Florida has two main court tracks for a probate estate: formal administration under chapter 733, and summary administration under chapter 735. An earlier post in this series explained the July 1, 2026 increase of the summary-administration dollar cap. This post is about the path, not that cap as news. The point for unmarried partners is simpler than the dollar figure. Easier probate does not create an heir. Exempt homestead can keep an estate on the shorter track and still leave the person who lived in the house with nothing.
Summary administration may be had for a resident or nonresident decedent's estate when two things appear. First, in a testate estate, the will does not direct administration as required by chapter 733 (section 735.201(1)). Second, the value of the entire estate subject to administration in this state, less the value of property exempt from the claims of creditors, does not exceed $150,000, or the decedent has been dead more than two years (section 735.201(2), as amended by section 7 of Chapter 2026-57, Laws of Florida, and as now printed in the 2026 Florida Statutes). The prior figure was $75,000. The two-year-since-death door is unchanged.
Read the formula the way the statute writes it. The cap is not "everything the person owned." It is the Florida estate that is subject to administration, minus property exempt from creditors. Article X, section 4(a) of the Florida Constitution generally exempts a natural person's homestead from forced sale, with listed exceptions for taxes, purchase-money and improvement obligations, and labor on the realty. Those exemptions "inure to the surviving spouse or heirs of the owner" (Art. X, section 4(b)). Protected homestead, as the Probate Code uses the term, is that constitutional homestead on which, at the owner's death, the exemption inures to the surviving spouse or heirs; property already held as tenancy by the entireties or as joint tenancy with right of survivorship is not protected homestead for purposes of the Code (section 731.201(33)). Homestead that is exempt from creditors generally does not count toward the $150,000 figure. Assets that already pass outside probate are not part of the estate subject to administration in the first place.
So a house worth several times $150,000, plus a smaller pile of solely owned accounts, can still fit summary administration after July 1, 2026. That is how the formula is built. It is not a guarantee that any particular house-and-accounts mix will qualify, and it is not a statement that the surviving occupant takes the house.
Who takes the house is a different statute. If homestead is not devised as the constitution and section 732.4015 allow, section 732.401 sends it like other intestate property -- with a spouse-and-descendants life-estate overlay that an unmarried partner cannot use. If the titled owner dies intestate, sections 732.102 and 732.103 still run to a legal spouse, then to blood or adoptive relatives. An unmarried partner is not on that list. Exempting the house from the summary-administration cap, so that the decedent's siblings can use the shorter track, is not protection for the person who shared the house.
Who may even ask for that shorter track is also not the partner, unless the partner is already a taker. Section 735.203(1) lets a beneficiary, or a person nominated as personal representative in the will offered for probate, file the petition. The surviving spouse, if any, and the beneficiaries must sign and verify, with a formal-notice exception for a beneficiary who will receive a full distributive share under the proposed distribution. A partner who is not a beneficiary and is not nominated in a will is not a section 735.203 petitioner. Compare section 733.202, under which any interested person may petition for formal administration. Summary administration is the narrower door.
What the order does is in section 735.206. The will, if any, is proved and admitted. Before the order, the petitioner must make a diligent search and reasonable inquiry for known or reasonably ascertainable creditors, serve those creditors, and make provision for payment to the extent assets are available. The court may then enter an order allowing immediate distribution to the persons entitled. Recipients may maintain actions to collect what the order assigns. Debtors and holders of the decedent's property may comply with the order and are not accountable to anyone else for doing so. Recipients are personally liable for a pro rata share of lawful claims, but only to the extent of the value actually received, exclusive of property exempt from creditors under Florida's constitution and statutes. After two years from death, neither the estate nor those to whom it was assigned is liable for a claim against the decedent unless proceedings have been taken to enforce it (section 735.206(4)(f); see also the two-year bar in section 733.710). An heir or devisee who was entitled to share but was left out of the order may sue those who procured it, with attorney's fees if successful.
Optional publication of a notice to creditors after a summary-administration order can shorten the unknown-creditor period to three months after first publication (section 735.2063). Publication is a tool of the person who obtained the order. It is not a partner's substitute for being named.
Formal administration is the usual path when letters of administration are needed, when the non-exempt Florida estate is over the cap and the decedent has been dead two years or less, or when the estate is indebted or contested in a way summary procedure cannot absorb. The personal representative takes possession of the decedent's property except the protected homestead (section 733.607(1)), publishes and serves notice to creditors (section 733.2121), and serves notice of administration on the spouse, beneficiaries, and other listed persons (section 733.212). The partner is not on the required notice list as a partner. Letters are the document banks and title companies ask for. Summary administration does not produce letters; that is often why a family uses the longer track even when the cap would allow the shorter one.
Until the chapter law's application language is confirmed on a given file, treat the $150,000 figure as applying to deaths on or after July 1, 2026. For a death before that date, the old $75,000 cap likely still governs.
None of this is a funded trust, and none of it is an heir statute. The 2026 amendment made the shorter track available to more modest, uncontested estates. It did not add a partner to section 732.103. A house that is exempt from creditors can keep the file on the summary side and still belong, at the end of that file, to the decedent's children, parents, or siblings. Occupancy is not that order.
This article is general information, not advice about a particular estate. The Law Office of Shawn C. Newman, P.A. offers a free consultation in person or by Zoom. Call (954) 563-9160 or visit www.shawnnewman.com. The office is at 710 NE 26th Street, Wilton Manors, Florida 33305, and serves Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade Counties.
