How Probate Works, State by State
Probate rules — thresholds, deadlines, and the court that handles it — vary significantly by state. Find the specific numbers and process for where the decedent lived.
How Probate Works in Alabama
Alabama is one of the few states with no true out-of-court small-estate affidavit at all — its only shortcut is a simplified petition still filed with the Probate Court, currently capped at $47,000 and adjusted for inflation.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Alaska
Alaska is the only state with an elective community-property system — married couples can opt in by agreement or trust, but by default Alaska works like any common-law state — and its small-estate affidavit splits into two separate caps: one for vehicles, one for everything else.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Arizona
Arizona dramatically expanded its small-estate affidavit thresholds effective September 2025 — up to $200,000 in personal property, and $300,000 in real property, roughly doubling and tripling the prior limits.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Arkansas
Arkansas's small-estate affidavit is unusual in a good way — it covers real property as well as personal property, and distribution happens without any court order at all, just a clerk-certified filing.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in California
California requires probate for most solely-titled property, but it also offers more ways to shortcut that process than almost any other state — from a no-filing affidavit for smaller estates to a streamlined court petition for a primary residence worth up to $750,000.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Colorado
Colorado's small-estate affidavit threshold isn't fixed — it rises almost every year with inflation, and which figure applies depends on the decedent's year of death, not the year you file.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Connecticut
Connecticut runs a genuinely statewide Probate Court system, organized into 54 probate districts, separate from its regular trial courts — and its small-estate procedure is filed with that same court rather than avoiding it entirely.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Delaware
Delaware just raised its small-estate affidavit threshold from $30,000 to $50,000 for anyone who died on or after June 10, 2026, and its creditor-claims deadline runs a full 8 months from the date of death regardless of whether notice was ever published.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in District of Columbia
DC's small-estate court threshold is genuinely unsettled right now: the 2024 law on the books raised it from $40,000 to $80,000, but that increase depends on funding certification that hasn't happened, and the court's own most-recently-updated guidance still cites $40,000 — so this page uses the currently-operative $40,000 figure with that caveat front and center.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Florida
Florida treats time itself as a qualifying factor for simplified probate: an estate can use the faster process either because it's small, or simply because two years have passed since the death — since Florida's creditor-claim statute bars all claims after that point regardless of notice.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Georgia
Georgia's main simplified path isn't gated by a dollar amount at all — it depends on whether the decedent died without a will, owes no debts, and every heir agrees in writing. Where Georgia is genuinely narrower than most states is on affidavits: there's no broad "collect everything under $X" statute, only a small one limited to bank deposits.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Hawaii
Hawaii has no separate probate court — it's handled by the Circuit Court — and its $100,000 small-estate affidavit covers personal property only; real property is excluded at any value, though motor vehicles can be transferred through the affidavit regardless of value as a carve-out.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Idaho
Idaho is a community property state — a surviving spouse already owns half of marital community property outright — and its $100,000 small-estate affidavit for personal property sits alongside a separate, condition-gated summary procedure rather than a second flat threshold.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Illinois
Illinois recently raised its small-estate affidavit threshold from $100,000 to $150,000 for anyone who died on or after August 15, 2025 — a good reminder that this figure changes, and that an older death may still fall under the earlier cap.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Indiana
Indiana raised its small-estate threshold to $100,000 for deaths after June 30, 2022 — but which figure applies depends entirely on the date of death, not the date of filing, a real trap worth checking carefully.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Iowa
Iowa genuinely has two different dollar-gated shortcuts at two different levels, and mixing them up is an easy mistake: a $200,000 court-based "small estate administration," and a separate, lower $50,000 true out-of-court affidavit.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Kansas
Kansas nearly doubled its small-estate affidavit threshold in 2023 — from $40,000 to $75,000 — and its court-based shortcut is a judgment call the court makes on the facts, not a second dollar figure.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Kentucky
Kentucky's small-estate threshold and its simplified-probate threshold are actually the same $30,000 figure and the same mechanism — a "Petition to Dispense with Administration" that still requires a District Court order, not a pure out-of-court affidavit.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Louisiana
Louisiana's legal system is civil law, not common law, and the terminology reflects it: there's no "probate" here — the process is called a succession, and the person handling it is a succession representative rather than an executor or administrator. The rest of this guide uses Louisiana's own terms.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Maine
Maine is unusual in keeping probate at the county level — each county elects its own probate judge — and its small-estate affidavit threshold isn't fixed: it's adjusted for inflation every January, reaching $52,500 for anyone who died in 2026.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Maryland
Maryland is one of the few states without a true out-of-court small-estate affidavit — even its simplified track still requires filing a Petition for Probate with the Register of Wills and having a Personal Representative formally appointed.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Massachusetts
Massachusetts anchors its creditor-claims deadline to the date of death rather than to when a notice is published — a real difference from most states, and one that rewards filing promptly rather than waiting.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Michigan
Michigan's small-estate relief is unusually well-indexed to inflation — its thresholds adjust every year, and for deaths in 2026 the figure is $53,000. Both of its simplified paths share that same dollar figure, but they cover different territory: one can include real property, the other is personal property only with no court filing at all.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Minnesota
Minnesota gives small estates two distinct shortcuts at two different dollar levels — a true out-of-court affidavit up to $75,000, and a court-involved but abbreviated "summary closing" up to $150,000 — worth telling apart before assuming a bigger estate needs full administration.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Mississippi
Mississippi has two distinct $75,000 thresholds that are easy to confuse — a small-estate affidavit and a separate "muniment of title" process for estates with a will and real property — plus a much smaller $12,500 bank-deposit-only shortcut layered underneath both.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Missouri
Missouri's small-estate affidavit stands apart from most other states' — it can transfer real property as well as personal property, as long as the whole estate is under $40,000 and the real property is separately recorded with the county Recorder of Deeds.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Montana
Montana's small-estate affidavit covers up to $100,000 of personal property, and its fallback creditor deadline — if notice is never published — is a comparatively short 1 year from death, shorter than several neighboring states' 3-year fallback.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Nebraska
Nebraska doubled its small-estate affidavit thresholds in 2024 — separate $100,000 caps for personal property and for real property — and has one of the shorter creditor-claim windows in the country at just 60 days.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Nevada
Nevada layers three separate shortcuts below full probate by estate size, and its small-estate affidavit has a real split most content misses: $25,000 for most heirs, but $150,000 for a surviving spouse.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in New Hampshire
New Hampshire is genuinely different from most states: it has no dollar-threshold small-estate affidavit at all. Its simplified option depends on who's inheriting, not on how much the estate is worth, and an older $10,000 threshold sometimes cited online was repealed back in 1997.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in New Jersey
New Jersey's uncontested probate is unusually administrative — most estates never see a judge, since the elected County Surrogate handles them directly. Its small-estate shortcut is intestate-only, and unlike most states, New Jersey doesn't require publishing a creditor notice at all.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in New Mexico
New Mexico genuinely has a court named "Probate Court," separate from its District Court — a non-lawyer-judge court built for uncontested, informal probate, with contested matters routed to District Court instead.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in New York
New York's probate is handled by the Surrogate's Court, and its small-estate shortcut — Voluntary Administration — covers personal property only up to $50,000; anything involving real estate, no matter how small, needs full probate or administration.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in North Carolina
North Carolina has no separate probate court — the Clerk of Superior Court in each county handles estate matters as "judge of probate," a distinct role from that clerk's other duties. Its small-estate affidavit is a genuine out-of-court shortcut, unlike some neighboring states.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in North Dakota
North Dakota's small-estate affidavit covers personal property up to $100,000 and expressly excludes real property regardless of value, while its 3-month creditor-notice window is one of the shorter publication deadlines among neighboring Uniform Probate Code states.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Ohio
Ohio's two small-estate shortcuts are both faster than full probate, but neither is a true out-of-court affidavit — both still require filing an application with the Probate Court and getting a court order, which is worth knowing before assuming a small estate needs no court involvement at all.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Oklahoma
Oklahoma is one of the few states where "simplified probate" and "small-estate affidavit" really are two cleanly distinct thresholds and mechanisms, not the same number wearing two names.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Oregon
Oregon's small-estate affidavit is really two separate caps that both have to be satisfied at once — one for personal property, a different, higher one for real property — not the single combined figure some secondary sources present.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania doesn't offer a simple sworn affidavit that bypasses court the way many other states do. Instead it has two separate tools: a genuinely small set of asset-specific payments institutions can release without any filing, and a formal-but-simplified court petition for personal property up to $50,000.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Rhode Island
Rhode Island is unusual on two fronts: every city and town runs its own Probate Court rather than a single statewide court, and its one small-estate mechanism — Voluntary Administration — is filed with that court rather than presented privately to banks as a true out-of-court affidavit.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in South Carolina
South Carolina nearly doubled its small-estate threshold in May 2025 — from $25,000 to $45,000 — so a lot of older content, and even some older estates, still reference the earlier figure.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in South Dakota
South Dakota splits its small-estate affidavit by asset type — $100,000 for personal property, filed separately from a $50,000 real-property affidavit — and raised the personal-property figure from $50,000 in 2022, so older sources citing the smaller number are now stale.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Tennessee
Tennessee has no single statewide "probate court" — most counties route probate through Chancery Court's Clerk and Master, while Nashville and Memphis each have a dedicated Probate Court of their own.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Texas
Texas probate is unusual in two ways: most estates use "independent administration," a Texas-specific process that lets an executor act with little ongoing court supervision, and a valid will with no debts can skip appointing an executor at all through a process called Muniment of Title.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Utah
Utah follows the Uniform Probate Code, and its efficient path for most uncontested estates is informal probate rather than a dollar-gated "simplified" tier — the real dollar threshold in Utah is the small-estate affidavit, which skips court entirely.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Vermont
Vermont's small-estate track is a simplified court petition rather than a pure out-of-court affidavit — available for estates worth $45,000 or less that consist entirely of personal property, where even a small parcel of real estate disqualifies the estate no matter how little it's worth.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Virginia
Virginia probate is handled administratively by the Clerk of the Circuit Court for the large majority of estates, and a brand-new optional law lets executors accelerate the creditor-claims window that has traditionally run a full 12 months.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Washington
Washington's hallmark feature is "nonintervention powers" — once granted, the executor administers the estate largely outside the court's day-to-day oversight. Publishing a creditor notice is optional, but skipping it stretches the claims window from 4 months to a full 2 years.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in West Virginia
West Virginia has no separate probate court at all — the County Commission is the court of probate by law — and its small-estate affidavit just got significantly narrower: as of July 2025, any real property at all disqualifies an estate, regardless of value.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Wisconsin
Wisconsin offers two genuinely different paths for estates at or under $50,000 — a court-supervised summary process, and a private affidavit that skips the court entirely — and which one fits depends on the family situation, not the dollar amount.
Read the guide →How Probate Works in Wyoming
Wyoming doubled both its summary-probate and small-estate-affidavit thresholds to $400,000, effective for deaths on or after July 1, 2025, and unlike its Rocky Mountain neighbors, publication of creditor notice is mandatory here, not optional.
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