Florida Estate Accounting: An Executor's Guide

The accounting Florida expects: the Rule 5.346 shape

Florida probate accounting is built the way every estate accounting is built: charges, everything you were answerable for, set against credits, everything that left or remains, balancing to the penny. What separates the Florida version from the plain informal accounting is the columns. Shaped the way Florida practice expects, under Prob. R. 5.346, the estate's own money and the money it earned while open are accounted for separately, so principal and income never blur into one number.

That split is the thing to get right early. Deciding a year later whether a deposit was principal or income, from bank statements alone, is close to impossible. Tag each entry the day it happens. Behind the summary sit the usual schedules: receipts, property found after the inventory, disbursements, gains and losses on sales, distributions to each beneficiary, and the property still on hand.

The inventory comes first and is its own filing. Fla. Prob. R. 5.340 puts it typically 60 days after letters of administration issue, and the court can extend it. Confirm the exact date with your attorney. Treat it as the accounting's opening balance, because that is what it becomes.

Florida's deadlines, with the citation behind each

Notice of Administration to family and heirs. Fla. Stat. §733.212 requires prompt service on the surviving spouse and beneficiaries. About 30 days is a common target, but the statute says promptly, so confirm timing with your attorney.

Notice to Creditors. Fla. Stat. §733.2121 requires prompt publication in a local paper once a week for two weeks, which starts the 3-month creditor claim window. The statute sets no fixed day count, so confirm the timing and the newspaper with your attorney.

The two-year cutoff. Under Fla. Stat. §733.710, claims not brought within 2 years of death are generally barred regardless of notice. Calendar it, and confirm how it applies to this estate with your attorney.

Federal estate tax return, if one is required. Form 706 is due 9 months after death under IRC §6075, but only for estates over the federal exemption. Florida has no separate estate tax. Confirm with your attorney or CPA whether a return is needed and whether an extension was filed.

The final accounting and petition for discharge. Fla. Prob. R. 5.400 puts these typically 12 months after letters issue, later if a federal estate tax return is due, and courts routinely extend. Confirm the schedule with your attorney.

What a Florida personal representative is paid

Fla. Stat. §733.617 calls a fee presumed reasonable at 3% of the first $1,000,000 of compensable value, then 2.5% to $5,000,000, 2% to $10,000,000, and 1.5% above. Compensable value means the inventory value of the probate assets plus the income the estate earned during administration, which is another reason the columns matter.

Presumed is not fixed. The court can still raise or lower the fee for how the work actually went. If the will sets the personal representative's pay, the will usually wins, so have the attorney read it. And the fee is taxable income to you: if you are also the main beneficiary, waiving the fee and taking more as inheritance is often smarter, which is a call to make with the attorney and a tax preparer.

How Florida estates usually close

The pattern is short. File the final accounting and the petition for discharge, and serve them on interested persons. Wait out the objection period. Make the distributions in the plan and collect receipts. Then obtain the order of discharge, because that order, not the last check, is what actually ends your liability.

Waivers can substitute when everyone signs. That does not make the accounting optional. It is the thing beneficiaries are signing off on, and they can ask for it complete and clear first. Which route your estate takes is a question for its attorney.

What software can prepare, and what only you can supply

Software can carry the arithmetic. From a ledger kept as you go, a Florida personal representative accounting can be generated whole: the schedules, the principal and income columns, the summary balanced to the penny, and a per-beneficiary distribution statement. Interim accountings come from the same records.

What software cannot supply is judgment. It cannot read the will. It does not track mortgages or liens, so real property values print gross, and if your filing shows them net you subtract when transcribing. It cannot decide what belongs in the inventory — what is probate property and what passes outside it turns on facts about this estate, and that is the attorney's call. The case details, the fee you request, and anything the will directs are yours.

And one limit worth stating plainly: a generated document follows the general style of the named Florida format. It is not a court form, and courts differ. What it gives your attorney is a complete, correctly structured starting point, ready to transcribe. It never replaces their review.

Where ExecutorLedger fits

ExecutorLedger is Florida executor accounting software with a plain arrangement. Recording is free for as long as the estate takes, and every court-style Florida document previews free with your real numbers, watermarked, nothing withheld. $149 once per estate lifts the watermark. Co-executors, the attorney, and beneficiaries get free seats.

Questions Florida executors ask