The bank froze the account the day it learned of the death, the mortgage is still due on the first, and the person who could sign checks is gone. That gap between the day someone dies and the day a court gives someone else legal authority to act is where most families get hurt, and in Georgia it usually lasts several weeks. Knowing what the probate court needs, in what order, is the difference between an estate that closes in eight months and one that drags past two years.
This is a practical walkthrough of settling an estate under Georgia law, written for the person who just found out they are named executor. The county filings and deadlines below are specific to Georgia, though the structure is similar in most states. If the estate involves real property, a family business, a contested will, or heirs who are not speaking to each other, bringing in a probate attorney Atlanta families use for administration work early is far cheaper than fixing a mistake after distribution.
Start by Sorting What Is Actually in the Estate
Probate only controls assets titled in the deceased person’s name alone, with no surviving co-owner and no beneficiary designation. Everything else moves outside the court file. Many families spend months on a probate petition for an estate that turns out to hold almost nothing, or worse, assume a retirement account follows the will when it follows a form signed in 1998.
Pull every statement, deed, and title, then sort them into two columns before you file anything:
| Asset | In the probate estate? | What actually controls it |
|---|---|---|
| House titled in the deceased person’s name alone | Yes | The will, or Georgia intestacy rules |
| House held jointly with right of survivorship | No | The survivorship language in the deed |
| Bank account with a payable-on-death beneficiary | No | The beneficiary card on file at the bank |
| 401(k), IRA, pension, life insurance | No | The beneficiary designation, not the will |
| Vehicle titled solely to the deceased | Usually yes, often via a short title affidavit | Georgia Department of Revenue title rules |
| Assets already retitled into a revocable living trust | No | The trust document and the successor trustee |
| Business interests, uncashed checks, personal property | Usually yes | The will, or intestacy |
| Property claimed as year’s support | Comes out of the estate ahead of creditors | A petition to the probate court |
Georgia has not adopted transfer-on-death deeds for real estate, so a house cannot be handed off with a beneficiary form the way a checking account can. Real property passes by will, by survivorship on the deed, or through a trust. That single fact is why so many Georgia estates end up in probate court even when the family did some planning.
The Three Georgia Filing Paths
Probate in Georgia runs through the probate court of the county where the person lived, one of 159 county courts. Which petition you file changes the timeline dramatically.
No administration necessary
If there are no unpaid debts of the estate, or all creditors have consented, and every heir agrees in writing on how to divide the property, the heirs can petition for an order that no administration is necessary. There is no executor, no inventory, and no annual reporting. This is the fastest route and it is badly underused. It fails the moment one heir will not sign or a real creditor surfaces.
Probate in common form
The will is filed and letters testamentary issue without formal notice to the heirs. It is quick, which is why lawyers reach for it when a deadline is bearing down. The catch is that a common form probate stays open to challenge by an heir for four years after it is granted, so nothing is truly final until that window closes.
Probate in solemn form
Every heir gets formal notice and either acknowledges service or is served. Once the court admits the will in solemn form, the heirs who were properly notified are bound and cannot come back later. It takes longer at the front end, typically adding several weeks, and it is the right choice for almost any estate with real property, a blended family, or an heir who was left out.
If there is no will at all, the path is a petition for letters of administration, and the person appointed is called an administrator rather than an executor. Heirs can consent to the appointment, which speeds things considerably, or fight over it, which does not.
The Creditor Clock Sets Your Real Timeline
Once letters issue, the personal representative must publish a notice to debtors and creditors in the county legal organ, the newspaper the county designates for legal notices. The notice runs once a week for four consecutive weeks, and creditors have three months from the date of first publication to present their claims. Known creditors should also get direct written notice rather than relying on publication alone.
That three-month window is the floor under every estate timeline. Distributing before it closes exposes the executor personally, because Georgia sets an order in which estate debts are paid, and paying a lower-priority claim ahead of a higher one can leave the executor answering for the shortfall out of their own pocket. Year’s support, funeral expenses, and administration costs come first. Ordinary unsecured debts, including most credit cards, sit near the bottom.
A realistic schedule for an uncontested Georgia estate with a house and a few accounts: four to eight weeks to qualify, three months of creditor notice running in parallel with asset collection, one to three months to sell or transfer real property, and a final accounting and discharge after that. Eight to twelve months is normal. Two years is what happens when a will is challenged, an heir cannot be located, or the estate has to sell a property nobody wants to sell.
Year’s Support, the Georgia Rule Families Never Hear About
A surviving spouse, and any minor children, can petition the probate court for year’s support, an award of estate property intended to sustain the family for twelve months after the death. Georgia does not use the elective-share system found in most states, and this is the mechanism that replaces it.
Two features make it powerful. It has priority over nearly all estate debts, including unsecured creditors, and there is no fixed dollar cap, so in modest estates a year’s support petition can effectively transfer the entire estate, house included, to the surviving spouse. The petition generally must be filed within two years of the date of death. Heirs and creditors get notice and can object on the ground that the amount requested is unreasonable, which is where these cases are actually fought.
What Settling an Estate Costs
The court itself is the cheap part. Probate court filing fees in Georgia counties typically run in the low hundreds of dollars, and the legal organ publication is usually under a hundred. The real money goes elsewhere:
- Attorney fees. Atlanta-area probate counsel commonly bills hourly, and a straightforward administration usually lands in the low thousands. Litigated will contests run far higher because they are litigation, not paperwork.
- Executor commissions. Georgia law allows a personal representative roughly two and a half percent of sums received and two and a half percent of sums paid out, plus a percentage of the value of property delivered in kind, unless the will sets different compensation. Family executors often waive it, partly because commissions are taxable income while an inheritance generally is not.
- Bond premiums. Unless the will waives bond, the court usually requires one sized to the estate. A well-drafted will waives bond, inventory, and annual returns, which removes a recurring cost and a recurring chore.
- Appraisals and carrying costs. A date-of-death appraisal on real property is often worth ordering anyway for the stepped-up basis. Meanwhile the estate keeps paying the mortgage, insurance, utilities, and property taxes on a house nobody is living in.
- Tax preparation. The estate needs its own taxpayer identification number, and if it takes in six hundred dollars or more of gross income during administration, it files a fiduciary income tax return.
Federal estate tax catches almost nobody. The exemption sits in the eight-figure range per person, and Georgia repealed its own estate tax, so the vast majority of estates owe neither. What families do owe is a final personal income tax return for the year of death, due on the normal April deadline.
When There Is No Will
Georgia intestacy is more rigid than most people expect. A surviving spouse and children share the estate equally, except that the spouse’s share can never fall below one third no matter how many children there are. A spouse with no children takes everything. Children of a child who died before the parent step into that child’s share. If there is no spouse and no descendants, the estate moves outward to parents, then siblings, then more distant relatives.
Nothing in that scheme accounts for a long-term partner you never married, a stepchild you raised but never adopted, or the fact that one child moved home for two years to provide care. Those outcomes are why it is worth taking an afternoon to get organized while you still can, rather than leaving a statute to guess at your intentions.
The Executor’s Actual Task List
If you have just been named, work in this order. Skipping ahead is what creates personal liability.
- Order ten to fifteen certified death certificates. Every institution wants an original and none of them give it back.
- Locate the original signed will. A copy is provable in Georgia but only with additional evidence, so search the safe deposit box, the drafting attorney’s file, and the county probate court, where some people file wills for safekeeping.
- Secure the property. Change locks if the house is empty, confirm the homeowner insurer knows it is vacant, and stop automatic payments that no longer make sense.
- File the petition in the probate court of the county where the person was domiciled, and obtain letters testamentary or letters of administration.
- Apply for the estate’s federal tax identification number and open a single estate checking account. Never pay estate expenses from your own account and never mix estate funds with yours.
- Publish the notice to debtors and creditors, and send direct notice to every creditor you actually know about.
- Inventory and value everything as of the date of death, including a real property appraisal.
- Pay valid claims in the statutory order of priority, after the creditor window closes.
- File the final individual income tax return, plus a fiduciary return if the estate earned enough income.
- Distribute, obtain signed receipts from each beneficiary, and petition for discharge so your authority formally ends.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does probate take in Georgia?
Most uncontested estates close in eight to twelve months. The floor is set by the three-month creditor claim period that starts with the first newspaper publication, plus the several weeks it takes to qualify a personal representative. Estates that own real property needing sale, or that face a will challenge, commonly run eighteen months to two years or more.
Can we avoid probate entirely?
Sometimes. If every asset is jointly owned, has a named beneficiary, or already sits in a revocable trust, there may be nothing left for the court to administer. Georgia also allows a petition for order that no administration is necessary when there are no unpaid estate debts and all heirs agree in writing on the division. One solely titled house or one unpaid creditor is usually enough to end that option.
Is the executor personally liable for the deceased person’s debts?
Not for the debts themselves, which are paid from estate assets and die with the estate if there is nothing left. The executor does risk personal liability for mishandling the process, most often by distributing to beneficiaries before the creditor period ends or by paying a low-priority claim ahead of a higher-priority one. Following the statutory order and waiting out the claim window is the protection.
Do the heirs inherit credit card debt?
No. Unsecured debts are claims against the estate, not against the family, and if the estate lacks funds those creditors go unpaid. The exceptions are joint account holders and co-signers, who were always liable in their own right. Authorized users on a card are not the same as joint account holders and generally owe nothing.
What happens to the mortgage on an inherited house?
The mortgage survives the owner and stays attached to the property. Federal law generally prevents the lender from calling the loan due when a relative inherits and lives in the home, but someone has to keep making the payments during administration or the lender can foreclose. If the estate cannot cover the payments, the practical choices are sell, refinance, or let a beneficiary who wants the house take over the payments. Families already behind on payments should read Protecting Your Home: Strategies and Rights in Foreclosure Defense before the arrears grow.
Does a will have to be filed even if there is nothing to probate?
Georgia expects a person holding an original will to deliver it to the probate court, even when no administration is needed. Filing it costs little and closes off later arguments about what the document said. Holding onto the only original for years is how families end up litigating a photocopy.
What to Do This Week
If you are the named executor, do one thing before anything else: order the certified death certificates and find the original will. Everything downstream, from the probate petition to the bank, waits on those two documents, and both take longer to obtain than people expect. Then look at the asset table above and decide honestly whether this estate needs a full administration or qualifies for the no-administration route, because that single call determines the next ten months of your life. For more on titling, deeds, and property transfers, the Real Estates section covers the ground next door to probate.
This article is general information about Georgia probate procedure and is not legal, tax, or financial advice; consult a licensed attorney about your specific estate.
