First, understand
what you are actually facing.
Probate is Florida's court-supervised process for settling an estate. Which track an estate takes — and what it costs — depends on what the decedent owned, how it was titled, and what documents exist. Before anyone quotes you a fee for the whole administration, it pays to know which process you are actually in.
The two main tracks
- Summary administration — available when the probate estate, after exempt property, is $75,000 or less, or the decedent has been dead more than two years. Faster, cheaper, no personal representative appointed.
- Formal administration — the full court-supervised process for everything else. Section 733.6171 of the Florida Statutes presumes attorney fees on a sliding scale — roughly $15,000 on a $500,000 estate — before costs and delay.
Assets titled in a funded trust, held jointly with survivorship, or carrying valid beneficiary designations pass outside probate entirely. Many families discover the estate is smaller — or larger — than they assumed once titling is actually read.
What the triage consult delivers
The firm's practice focuses on estate planning — the architecture designed to keep estates out of probate. For families facing probate now, Oaktree Reserve Law PLLC offers a flat-fee triage consult: a read of the estate's assets and titling, a map of which administration track applies, a plain-English outline of what the process involves, and a direct answer on who should handle it. Where the estate calls for full probate administration, the firm says so and refers you to a Florida probate firm suited to it — the firm accepts no referral fee in either direction.
The better time to solve probate
Probate is solved most cheaply before it exists. A funded revocable trust is designed to pass assets outside the process — see the Trust Plan, which includes the deed and funding verification that make the architecture perform.