If you are settling a loved one’s estate in Orange County, the most common question is also the most practical one: what will it cost to probate the will at the Orange County Surrogate’s Court? The honest answer is that the total cost has two distinct parts — the court filing fee, which is set by statute and graduated based
When a loved one passes away in Orange County, one of the first questions families ask is whether they must go through full probate or whether a simpler small estate affidavit will do. The short answer: if the decedent’s personal property qualifies as a “small estate” under New York law, you may be able to use a voluntary administration affidavit
Preliminary Letters Testamentary are an interim grant of authority that the Orange County Surrogate’s Court can issue under SCPA §1412 to the executor named in a will, allowing that person to begin managing and protecting the estate before the will is fully admitted to probate. When a probate proceeding will take time — because distributees must be located, a citation
For a straightforward, uncontested estate, probate in Orange County typically takes about three to six months from the date you file the petition until the Orange County Surrogate’s Court issues Letters Testamentary to the executor. That timeline can stretch to a year or more if heirs cannot be located, if a will contest arises, or if the estate holds complex
When someone dies without a will in Orange County, New York, the State of New York effectively writes the will for them. This is called dying “intestate,” and it means the deceased person’s property is distributed according to a fixed set of inheritance rules under New York’s Estate, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL §4-1.1) rather than according to any personal
If you have just been named executor in a loved one’s will in Orange County, you are probably asking one urgent question: do you actually need a lawyer to probate the will? The short answer is that New York law does not technically require you to hire an attorney to file for probate in the Orange County Surrogate’s Court —