voluntary sale needs everyone’s signature. When one sibling refuses, the remedy is a partition action, and the analysis moves into different territory entirely. See what happens when siblings disagree about selling the family home, and for the mechanics of a sale during administration, selling a house during probate.

What If One Sibling Wants to Keep the House?

Frequently the fairest outcome, and frequently the hardest to negotiate. The sibling who wants it buys out the others at an agreed value, usually with financing, and the estate or the co-owners deed it across. The fight is almost never about principle. It is about the number, and about whether the person who has been paying the taxes and cutting the grass for eight months gets credit for it. That accounting is a real legal question with real answers, not just a family argument.

Can I Serve as Personal Representative (Executor) If I Live Out of State?

This is the single most common surprise in a Villages estate, because the demographics guarantee it: the parent moved to Florida and the children never did. (Florida calls this role the personal representative; most of the country calls it the executor, and they are the same job. If the will says “executor,” nothing is wrong with it.)

The Florida executor requirements that catch families out are the residency ones. Florida allows a non-resident to serve as personal representative — but only if they fall within one of the categories in section 733.304, Florida Statutes. A person not domiciled in Florida cannot qualify unless they are:

• a legally adopted child, or an adoptive parent, of the decedent;
• related to the decedent by lineal consanguinity — a child, grandchild, parent, grandparent;
• a spouse, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece of the decedent, or someone related by lineal consanguinity to any of those; or
• the spouse of a person otherwise qualified above.

So a son in Michigan qualifies. A niece in Ohio qualifies. A son-in-law qualifies, as the spouse of a qualified person. A close family friend, a neighbor who has been handling everything for years, a trusted business partner, or a stepchild who was never adopted generally does not — no matter what the will says and no matter how obviously right they are for the job.

Families discover this after the will has named someone. It is fixable — but it is fixed at the front of the case by choosing someone who can actually be appointed, not by arguing about it after a petition has been filed. If you are working from a will that names an out-of-state friend, raise it on the first call.

What If Someone Objects to the Personal Representative?

The mechanism here changed recently, and pages that have not been updated will send you down a path that no longer exists. Section 733.212(3), Florida Statutes, was amended effective 13 June 2024, and the grounds that must be raised on an objection to the notice of administration now reach only the validity of the will, venue and the jurisdiction of the court. Qualification of the personal representative was removed from that list.

Challenges to whether a personal representative is qualified now run through section 733.3101 instead. A personal representative who knows they were not qualified at the time of appointment must resign immediately. One who was qualified then but would not be now must give notice to interested persons — and an interested person served with that notice may petition for removal within 30 days of service. A personal representative who ignores the section is personally liable for the costs and attorney’s fees of the removal proceeding.

If a page or a lawyer tells you that an objection to a personal representative’s qualifications is barred by the three-month notice deadline, that advice is built on the pre-2024 statute. (For completeness: the outer limit on a section 733.212(3) objection is the earlier of final discharge or one year after service of the notice of administration.)

Do I Have to Travel to Florida for Probate?

In the great majority of administrations, no. Petitions are filed electronically, oaths and designations are handled remotely, most hearings in an uncontested matter are brief or unnecessary, and closings are routinely done by mail or remote notarisation. I handle Villages matters for families in Ohio, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Ontario without any of them getting on a plane.

Contested matters are different, and I will say so plainly rather than promise otherwise. If there is a will contest or a removal fight, someone is eventually going to be in a courtroom in Bushnell, Tavares or Ocala — more often the lawyer than the client, but not always. See also serving as an out-of-state executor in Florida.

Who Handles the House While I’m in Ohio?

The unglamorous half of an out-of-state administration, and the half nobody plans for. Somebody has to keep the utilities on, keep the insurance current and the carrier informed that the house is vacant, keep the lawn to community standards, meet the locksmith, meet the appraiser, meet the estate-sale company, clear the garage, and be physically present for the inspection. Most estates solve it with a combination of a local realtor who has done estate sales before, a clean-out service, and one relative willing to make two trips. Budget for it explicitly, because it is a real cost that gets left out of every estimate.

Was Mom Actually a Florida Resident? Domicile and Ancillary Administration

A very large number of people in The Villages arrived from somewhere else and never entirely left. They kept the house in Pennsylvania, or the apartment in New York, or the voter registration in Ohio. For some of them the move to Florida was a genuine change of domicile. For others it was a long winter.

The distinction is not sentimental. It determines which state’s court has the primary estate, which procedure Florida uses, and — the part families care about most — whether a state that taxes estates gets to tax this one.

Did Mom Actually Become a Florida Resident?

Domicile is about where a person intended to make their permanent home, evidenced by what they actually did. The usual indicators are a recorded declaration of domicile, the driver’s license, the voter registration, where income tax returns were filed, where the vehicles were registered, and whether a Florida homestead exemption was claimed on the Villages house.

Where those point in the same direction the answer is easy. Where they point in different directions — the Florida homestead exemption was claimed but the person voted absentee in Ohio for eleven straight years — you have a genuine question, and it is one worth resolving before anything is filed anywhere.

Do We Need Ancillary Administration If Dad Stayed Domiciled Up North?

If the person who died was not a Florida resident but owned the Villages home, the Florida proceeding is an ancillary administration under section 734.102, Florida Statutes. It runs alongside the primary administration in the home state and exists to deal with the Florida real property.

It is not optional. Florida real property is "assets in this state" within section 734.102(1), and the statute’s framework is mandatory — a non-domiciliary’s Florida realty is administered through ancillary letters. The ancillary personal representative then has the same rights, powers and authority as any Florida personal representative to manage and settle the estate, to sell, lease or mortgage the local property, and to raise funds for the payment of debts, claims and devises in the home state (§ 734.102(7)).

Practically it means two proceedings in two states, coordinated, with the home state generally leading. It is not double the work, but it is more than one state’s worth, and it needs to be planned as a single sequence rather than discovered halfway through. This is territory I work in constantly — see Florida ancillary probate.

Does Florida Have an Estate Tax or an Inheritance Tax?

Florida has neither. That is one of the reasons people move here, and it is the single most reliable piece of good news in an initial consultation.

What it does not mean is that no state will tax the estate. A number of states still impose an estate tax of their own, and a few impose an inheritance tax on the people who receive the money rather than on the estate. If the person who died was still domiciled in one of those states, spending winters in The Villages did not by itself solve that problem — the home state may still have a claim even though the house is in Sumter County. Federal estate tax is a separate question and reaches only very large estates.

I should be straight about the limits of that. I am admitted in Florida and I do not practice in other states, so I am not the person to tell you what New York or Pennsylvania will do with your parent’s estate — and thresholds in those states change from year to year, so anything you read on a page like this one should be checked against the current position. What I can do is the part that decides whether the question even arises: work out whether the person who died was domiciled in Florida or somewhere else, and handle the Florida administration accordingly. Where another state is genuinely in the picture, that is a conversation to have with counsel or an accountant in that state, and I will say so rather than guess.

See also does Florida have an inheritance tax.

Blended Families, Homestead and the Elective Share

Second marriages are ordinary in a retirement community, and they produce the most consequential estate problem in this market: a house in one spouse’s name, a surviving spouse who expects to stay in it, and children from a first marriage who expect to inherit it.

Can Dad Leave the Villages House to His Children Instead of His Wife?

Generally not, if it was homestead and he was survived by a spouse. Section 732.4015, Florida Statutes, restricts the devise of homestead property when the owner is survived by a spouse or a minor child. A will that purports to leave the house to the children anyway does not accomplish it — the property descends under section 732.401 instead, which is not what anybody drafted for and not what anybody expected.

This is the provision that turns a well-intentioned will into litigation, and it is why a Villages homeowner in a second marriage should not assume a will alone does the job.

Can My Stepmother Stay in the House for Life?

Where homestead descends under section 732.401, the surviving spouse takes a life estate, with the remainder to the decedent’s descendants. So yes — in the default case she can stay, and the children own what is left when she is gone.

Note where that rule sits. Section 732.401 says that homestead not devised as the law allows descends in the same manner as other intestate property — which is why Florida intestate succession and homestead get discussed together even when there is a will. A will that tries to leave the house somewhere it cannot go does not fail into nothing; it fails into the intestate scheme.

A life estate is a mixed blessing for everyone involved, which is why section 732.401(2) gives the surviving spouse an alternative: an election to take an undivided one-half interest as a tenant in common instead, with the remaining half vesting in the decedent’s descendants living at the date of death, per stirpes.

The deadline is 6 months after the date of death, and the election must be made during the surviving spouse’s lifetime. It cannot be extended, with one narrow exception for a petition brought by the spouse’s attorney-in-fact or guardian of the property, which itself must be filed within the same 6 months. Six months is not long for a decision this consequential, and it runs from the death rather than from anyone being told about it — which is why a surviving spouse should get advice on this in the first weeks, not the first year.

Should a Surviving Spouse Take the Life Estate or Elect the Half Interest?

It depends on age, health, whether she actually wants to stay, and what the property is worth relative to the rest of the estate. A life estate keeps a roof over her head but leaves her holding the obligations of an owner without the ability to sell. A one-half tenancy in common is liquid, sellable and severable, but it puts her in co-ownership with stepchildren who may want the house sold immediately.

The right answer is genuinely fact-dependent, and the wrong answer is permanent. This is a decision worth taking advice on rather than defaulting into by letting a deadline pass.

What Is the Elective Share and When Must It Be Claimed?

Separate from homestead, a surviving spouse in Florida is entitled to an elective share — 30 percent of the elective estate under section 732.201, Florida Statutes, calculated against a broad pool that reaches well beyond the probate estate to include trusts, jointly held property and certain transfers made during life.

The deadline is where these claims are won and lost. Under section 732.2135 the election must generally be filed by the earlier of six months after service of the notice of administration or two years after the date of death. Miss it and the right is gone regardless of how strong the claim was. See the Florida elective share and heirs’ rights.

Does a Prenuptial Agreement Waive Florida Homestead and Elective Share Rights?

It can, and in a second marriage that is often exactly the point of having one. Whether a particular agreement actually accomplished it is a question about that document — how it was executed, what was disclosed, and whether the waiver language reaches the rights it needs to reach. Agreements drafted in another state before a move to Florida are the ones that most often fall short, because they were written against a different body of law. If there is a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement in the picture, it is the first document to read, not the last.

When a Late-Life Will Change Doesn’t Look Right

An older person, increasingly dependent, with a new person in their life — a caregiver, a neighbor, a recently attentive relative, sometimes a new spouse. A will or a deed or a beneficiary change signed a few months before death, prepared by a lawyer the family had never heard of, that redirects a substantial part of the estate. The family finds out afterwards.

This pattern is not rare anywhere. In a community with the age profile of The Villages it is a standing risk, and it is the reason a meaningful share of estates here end up in litigation rather than administration.

How Does Florida Law Treat Undue Influence Claims?

Florida has a framework that does real work for families in exactly this position. A will procured by fraud, duress, mistake or undue influence is void under section 732.5165, Florida Statutes.

More importantly, Florida shifts the burden in defined circumstances — and it takes two authorities working together to see why.

In re Estate of Carpenter, 253 So. 2d 697 (Fla. 1971) supplies the trigger. The Florida Supreme Court held that a rebuttable presumption of undue influence arises where a substantial beneficiary under the will occupied a confidential relationship with the testator and was active in procuring the will, and it set out the factors that show active procurement.

What Carpenter also said — that the presumption does not shift the burden of proof — has since been superseded by statute. The 2002 amendment adding section 733.107(2), Florida Statutes, provides that the presumption of undue influence implements public policy against the abuse of fiduciary and confidential relationships and is therefore a presumption shifting the burden of proof under sections 90.301–90.304 of the Evidence Code. In Hack v. Janes, 878 So. 2d 440 (Fla. 5th DCA 2004), the Fifth District so held, and the Third District confirmed the same framework in Diaz v. Ashworth, 963 So. 2d 731 (Fla. 3d DCA 2007).

Hack is a Fifth District decision, which makes it binding in Sumter, Lake and Marion. So the correct statement of the law here is: Carpenter tells you when the presumption arises; section 733.107(2), as construed in Hack, tells you that it shifts the burden of proof; and the portions of Carpenter describing the circumstances giving rise to the presumption are untouched by the amendment.

That shift matters enormously in practice, because the family challenging a will was by definition not in the room. Being able to establish the three elements — substantial benefit, confidential relationship, active procurement — rather than having to prove directly what was said behind a closed door is frequently the difference between a viable case and no case. Be wary of any page that still describes Florida as a state where the challenger carries the burden throughout; that has not been the law since 2002.

What If They Weren’t Competent When They Signed?

Testamentary capacity is a separate ground with a different standard, and it is a lower bar than families expect. A person can have a diagnosis, need help with daily life, and still have had capacity to make a will on the day they signed it. Capacity is assessed at the moment of execution, not across the illness generally, which is why medical records around a specific date matter more than a general decline.

Capacity and undue influence are often pleaded together for exactly this reason: the same facts that make capacity questionable make a person susceptible to influence.

Can You Block a Will Before It Is Admitted to Probate?

Yes — a caveat under section 731.110, Florida Statutes, filed by an interested person requires the court to give notice before admitting a will to probate or appointing a personal representative. It does not decide anything, but it stops the estate from being opened and administered without you knowing about it.

It is a cheap and severely underused tool. If you have reason to believe a will is going to be filed that should not be, filing a caveat is a great deal easier than unwinding an administration afterwards. See caveats in Florida probate.

How Do You Remove a Personal Representative or Executor?

Section 733.504, Florida Statutes, lists the grounds — among them failure to account, mismanagement, wasting the estate’s assets, a conflict of interest, and simply failing to do the job. Section 733.609 provides for breach of fiduciary duty and, notably, for attorney’s fees against a personal representative found to have breached, which changes the economics of bringing the action.

Most removal cases in this market are not fraud. They are the sibling who was appointed, went quiet, will not produce an accounting, and has been living in the house for two years while the other beneficiaries get nothing.

Guardianship in The Villages

Not every matter here begins with a death. In a community with this age profile a great many begin while the person is still living, when an adult child arrives for a visit and finds that things have gone further than the phone calls suggested.

Adult guardianship in Florida is governed by chapter 744, Florida Statutes, and there is more than one kind — the types of guardianship for adults range from a limited guardianship over specific rights to a plenary guardianship over all of them, with guardian advocacy available for adults with developmental disabilities. A guardian ad litem is a different role again: appointed to represent an interest in a particular proceeding rather than to manage a person’s affairs. Legal guardianship for adults with disabilities in Florida runs through the same chapter 744 framework.

A guardianship begins with a petition to determine incapacity. Within five days the court appoints an examining committee of three members under section 744.331(3)(a) — one of whom must be a psychiatrist or other physician, and one of whom must have knowledge of the type of incapacity alleged. Committee members may not be related to or associated with each other, the petitioner or the proposed guardian, and the attending or family physician generally may not serve. Rights are not removed until that committee has reported.

Guardianship is a last resort by statute, not merely by custom. Section 744.331(6)(b) provides that where a person is found incapable of exercising delegable rights, the court must consider and find whether an alternative to guardianship would sufficiently address the problems — and that a guardian may not be appointed if such an alternative exists. Section 744.2005(3) reinforces it: any appointment must be the least restrictive appropriate alternative and must reserve to the person the right to make decisions they remain able to make.

That is worth knowing before you start, because families often arrive convinced they need a guardianship when what they actually need is a durable power of attorney or a health care surrogate signed while the person still has capacity to sign it. The cheapest guardianship is the one that never has to be filed.

What If It Is an Emergency?

Section 744.3031 provides for an emergency temporary guardian, appointed after a petition for incapacity is filed but before a guardian is appointed. The court must specifically find that there appears to be imminent danger that the person’s physical or mental health or safety will be seriously impaired, or that their property is in danger of being wasted, misappropriated or lost.

It moves fast: notice of the petition and hearing must be served on the alleged incapacitated person and their attorney at least 24 hours beforehand, and the court appoints counsel to represent them. The authority expires 90 days after appointment or when a guardian is appointed, whichever comes first, and can be extended once for a further 90 days if the emergency conditions persist.

This is the tool for the situation families here describe most often: a parent whose accounts are being drained by someone who has become very attentive, where waiting three months for a full determination means there is nothing left to protect.

Where families disagree about who should serve, or where one sibling has been quietly managing a parent’s accounts and another wants to know where the money went, guardianship becomes litigation with the same shape as a will contest. See Florida adult guardianship and the Florida guardianship guide, and for the standby documents, the Florida power of attorney.

Trusts, Inherited IRAs and What Doesn’t Go Through Probate

Dad Had a Trust — Do We Still Need Probate?

Often, partly. A revocable trust avoids probate for the assets that were actually retitled into it. The recurring failure is a trust that was signed and never funded — the document exists, the deed to the Villages house was never changed, and the house is therefore still in the probate estate. A pour-over will then does the job it was designed for, which is to catch what was missed, and that catching happens in probate court.

A successor trustee has duties of their own under chapter 736 — to administer, to keep beneficiaries reasonably informed and to account. Those duties are enforceable, and trust disputes in this market look very much like probate disputes. See Florida trust litigation.

What Happens to an Inherited IRA?

Retirement accounts with a living named beneficiary generally pass outside probate entirely, which is why they are often the largest thing in an estate and the thing nobody has to go to court about.

What has changed, and changed more than once, is what the beneficiary may then do with it. For many years an inherited retirement account could be drawn down slowly over the beneficiary’s own life expectancy — the arrangement people still call the “stretch.” Federal law has substantially narrowed that. Most non-spouse beneficiaries now face a much shorter window in which the account has to be emptied, while a surviving spouse and certain other categories of beneficiary — including, in defined circumstances, a beneficiary who is disabled or chronically ill — are treated differently.

These are federal tax questions, not Florida probate questions, and I am not a tax attorney. I am flagging the issue rather than answering it, because the practical consequence is real and it is easy to miss: an inherited retirement account can generate a materially larger tax bill than the family expects, and some of the choices that affect it have to be made early. The rules have been amended repeatedly and the details turn on the beneficiary’s own circumstances, so the current position should be confirmed with a CPA or a tax adviser before anyone takes a distribution — not after.

Two situations are worth raising with someone promptly. Where a beneficiary receives needs-based benefits, naming them outright can cost them eligibility, and the planning answer is usually a properly drafted trust rather than a change to the account — see funding and managing a Florida special needs trust. And where the beneficiary designation is blank, out of date, or names someone who has died, the account may fall back into the estate and become a probate asset after all, which changes both the procedure and the tax picture.

What Else Passes Outside Probate?

Jointly held property with rights of survivorship, payable-on-death bank accounts, transfer-on-death brokerage accounts, life insurance with a living named beneficiary, and property subject to an enhanced life estate deed. A retiree’s balance sheet is often mostly these, which is why an estate that looks large can require a very modest procedure. See Florida non-probate assets and the Lady Bird deed in Florida.

Florida Probate Deadlines: Quick Reference

What	When	Authority
Deposit the original will with the clerk	10 days after receiving information of the death	§ 732.901
Objection to the notice of administration — reaching only will validity, venue and jurisdiction	3 months after service	§ 733.212(3), as amended eff. 13 June 2024
Objection to the notice of administration — outer limit	Earlier of final discharge or 1 year after service	§ 733.212(3)
Petition to remove an unqualified personal representative	30 days after service of the PR’s notice	§ 733.3101
Creditor claim — served creditor	30 days from service of the notice to creditors	§ 733.702
Creditor claim — general period	3 months from first publication	§ 733.702
Absolute bar on claims, regardless of notice	2 years from date of death	§ 733.710
Elective share election	Earlier of 6 months after service of the notice of administration or 2 years after death	§ 732.2135
Surviving spouse’s election to take a half interest in homestead instead of a life estate	6 months after death, and during the spouse’s lifetime — not extendable	§ 732.401(2)
Withdrawal of an elective share election	Within 8 months of death, before the order of contribution	§ 732.2135(3)
Examining committee appointed after a petition for incapacity	Within 5 days	§ 744.331(3)(a)
Emergency temporary guardianship — notice / duration	24 hours’ notice; expires in 90 days, extendable once	§ 744.3031
Summary administration available regardless of value	More than 2 years after death	§ 735.201

Deadlines in probate are not soft. Several of these extinguish a right rather than merely delaying it. For a fuller treatment see Florida probate rules and deadlines.

Comparing The Villages Probate Attorneys: What Actually Matters

If you are comparing probate attorneys in The Villages, you are probably looking at a list of names with very similar-sounding pages. Most will tell you they are experienced, compassionate and local. None of that distinguishes anyone. Four questions do.

Which county will my case be filed in, and have you filed there?

Ask any attorney you are considering which county your case belongs in and where it gets filed. An attorney who answers “Sumter” without first asking which side of CR 466 the house is on has not looked at your case yet. It is a small test and it is a good one.

Who will actually handle my file?

At a firm, the attorney you meet is frequently not the attorney who does the work. Ask directly: who drafts the petition, who appears at the hearing, who returns the call when the title company needs estoppel figures on a Friday afternoon, and who is answering the phone in month nine when everyone else has forgotten the file exists.

So that you can weigh mine against the others, here is the plain answer for this practice. I am a solo practitioner. There is one attorney on your matter, and it is me — from the first phone call through the order of discharge. No intake coordinator, no handoff to an associate, no status email from a paralegal you have never spoken to. That is also a real limit on how many matters I can take at once, and I would rather tell you that than not. Whether that arrangement suits your matter is your call to make, and it is worth asking the same question of everyone on your list.

What is the fee, and what is not included in it?

Get the fee structure in writing before you sign anything, and ask specifically what is excluded — the clerk’s filing fee, the newspaper publication, the certified copies, the deed, the appraisal. A quote that does not distinguish between the fee and the costs is not a quote. See what probate costs in The Villages above.

Will I have to come to Florida?

Most of the people administering a Villages estate live somewhere else. Ask whether the matter can be handled without you flying down, and get an answer rather than “we’ll see.” For nearly every uncontested administration the answer should be no.

Communities and Areas Served

Probate, probate litigation, guardianship and estate matters throughout the Fifth Judicial Circuit and across Florida.

Sumter County (filed at Bushnell) — The Villages south of CR 466, including the Southern Oaks and Middleton areas, together with Wildwood, Oxford, Coleman and Bushnell.

Lake County (filed at Tavares) — The Villages around Lady Lake, plus Fruitland Park, Leesburg, Tavares, Eustis, Mount Dora and Clermont.

Marion County (filed at Ocala) — The Villages of Marion, plus Ocala, Summerfield, Belleview, Dunnellon and Silver Springs.

Also throughout Central Florida — Orlando and Orange County, Kissimmee and Osceola County, and Celebration — and statewide from offices in Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale.

Families searching for probate attorneys in The Villages usually start with Sumter County. Check the parcel before you assume it: the house may be in Lake or Marion, and that decides everything about where this gets filed.

A note on searching. Most people looking for help here type probate attorney near me, probate lawyer near me or probate law firms near me, and what those searches actually return is whoever has an office closest to the searcher — which is not the same question as who is right for the estate. Proximity decides the map results; it does not decide who knows which of the three counties your case belongs in, or who will still be answering the phone in month nine. Ask the four questions above instead.

Talk to a Villages Probate Lawyer

If someone has died and there is a house, an account or a will involved, the useful first conversation is short. Where were they domiciled? Which county is the house in? What is actually in the estate, once you set aside anything with a named beneficiary? Is there an original will? Those four answers determine the procedure, the timeline and the cost, and I can usually tell you all three on the first call.

If a summary administration will do, I will say so. If you do not need a lawyer at all, I will say that too. The first conversation is a free consultation — no charge, and no obligation at the end of it.

Call (305) 224-6811, email jml@lorenzolaw.com, or send a message.

Jose M. Lorenzo, Jr., Esquire — Florida Bar No. 107002. Lorenzo Law, Coral Gables and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Practice focused on probate, probate litigation, estate planning, guardianship and Florida homestead law, in Sumter, Lake and Marion counties and throughout Florida.

This page is general information about Florida law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes and thresholds change; the summary administration figures discussed above changed in 2026 and some sources have not caught up. Confirm the current law as it applies to your own facts before acting.