How we gather court data
Every court listing on ProbateUS was collected from public sources, mostly the court's own website, between March 2026 and May 2026. Nobody has phoned each court to confirm the details, so check with the court before you file or travel.
| Courts listed | 3,143 |
|---|---|
| With a phone number | 3,134 (100%) |
| With a website | 3,143 (100%) |
| With office hours | 3,042 (97%) |
| With filing fees | 1,356 (43%) |
| With a map location | 3,135 (100%) |
| First collected | March 18, 2026 |
| Last updated | Between March 24, 2026 and May 11, 2026 |
Which courts are listed
We start from the federal list of US counties and county equivalents, each with its FIPS code, and list one probate court for each. In most states that is the county probate court. Some states hear probate in a different court, such as the Surrogate's Court in New York and New Jersey or the Orphans' Court in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
How a listing is built
For each county we found the probate court's official website and its street address. From the court's own pages about probate, and the PDF and Word documents they link to, we recorded the phone number, fax, email, office hours, filing fees, forms and judges. When a court website gave too little, we looked for the same details in other public sources, such as the state court system's website.
What we check
- Each listing gets a completeness score. Phone and hours count most, then filing fees, then email or fax, forms and judges. Listings that scored low were looked up again in other public sources.
- Pages that turned out to be error pages, such as "page not found", are thrown away rather than read.
- Phone numbers must look like a US phone number.
- A map location that falls outside the court's state is left off the map. Some courts were placed in a same-named county in another state, and we fix those as we find them.
What we don't check
We don't call courts, and we can't see changes a court makes after we collected its page. Fees and hours change most often. Where we found no fees or hours for a court, its listing leaves them out.
How often we recheck
There is no fixed schedule yet for rechecking every court. The most recent change to a court listing was on May 11, 2026. We fix a listing when a reader reports a problem and the court's own website confirms it.
Attorneys
The attorney pages list 2,018 Fellows of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel (ACTEC) and 1,943 California State Bar certified specialists in estate planning, trust and probate law, copied from those two public directories in March 2026. Attorneys don't pay to be listed, and we don't rank or recommend them. They are sorted by city, or by distance from a court.
State guides and calculators
The 51 state guides are based on each state's probate statutes and court rules and on official court websites, and were last updated in September 2026. The small-estate limits, creditor claim deadlines and executor fee formulas used by the calculators were checked against each state's statute on August 25, 2026, and each page lists the statutes it relies on. Where a guide states a small-estate limit, the page shows the checked figure.
Corrections
If something is wrong, report a correction. We check it against the court's website and update the listing. The about page explains why ProbateUS exists and how it is paid for.