Georgia Estate Accounting: A Personal Representative's Guide

Georgia probate runs through each county's own probate court. The personal representative is called that throughout the Revised Probate Code of 1998, O.C.G.A. Title 53. O.C.G.A. § 15-9-90 lets the Supreme Court of Georgia adopt standard forms for the probate courts, and Uniform Probate Court Rule 5.9 makes a standard form mandatory once one is adopted for a given procedure. The Council of Probate Court Judges of Georgia has adopted no such form, called a GPCSF, for a decedent's estate inventory or for an annual or final return, so Rule 5.9's mandate never reaches either filing.

What gets filed is whatever inventory and return template the estate's own probate court hands out. This guide draws on two county templates: Cobb County's Estate Inventory and Return of Personal Representative, dated February 2025, and Fulton County's Inventory and Annual Return. Other counties, including Gwinnett, publish their own. Check your own county probate court's website or clerk's office for its current template before filing.

Both filings can be relieved. A testator can dispense with the inventory, the annual returns, or both, by will, as long as doing so does not injure creditors or anyone besides the beneficiaries (§ 53-7-33 for the inventory, § 53-7-69 for the return). Separately, the heirs or beneficiaries can give unanimous written consent authorizing the probate court to relieve the personal representative of inventory and returns (§§ 53-7-32(b), 53-7-68(c)); the court has no power to relieve either filing on its own. An individual beneficiary or heir can also waive their own copy of either document in a signed writing, revocable at any time (§§ 53-7-32(a), 53-7-68(b)).

Notice to creditors is due within 60 days after qualification, published once a week for four weeks in the official newspaper of the county of qualification (O.C.G.A. § 53-7-41).

Absent a will or a written agreement, O.C.G.A. § 53-6-60(b) sets the default: two and one-half percent commission on all sums of money the personal representative receives for the estate, except money the personal representative personally loaned to the estate and got back, and two and one-half percent commission on all sums paid out, for debts, legacies, or distributive shares.

For property delivered over in kind, the probate court may separately allow reasonable compensation, up to 3 percent of its appraised value, or, if there was no appraisal, up to 3 percent of the fair value the judge finds (§ 53-6-60(b)(3)).

If the personal representative lends the estate's own money out in that capacity during administration, and includes the interest earned on the return so it becomes chargeable as part of the estate's corpus, the personal representative earns a 10 percent commission on that interest (§ 53-6-60(b)(2)). The probate court can also allow up to 10 percent of the annual income of any land the personal representative manages for the estate (§ 53-6-60(b)(4)).

A personal representative who fails to make a required annual return forfeits that year's commissions, unless the probate court relieves the forfeiture on cause shown (§ 53-6-60(f)). A personal representative may also renounce all or part of the compensation (§ 53-6-60(g)).

Georgia has no separate final-return filing named in the statute. What closes out the record is the last annual return, filed with a zero balance on hand once distribution is complete, alongside the petition for discharge.

The personal representative closes the estate by filing a petition for discharge under O.C.G.A. § 53-7-50 with the probate court that granted letters, on the state's own standard form, GPCSF 33. The petition states that the estate is fully administered, names every known heir or beneficiary, addresses any unpaid claims, and states that all necessary inventory and returns were filed, or that relief from filing them was granted by the testator, the heirs or beneficiaries, or the probate court.

Citation issues to every heir or beneficiary, with one published notice at least ten days before the objection deadline. Anyone who already relieved the personal representative of liability need not be separately notified. If no objection is filed, the probate court enters the discharge order without a hearing.

Discharge releases the personal representative from liability, but it does not bar a minor heir, beneficiary, or creditor who lacked a guardian; they get two years after reaching majority to sue despite the discharge (§ 53-7-50(c)). Outside the ordinary discharge route, an heir or beneficiary, or the probate court on its own initiative, can also cite the personal representative to a formal settlement of accounts, at any time after six months from the grant of letters (§ 53-7-62(a)); a successor personal representative can petition for the same kind of accounting after a prior representative resigns, is removed, or dies (§ 53-7-61). Either produces an enforceable settlement but is not itself a closing filing.

• Wait out the six-month creditor standstill (O.C.G.A. § 53-7-42), pay the valid claims, then distribute what's left and collect a signed receipt and release from each beneficiary.
• Get your paperwork current before you ask to be discharged: inventory filed and every annual return in, or written proof that the will, the beneficiaries, or the court relieved you of those filings.
• File a Petition for Discharge of Personal Representative (standard form GPCSF 33) under O.C.G.A. § 53-7-50 in the same probate court that appointed you; beneficiaries can sign acknowledgments consenting to the discharge, which avoids citation and speeds things up.
• If everyone consents or no one objects after notice, the court enters an order discharging you from office and from all liability. In Georgia, that court order is what cuts off your exposure, not the beneficiary releases.

Georgia closing runs through the probate court of the county of appointment. Some executors skip formal discharge and just hold the signed releases, but only a § 53-7-50 discharge order ends liability. Even that order does not bar a minor heir, beneficiary, or creditor who lacked a guardian; they get two years after majority to sue.

The inventory follows Cobb County's four sections: real property; financial assets, split into bank, credit union and liquid assets and then other financial accounts such as brokerage holdings; other personal property, split into vehicles, boats, campers and trailers and then miscellaneous personal property and effects; and other, for a business interest, claim, or asset not listed elsewhere. Cobb's ownership-interest percentage, mortgage balance, and last-four-digits columns have no source in this app's records and print as labeled blanks.

The return follows Cobb's eight-line summary: a beginning balance, total receipts and gains, a subtotal, total expenditures and losses, the asset balance on hand, the value of any in-kind distributions, the undistributed assets remaining, and the current bond amount. The asset balance on hand, minus what was distributed in kind, should equal the total of what is still undistributed at the end of the period. If it does not, the export flags the difference as a warning rather than hiding it.

A sale posts as a gain or a loss against the value the asset was carried at, the way Cobb's own Receipts/Deposits/Gains and Expenditures/Distributions/Losses labels describe. Not every Georgia county's blank works this way: Fulton's own return shows a sale's full proceeds as a plain receipt instead, with no gain or loss line at all. Check your own county's template before transcribing.

Property distributed in kind gets its own line, with the date, a description, the recipient, and the value at which it was carried. The personal representative's commission is one itemized disbursement, with its own calculation attached. Either the original vouchers or an affidavit that they were compared to each item on the return accompanies the filing (§ 53-7-67(a)).

Once filed, a copy of the return, not the vouchers, goes to every heir or beneficiary by first-class mail, and the personal representative files a verified statement that the mailing was made (§ 53-7-68(a)). The 30-day window to object runs from that filing and mailing (§ 53-7-70).

Recording is free for as long as the estate takes: every receipt and disbursement with its date and description, distributions per heir or beneficiary, and a balance that checks itself as you go. ExecutorLedger builds Georgia-style documents from those records, an inventory shaped like Cobb County's Estate Inventory template and a return laid out the way Cobb's Return of Personal Representative is, ready to transcribe onto your own county's template if you end up filing one. Neither is a court form, and your attorney should review them before anything is signed or filed. Every document previews free with your real numbers, and $149 (one-time payment) per estate lifts the watermark.