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Probate

How to Probate a Will in Georgia

Probating a will in Georgia means filing the original will with the probate court in the county where the person lived, then asking that court to put you in charge. Common form is faster but stays open to challenge for four years. Solemn form serves every heir first and binds them when the judge signs.

By Melissa Breyer, Esq. 10 min read

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You were named executor in a Georgia will, and now you are holding the original with no idea what to do with it. The short answer: you file the will with the probate court in the county where the person lived, and you ask that court to appoint you. Nothing in the will happens on its own.

Until a judge signs an order, you have no legal power to act. You cannot close a bank account, sell a house, or pay a bill. The document that gives you that power is called Letters Testamentary, and the court issues it only after the will is admitted. Here is what you file, which of the two probate paths to pick, what Atlanta area courts charge, and how long it all takes.

What Probating a Will Means in Georgia

Probating a will means asking a Georgia probate court to accept the will as genuine and to put someone in charge of the estate. Until a judge signs an order, the will is just a piece of paper. Nobody can use it to move money or transfer a house.

You file in the county where the person lived when they died. If your mother lived in Sandy Springs, that is Fulton County Probate Court. If she lived in Marietta, it is Cobb County. Where she owned property does not decide this. Where she lived does.

Georgia law says whoever has the will must file it with reasonable promptness. That standard is O.C.G.A. § 53-5-5, and it does not give you a number of days. You may have read that Georgia gives you 10 days to file a will. That is not a state law. A few counties use a 10 day rule inside their own e-filing systems, but there is no statewide deadline. Hiding a will is a different matter. A judge can hold that person in contempt and even jail them until the will is handed over.

The court wants the original signed will, not a photocopy. If the original cannot be found, Georgia presumes the person destroyed it on purpose and revoked it. That rule is O.C.G.A. § 53-4-46. You can still probate a copy, but you have to prove two things: that the copy is a true copy, and that the will was never actually revoked. That means a real hearing with real evidence, and it is one of the fastest ways a simple estate turns into a hard one. For the wider picture, start with how probate works in Georgia.

Common Form or Solemn Form: The Choice You Make First

Georgia gives you two ways to prove a will, and you pick one on the very first filing. This is the biggest decision in the whole process, and most families make it without realizing they made it.

Common form probate is the fast one. Under O.C.G.A. § 53-5-17, the court can accept the will on the testimony of a single subscribing witness, with no service or notice to anyone. If the will is self-proved, meaning it was signed with a notarized page attached, the court does not need witness testimony at all. You file, and the court can move quickly.

The catch shows up later. A common form probate stays open to challenge for four years from the date of the order, under O.C.G.A. § 53-5-19. Anyone with a stake can come back inside that window and demand the will be proved the hard way. One group gets longer. An heir who was a minor when the will was admitted has four years from the day they turn 18.

Solemn form probate is the slow one that actually ends. Every heir must be served, and an heir living in Georgia has to be served in person. O.C.G.A. § 53-5-22(a) requires that notice at least 30 days before probate is made, unless the court shortens that window. Heirs can sign a waiver instead, which is what usually happens when a family agrees. Careful with an old number here. Some websites still say 10 days. The current Georgia code says 30.

What the wait buys you is finality. Under O.C.G.A. § 53-5-20, solemn form is conclusive on everyone who got notice, and conclusive against nearly everyone else six months after the order is entered. If the estate has a house to sell, a bank that wants clean paperwork, or an heir you are unsure about, solemn form is usually the right call.

Where You File It, and What Metro Atlanta Courts Charge

Georgia uses statewide standard forms, so the paperwork itself is the same in every county. GPCSF 4 is the Petition to Probate Will in Common Form. GPCSF 5 is the Petition to Probate Will in Solemn Form. Both ask the court to admit the will and to issue Letters Testamentary to you. File the form with the original will, a certified death certificate, and the filing fee.

What changes county to county is how you file and what it costs. Fulton County lets you e-file a new estate petition through its online system, and its published fee is $209 for the first filing on either form, and $205 for a later filing in the same estate. If you do e-file in Fulton, the court still wants the original will handed in physically within 10 days.

Cobb County charges $200 for the solemn form petition. Service on the heirs is billed on top of that: $50 for personal service on someone inside Georgia, or $8.50 by certified mail when the person lives out of state. Gwinnett County charges $202 for the same solemn form filing, and DeKalb County charges $209. If the fee itself is the problem, Cobb accepts an Affidavit of Indigency to waive it.

Certified copies of your Letters Testamentary cost $10 each, and that amount is set statewide by O.C.G.A. § 15-9-60, not by the county. Order at least two at the counter, because banks keep the one you hand them.

Those four numbers are county totals, not the state fee. Georgia sets one statutory filing fee for a petition to probate a will, and it is $175 under O.C.G.A. § 15-9-60. That amount applies to fees paid in a probate court on or after January 1, 2025, when Senate Bill 232 rewrote the state’s probate court fees.

Counties add their own service, publication, and processing charges on top of that base. That is why the four county totals are close but not identical. Older articles still quote pre-2025 numbers, so a figure like $159.50 or $164 for Fulton is out of date rather than a different fee.

GPCSF 4 and GPCSF 5 both assume the person named in the will is alive and willing to serve, which is not always true. If the named executor has died, the will often names a backup. If there is no backup, or the named executor simply does not want the job, someone else can ask the court to take over by filing GPCSF 7 instead. That form asks the court to probate the will in solemn form and to appoint an Administrator with Will Annexed at the same time. If the will was already admitted before the executor stepped away, the form is GPCSF 8. Either way the will still controls who inherits, and only the person running the estate changes.

Those figures are only the court’s cut. They are not what the estate ends up spending. Add the newspaper notice, certified mail, an appraisal if there is real estate, and legal help if the estate needs it, and a simple Georgia estate runs closer to $14,700. The full breakdown is on our page about what probate costs in Georgia.

The three clocks that shape a Georgia will probate
13 Months
How long your family waits before they can use what you left them
30 Days
What solemn form adds before the court will even hear your petition
4 Years
How long a common form probate can be reopened and challenged

How Long Probating a Will Takes in Georgia

A simple Georgia estate takes about 13 months from filing to closing. An estate holding a business, rental property, or a family fight averages closer to 25 months. Most of that is not the court being slow. It is built into the law on purpose.

Three waiting periods run at the same time. First, you publish a notice to debtors and creditors in the county legal newspaper within 60 days of being appointed, and it runs once a week for four weeks. That is O.C.G.A. § 53-7-41. Second, creditors get three months from the last publication date to file a claim. Third, and this one sets the floor, O.C.G.A. § 53-7-42 says you do not have to pay estate debts, and nobody can sue you over them, until six months after you qualify as executor.

There is an inventory too. Georgia expects the executor to file one with the court and mail it to the heirs within six months of qualifying, under O.C.G.A. § 53-7-30. A carefully drafted will often waives that requirement, which is one small way a good will saves the family real time.

What Slows a Georgia Probate Down

Four things push an estate past that 13 month average, and three of them can be prevented while the person is still alive. A missing original will is the worst, because you now have to prove a copy is genuine before anything else can start.

Next is an heir who will not sign a waiver. Solemn form only moves fast when everyone waives service. One holdout means personal service and a 30 day wait before the court takes up the petition. If an heir cannot be found at all, the court can require service by publication, which adds more weeks. Our guide on how to notify heirs and beneficiaries during probate covers what the court accepts as proof.

Then there is a caveat, which is the formal name for an objection to the will. A caveat turns probate into a lawsuit with hearings and evidence. Real estate in more than one Georgia county adds a separate filing in each one.

One more thing can change the outcome, and it is not in the will. A surviving spouse, or a minor child, can ask the court to set aside property as year’s support under O.C.G.A. § 53-3-1. The petition has to be filed within 24 months of the death, under O.C.G.A. § 53-3-5. Property the court sets aside stops being part of the estate at all, under O.C.G.A. § 53-3-9(a), so it never reaches the people the will names. On a small estate with a surviving spouse, that can be most of it.

One thing that does not hold a will up is bond. Georgia requires bond from the administrator of an estate with no will, or from a temporary administrator, under O.C.G.A. § 53-6-50(a). An executor named in a will does not post one. A judge can still order bond later, under O.C.G.A. § 53-6-53, if someone tells the court you are mishandling the estate.

When You Need a Probate Attorney

Georgia does not require you to hire a lawyer to probate a will when you are acting for yourself. Plenty of small, friendly estates move through Fulton or Cobb probate court with no attorney at all. Court staff can hand you the forms, but they are not allowed to give you legal advice.

Get help when the estate holds a business or an LLC interest, real estate in more than one county, or debts that may be larger than the assets. Do the same if there is a blended family, an heir who has already hired a lawyer, or a caveat on file. Paying creditors in the wrong order can leave you personally responsible for the shortfall. That is the costliest mistake an executor can make, and it is easy to make by accident.

How Your Family Can Skip This Next Time

Every step of Georgia probate happens because assets were still titled in one person’s name at death. Probate is a title problem, not a will problem. A will tells the court what you wanted. It does not keep the court out.

A funded revocable living trust is the usual fix, because the trust already holds title when you die, so there is nothing left for the court to move. If you are weighing the two, read how a will and a trust actually differ in Georgia. For one piece of Georgia real estate, a transfer on death deed can move the house without probate. And if you already have a will that no longer fits your family, amending it with a codicil is a smaller job than most people expect. Atlanta Estate Planning builds all three, and the first conversation costs nothing.

THE PROCESS

The Five Steps to Probate a Will in Georgia

File the Will and the Petition

Take the original signed will to the probate court in the county where the person lived. File it with GPCSF 4 for common form, or GPCSF 5 for solemn form. Include a certified death certificate and the filing fee. Fulton County accepts new estate petitions through its e-filing system.

Get Your Letters and Open the Estate Account

The court reviews the petition. In a solemn form case it waits until every heir has been served or has signed a waiver. When the judge signs the order admitting the will, the court issues Letters Testamentary. That document, not the will, is what proves to a bank or a title company that you can act. With the Letters in hand, ask the IRS for an EIN for the estate, then open a bank account in the estate name using it. Never move estate money through your own account.

Publish Notice to Creditors

Within 60 days of qualifying, publish a notice to debtors and creditors in the county legal newspaper. It runs once a week for four weeks. Creditors then have three months from the last publication date to file a claim. Under O.C.G.A. § 53-7-42, you do not have to pay estate debts until six months after you qualify.

Inventory the Estate and Pay What It Owes

List everything the estate owns and what it is worth. File that inventory with the court within six months of qualifying, unless the will waives it. Pay valid claims in the order Georgia law sets, along with taxes and administration costs. Paying the wrong creditor first can leave you personally responsible for the difference.

Distribute What Is Left and Close the Estate

Once the waiting periods have run and the debts are paid, transfer what is left to the people named in the will. File the final return or a petition for discharge. Collect receipts from the heirs and ask the court to release you. The estate is not closed until the court says it is.

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Melissa Breyer

Melissa Breyer

Georgia Estate Planning Attorney

Licensed by the State Bar of Georgia, Bar No. 897967

Melissa Breyer is a Georgia-licensed estate planning attorney focused exclusively on trust-based planning for individuals and families. She personally meets with every client and designs every plan from scratch. No templates. No associates handling your case. Every plan is built for your specific family, your specific assets, and your specific wishes.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Common form and solemn form are the two ways a Georgia court can prove a will. They trade speed for finality. Common form is the faster one. The court can accept the will on the testimony of one witness who signed it, and nobody has to be given notice. The trade-off is that it stays open to challenge for four years under O.C.G.A. § 53-5-19. Solemn form is the slower one. Every heir must get notice, and an heir living in Georgia has to be served in person, at least 30 days before probate is made. In exchange, the order is conclusive the moment it is entered against every heir who was served or signed a waiver, and conclusive against everyone else six months later, under O.C.G.A. § 53-5-20.

Georgia law sets no fixed number of days for filing a will. O.C.G.A. § 53-5-5 says a person who has possession of a will must file it with the probate court with reasonable promptness. That is the whole standard. A judge can hold someone in contempt, and even jail them, for withholding a will. A 10 day figure shows up all over the internet. It comes from individual county e-filing rules, not from Georgia statute. There is one hard outer limit, though. Under O.C.G.A. § 53-5-3, a will cannot be offered for probate more than five years after someone files to open an estate without it, gets an order saying no administration is needed, or probates a different will. Sitting on a will while a relative opens an estate as if there were none can run that clock out.

When an original Georgia will cannot be found, the law presumes the person destroyed it on purpose and revoked it. O.C.G.A. § 53-4-46 still allows a copy to be offered for probate. The family has to prove two things by a preponderance of the evidence. First, that the copy is a true copy of the original. Second, that the presumption of revocation is rebutted. In practice that means a hearing with real evidence, such as testimony from the attorney who drafted the will.

Georgia does not require an executor acting on their own behalf to hire a lawyer. Many small, uncontested estates go through probate court without one. Court staff can give you the standard forms, but they cannot give you legal advice. Hire an attorney when the estate holds a business, real estate in more than one county, or debts that may be bigger than the assets. Do the same if there is a blended family or an heir who has already objected.

Letters Testamentary is the document a Georgia probate court issues to prove that the named executor can legally act for the estate. Banks, title companies, and transfer agents ask to see the Letters, not the will. Until the court signs the order admitting the will and issues Letters, an executor cannot close an account, sell a house, or pay an estate bill.

A Georgia will can still be challenged after the court admits it. How long that window stays open depends on which form of probate was used. Common form probate stays open for four years from the date of the order, under O.C.G.A. § 53-5-19. An heir who was a minor at the time gets four years from the day they turn 18. Solemn form probate closes much sooner. Under O.C.G.A. § 53-5-20, it is conclusive against every heir who was served or waived service as soon as the order is entered, and conclusive against everyone else six months later. An heir who was entitled to notice but never adequately served still gets the four year common form window.

Most Georgia wills are self-proved, meaning a notarized page is attached and signed by the person who made the will and by both witnesses. A court accepts those signatures without asking for anything more. A will with no such page has to be proved another way. You file a form called Interrogatories to Witness to Will (GPCSF Supplement 6), and one of the witnesses who watched the signing then answers written questions under oath. The probate court provides the form. Start looking for that witness early, because tracking down a witness years later is what stalls a filing most often.

A Georgia executor is entitled to a commission unless the will says otherwise. The default rule is O.C.G.A. § 53-6-60: 2.5 percent of the money that comes into the estate, and another 2.5 percent of the money paid out. A will can set a different amount, and so can a written agreement signed by all the beneficiaries. Family members serving as executor often waive the fee, especially when they are inheriting anyway. One thing to weigh before deciding: the commission is taxable income to you, while an inheritance usually is not.

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Whatever brought you here today, the real question underneath it is simple: is your family protected if something happens to you? Without a plan, the people you love could face months in probate court, a fight over what you meant, or bills nobody has the authority to pay.

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