Fort Lauderdale
Probate Attorney.

Someone has died and you have been handed a folder of accounts, a deed, and a stack of unopened mail. The first question is not which lawyer to hire. It is whether a court needs to be involved at all, because a large share of Florida estates transfer without a probate file ever being opened.

The Kogan Firm opens and closes estates in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach. Paul Kogan is a litigator, which matters here for an unobvious reason: most probate work is administrative until it suddenly is not, and the matters that turn contested are the ones where having a courtroom lawyer already on the file saves the family a second retainer.

Probate exists to move title on assets that have nowhere else to go. If an account, a vehicle, or a parcel of real property was titled in the deceased person’s sole name with no beneficiary designation, only a court order can transfer it. Everything else, and it is often most of the estate, passes by operation of law:

• Assets held in a funded revocable living trust pass under the trust, privately.
• Accounts with a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death beneficiary pass to that person directly.
• Property held jointly with right of survivorship, or as tenancy by the entirety between spouses, passes to the survivor.
• Life insurance and retirement accounts pass to the named beneficiary, not under the will.

Run the probate calculator before you do anything else. Six questions and you will know whether you are looking at formal administration, summary administration, or nothing at all.

Florida runs two tracks, and which one you are on drives every number that follows: the cost, the timeline, and whether a personal representative gets appointed at all.

The $150,000 ceiling is new. It came from chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida, and it applies to deaths on or after July 1, 2026. For an earlier death the old $75,000 limit still governs, which means two families with identically sized estates can land on different tracks based only on a date. See the law update for the detail, or the glossary entry for the short version.

Florida Statute §733.6171 sets a presumptively reasonable attorney fee at 3 percent of the first $1 million of estate value, 2.5 percent of the next $4 million, and 2 percent of the next $5 million. On a $500,000 estate that is roughly $15,000, and the personal representative is entitled to a comparable commission under §733.617 on top of it.

We do not quote off that schedule on straightforward estates. Summary administration is a flat $3,000. Formal administration starts at $4,500 and is quoted in writing before any work begins, so the number you hear on the first call is the number on the engagement letter. Court filing fees, publication of the notice to creditors, and certified copies are separate and run a few hundred dollars.

The probate cost estimator models your specific estate, and what probate costs in Florida breaks down every line item. Full fee detail is on the pricing page.

Probate is opened in the county where the person lived, and each county runs its own court, clerk, and calendar. The statutes are identical statewide; the local practice is not. Pick your county for the courthouse address, the clerk, the current filing fee, and how that court actually moves.

Opening the estate and qualifying the personal representative. Marshaling and valuing assets. Publishing and serving the notice to creditors, then resolving or objecting to the claims that come in. Determining homestead status. Filing the inventory and the accountings. Distributing and closing. Where the estate turns contested, we stay on it: will contests, undue influence and capacity claims, breach of fiduciary duty by a personal representative or trustee, and disputes over an elective share.

If you are the personal representative and want to understand the job before you accept it, the free Florida Executor’s Kit walks through the first thirty days. If you are administering a trust rather than an estate, start with the Trustee’s Kit.

Outside these three counties? We can still help, or point you to the right local counsel. And if you are planning ahead rather than administering an estate, the better move is to avoid probate in the first place. Our trust vs will guide explains how, and the estate planning practice page covers what a plan involves.

New to the vocabulary? The estate and probate glossary defines the terms you will run into, from summary administration to the personal representative, with the Florida-specific detail.