Florida Just Doubled the Estate That Can Skip Full Probate — and the $15 Million Federal Number Has Nothing to Do With It

Florida has raised the ceiling for summary administration — its simplified probate route — from $75,000 to $150,000. The change came in CS/HB 1337, chaptered as Ch. 2026-57 and signed on April 29, 2026, and it applies to deaths on or after July 1, 2026.

The threshold is measured on the value of the entire estate subject to administration less property exempt from creditors' claims — protected homestead in particular. That exclusion matters more in Florida than almost anywhere: a homestead that would blow past $150,000 on its own does not count towards the limit.

The second route into summary administration is unchanged and is not about value at all: it is available regardless of the estate's size if the decedent has been dead more than two years.

One point of timing that will catch people out: deaths before July 1, 2026 remain under the old $75,000 limit. The date that governs is the date of death, not the date the petition is filed.

Ask most people what estate size triggers probate and you will hear a number in the millions. That number is the federal estate tax exemption, which the IRS puts at $15,000,000 for deaths in 2026, up from $13,990,000 in 2025.

The two have nothing to do with each other. The estate tax exemption decides whether the estate owes federal tax — which, at that level, almost none do. The probate threshold decides whether the estate has to go through the full court process, and it is set by each state, in figures three orders of magnitude smaller.

Across the states the simplified-procedure thresholds run from $15,000 in Rhode Island and $20,000 in North Carolina up to $400,000 in Wyoming, with Massachusetts and Nevada at $25,000, Ohio at $35,000, and California at $208,850. Florida's new $150,000 puts it near the top of the range.

So: an estate of $200,000 in Rhode Island owes no federal estate tax whatsoever and still goes through full probate. That is the ordinary case, and it is the opposite of what the $15 million figure leads people to expect.

Summary administration skips the appointment of a personal representative and the formal administration that follows. In practice that means no letters of administration, no formal notice-to-creditors period running the full course, and a materially shorter timetable — often weeks rather than the many months a formal administration takes.

It also avoids the fee structure that attaches to formal administration. Florida sets a presumed-reasonable attorney fee schedule for ordinary services in formal administration: $1,500 for estates up to $40,000, rising in steps, then 3% on the next $900,000 up to $1 million, 2.5% from $1 million to $3 million, and so on. That schedule is a rebuttable presumption, not a mandatory tariff — parties may agree something different — but it is the default anchor in any fee discussion.

On a $140,000 estate, the difference between qualifying and not qualifying is the difference between a summary petition and a formal administration carrying a percentage-based fee. Doubling the threshold moves a large band of ordinary estates from the second into the first.

Summary administration is not an escape from creditors — Florida’s summary administration statute imposes its own obligations on those who receive estate property, and a probate lawyer will read them against the particular estate. Skipping the formal process shortens the machinery; it is not a release.

Nor does it apply to every estate under the limit: it is unavailable where the will directs formal administration, and complications — a contested will, an unclear beneficiary, real property that must be sold — will push a small estate into the formal route anyway.

And it is one state. Every other state sets its own threshold and its own simplified procedure with different names — small estate affidavit, voluntary administration, summary release. The one thing they have in common is that none of them is the number people think it is.