California Probate Statistics: Filings by County (2026)

California courts recorded 41,985 estate and trust probate filings in fiscal year 2024 to 2025, according to the Judicial Council of California's 2026 Court Statistics Report (opens in a new tab). That is up 30% over the past decade. Los Angeles County alone accounted for 12,051 of those filings, more than the next four largest counties combined.

Below, we give the full county-by-county breakdown, show how filings have grown over ten years, explain which four counties publish their own numbers and how closely those match the state, and cover the one thing this data cannot tell you. Every figure traces to a primary source, and we reconciled the county totals against the Judicial Council's own statewide figures before publishing them. For the same breakdown on Oregon, see our Oregon probate statistics. We have also added stage-by-stage timing from our own review of 1,350 court dockets, because the state does not publish any.

How Many Probate Cases Are Filed in California Each Year?

California recorded 66,908 total probate filings in fiscal year 2024 to 2025. Of those, 41,985 were estate and trust matters and 24,923 were conservatorship and guardianship matters. For anyone dealing with an inheritance, the 41,985 figure is the relevant one.

The distinction matters more than it looks. Conservatorships and guardianships involve living people, an adult who can no longer manage their own affairs or a minor who needs a legal guardian. Estates and trusts are what open when someone dies and their assets pass to heirs. Using the 66,908 headline number to describe inheritance-related probate would overstate it by roughly 60%.

One more point of precision. The Judicial Council groups estates, trusts, and a handful of miscellaneous petitions into a single "Other Probate" category, so 41,985 is the closest available measure of decedent-estate activity rather than an exact count of estates. A single estate can also generate more than one filing. Treat the number as a strong measure of how much estate probate work the courts handle, not as a headcount of families.

California Probate Filings by County

Probate is filed in the superior court of the county where the person lived. All 58 counties run their own probate calendars, and the volume ranges from five figures in Los Angeles down to single digits in the smallest rural counties. The table below shows each county's filings and its share of the statewide total. The ten busiest counties carry 71% of the state's estate and trust probate work.

Rank	County	Estate & trust probate filings, FY 2024-25	Share of California
1	Los Angeles	12,051	28.7%
2	Orange	2,893	6.9%
3	Riverside	2,849	6.8%
4	San Bernardino	2,723	6.5%
5	San Diego	2,318	5.5%
6	Santa Clara	1,802	4.3%
7	Contra Costa	1,416	3.4%
8	Sacramento	1,385	3.3%
9	Alameda	1,322	3.1%
10	San Mateo	1,057	2.5%
11	Kern	952	2.3%
12	San Joaquin	781	1.9%
13	Ventura	737	1.8%
14	Fresno	718	1.7%
15	San Francisco	716	1.7%
16	Sonoma	617	1.5%
17	Stanislaus	565	1.3%
18	Tulare	509	1.2%
19	Santa Barbara	495	1.2%
20	Solano	472	1.1%
21	Placer	431	1.0%
22	Marin	397	0.9%
23	Monterey	388	0.9%
24	Butte	343	0.8%
25	Shasta	304	0.7%
26	San Luis Obispo	279	0.7%
27	Merced	273	0.7%
28	Santa Cruz	267	0.6%
29	Napa	243	0.6%
30	El Dorado	231	0.6%
31	Humboldt	220	0.5%
32	Imperial	181	0.4%
33	Mendocino	152	0.4%
34	Madera	150	0.4%
35	Yolo	150	0.4%
36	Lake	143	0.3%
37	Siskiyou	141	0.3%
38	Nevada	137	0.3%
39	Kings	130	0.3%
40	Sutter	110	0.3%
41	Tuolumne	107	0.3%
42	Tehama	101	0.2%
43	Yuba	99	0.2%
44	Calaveras	90	0.2%
45	Amador	75	0.2%
46	San Benito	61	0.1%
47	Del Norte	53	0.1%
48	Lassen	51	0.1%
49	Mariposa	46	0.1%
50	Modoc	45	0.1%
51	Glenn	44	0.1%
52	Plumas	44	0.1%
53	Trinity	38	<0.1%
54	Inyo	37	<0.1%
55	Colusa	20	<0.1%
56	Mono	16	<0.1%
57	Sierra	7	<0.1%
58	Alpine	3	<0.1%

The bottom half of the list is a different world from the top. Sixteen counties recorded fewer than 100 estate and trust probate filings in the entire year. Alpine County, in the Sierra Nevada, recorded three. In a county like that, the probate calendar is a few hearings a month rather than a daily docket, and cases tend to move on the schedule the personal representative and the estate attorney set rather than one the court's backlog dictates.

Los Angeles County Dominates California Probate

Los Angeles is the largest probate jurisdiction in California by a margin that surprises most people. At 12,051 estate and trust filings, LA handles 28.7% of the state's probate work, and it files more than Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties combined, which total 10,783.

That concentration is why probate patterns that hold statewide tend to be amplified in Los Angeles. LA real estate values mean the typical LA estate holds at least one piece of property, which pulls in a court-confirmed sale process. The volume also means a heavily booked probate calendar, and a continued hearing in LA often waits longer for the next available date than the same continuance would in a smaller county. Our Los Angeles probate advance page goes deeper into the LA Superior Court process, the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, and the local probate-notes system.

Which California Counties Have the Most Probate Filings Per Capita?

Measured against population, Napa County has the highest estate and trust probate filing rate among California's larger counties, at roughly 183 filings per 100,000 residents. Los Angeles leads on raw volume but sits near the statewide average of 106 per 100,000 once you adjust for population.

Ranking counties by rate rather than raw count changes the story. Los Angeles is first in the state by volume, but it ranks 26th per capita. The counties with the highest probate rates are older, and that is the whole explanation. Probate follows death, deaths concentrate among older residents, and the counties near the top of this list have some of the oldest populations in California.

County	Filings per 100k residents	Estate & trust filings	Population (2024)
Napa	183	243	132,727
Shasta	168	304	181,121
Humboldt	166	220	132,380
Butte	165	343	208,334
Marin	155	397	256,400
San Mateo	142	1,057	742,893
Sonoma	127	617	485,375
Los Angeles	124	12,051	9,757,179

This ranking covers counties with at least 200 filings a year, because in the smallest counties a handful of cases produces a rate that swings wildly from year to year and does not mean much. Rates are calculated against 2024 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau (opens in a new tab). At the other end of the scale, the large urban counties with younger populations file the fewest per capita. San Diego and San Francisco each sit near 70 to 87 per 100,000, well below the state average.

California Probate Filings Over the Last Decade

Estate and trust probate filings grew from 32,278 in fiscal year 2015-16 to 41,985 in fiscal year 2024-25, a 30% increase. Most of that growth happened in the second half of the decade. Filings dropped to 32,864 in fiscal year 2019-20 when courts limited operations during the pandemic, climbed sharply to about 42,000 by fiscal year 2021-22, and have held roughly flat since, including a slight dip in the most recent year.

So the accurate shape is a decade of strong growth followed by a plateau, not an uninterrupted climb. The demographics behind the long-run rise are steady. California's population is aging, and home values across the state keep more estates above the thresholds that require a full court process rather than one of the simplified small-estate procedures. What the recent plateau tells you is that probate is now a wait a large and stable number of California families run into every year, more than 40,000 estates and trusts annually.

Which California Courts Publish Their Own Statistics?

Only four of California's 58 superior courts publish their own caseload figures. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Riverside publish usable probate numbers, and San Benito runs a live filings dashboard. Every other county reports its caseload to the Judicial Council rather than publishing it directly.

That pattern is by design. The California Constitution assigns caseload reporting to the Judicial Council, which surveys all 58 courts and publishes the combined result in the annual Court Statistics Report. So the individual courts largely leave the statistics to the state, and the Court Statistics Report is the authoritative source for all 58 counties.

Where the self-publishing courts can be compared to the state, they line up closely, which is the strongest available confirmation that the statewide data is sound. San Francisco's own biennial report lists 692 estate, trust, and other probate filings for fiscal year 2023-24. The Judicial Council's figure for San Francisco that year is also 692. Riverside's own Court Fast Facts sheet reports 4,565 probate filings for fiscal year 2024-25. The Judicial Council's total for Riverside is 4,565 as well. Two independent county sources reproducing the state's number to the case is about as clean a cross-check as public data offers.

What This Data Cannot Tell You

The filing counts are reliable, but they answer a narrower question than most people ask. Two limits are worth stating plainly.

First, California does not measure how long probate takes. The Court Statistics Report publishes case-processing-time tables for civil and criminal cases, but not for probate. The only probate figures the state publishes are filings and dispositions, so no official source ranks counties by how quickly a probate case actually moves from petition to final distribution. Anyone who tells you one California county is "faster" than another for probate is not citing a state statistic, because that statistic does not exist. What the filing counts do show is which courts carry the most work.

Second, counties do not all define probate the same way. When a court publishes its own numbers, its categories can differ from the Judicial Council's. Santa Clara County's older annual report counted name changes and adoptions inside its probate figure, which the Judicial Council does not. San Francisco folds elder abuse petitions into its probate line, which the Judicial Council classifies as civil. Filing counts also say nothing about what the estates actually hold. For a different angle on estate assets by county, see our county breakdown of unclaimed property held by California. This is why a county's own headline number sometimes looks larger than the state's figure for the same county, and it is why the statewide Court Statistics Report, which applies one consistent definition across all 58 counties, is the right source for any comparison between counties.

How Long Do the Stages of a California Probate Take?

In our review of 1,350 California estate dockets, letters issued a median of 84 days after the petition was filed. The state publishes no such figure.

Because California does not measure probate timing, we measured it ourselves from the court dockets of cases we have reviewed. The sample is 1,350 decedent's estate cases filed from 2015 through 2026 in 38 California counties. It is not a random sample. About three quarters of these estates have an assignment of an heir's interest on file, which means an heir took an inheritance advance from some company. Read the figures as a description of those cases, not of every California probate.

Stage	Median	Middle half of cases	Cases measured
Petition filed to order appointing the personal representative	62 days	42 to 119 days	1,002
Petition filed to letters issued	84 days	53 to 143 days	926
Letters issued to first inventory and appraisal	116 days	63 to 203 days	753
Final petition or account filed to court approval	80 days	71 to 147 days	403
Delay each time the first hearing is reset	42 days	24 to 66 days	875

Source: CSF analysis of California Superior Court probate filings, cases filed 2015 through 2026, reviewed October 2026.

How Long After Filing Are Letters Issued in California?

A median of 84 days, or 12 weeks, in the 926 cases where we could measure it. About one case in six waited more than six months.

The order appointing the personal representative comes first, at a median of 62 days after filing. Letters follow about three weeks later, once the bond is posted and the signed forms reach the clerk. Until letters issue, nobody has authority to act for the estate, and the creditor claim period has not started.

Three counties have enough cases to report on their own. The median was 91 days in Los Angeles (362 cases), 90 days in Sacramento (132 cases), and 64 days in San Francisco (89 cases). Those differences reflect our sample and should not be read as a ranking of courts. Our California probate timeline explains what happens in each phase.

How Often Is the First Probate Hearing Continued?

In 40% of the 953 cases with a hearing record, the hearing on the petition was set on more than one date before anyone was appointed. In 18% it took three or more dates.

Each reset moved the hearing a median of 42 days. In Los Angeles the median was 52 days across 274 resets. A reset usually means the court asked for something that was missing, such as a notice, a bond, or a correction to the petition.

A note on method. We counted a hearing as reset when the same petition was set on a later date. We checked that against the text of 86 minute orders, and the two agreed 87% of the time. If your own case keeps moving, our guide to why probate is taking so long shows how to find out what the court is waiting for.

How Many California Estates File the Inventory on Time?

Fewer than half. Probate Code § 8800 gives the personal representative four months after letters to file the inventory and appraisal, and 45.5% of the estates we measured met it.

That figure covers 764 estates whose letters issued at least a year before our review. Another 17% filed within six months, and 81% had filed within a year. Across the 753 estates in our review with an inventory on file, the median was 116 days after letters. We counted the first inventory on file, including a partial one, so the share with a complete inventory by the deadline is lower still.

The inventory matters to heirs because almost nothing after it can happen without it. The estate cannot be valued, the fees cannot be calculated, and a preliminary distribution under independent administration is capped by the inventory's figures.

How Long From the Final Petition to the Court's Approval?

A median of 80 days in 403 cases, with the middle half between 71 and 147 days. In Los Angeles the median was 74 days, with half of the cases between 72 and 91 days.

This is the most predictable stretch in the whole process. Once the final account or petition for final distribution is on file, the court sets a hearing about two and a half months out, and most petitions are approved at it or shortly after. Approval is not payment. The executor still has to pay the final expenses and write the checks, which we cover in our guide to an inherited house in probate.

When Does Los Angeles Expect a Probate to Close?

Los Angeles Superior Court schedules its own check on each new estate. In 396 Los Angeles cases we reviewed, that date fell a median of 563 days after filing, about 18 and a half months.

The court sets the date at the hearing where it grants the petition for probate, as an order to show cause regarding the petition for final distribution or a status report, about 17 months out. Half of the cases fell between 551 and 616 days. It is the closest thing to an official expectation that any California court puts on the record, and it tells you when the court will ask about the case whether or not anyone complains.

What this data does not give is a total time from filing to final distribution. Three quarters of the cases were filed in 2023 or later, so the ones that have already closed are the fast ones, and a median built on them would mislead. We will add that figure when enough of the sample has had time to finish.

How We Compiled This Data

The county figures come from Table 12a of the Judicial Council of California's 2026 Court Statistics Report, which covers fiscal year 2024 to 2025. We extracted all 58 counties and confirmed that the county rows sum exactly to the Judicial Council's own printed statewide totals, so nothing was dropped or misread in the process.

We also checked the filing counts against four prior editions of the Court Statistics Report and against the two courts that publish their own probate numbers. Filing counts held steady across every report edition, and the two independent county sources matched the state to the case. The dispositions and any derived "clearance rate" figures are a different matter. The Judicial Council has revised its own historical disposition counts, and several counties report disposition data inconsistently, so this article reports filings, which are stable and reconcilable, and does not build any speed or backlog claim on the disposition numbers.

The stage-by-stage timing figures come from a different source. We reviewed the registers of actions in 1,350 California decedent's estate cases filed from 2015 through 2026, read from Superior Court records as of October 2026, and dated each stage from the docket entry that records it. Cases whose record begins partway through were left out of anything measured from the filing date. We compared the dates against the text of court documents in four counties. Letters documents fell within three days of the docket date 91% of the time. Because most of these cases involve an heir who assigned part of an inheritance, the sample is not representative of all estates, and we do not use it to compare one county's speed with another's.

The per-capita rates use county population estimates for 2024 from the U.S. Census Bureau. We limited the per-capita ranking to counties with at least 200 filings a year, because a rate built on a few dozen cases in a small county is too volatile to compare fairly.

You are welcome to cite any figure on this page. Please credit Catalina Structured Funding and link here so your readers can check the method and the sample sizes for themselves.

How many probate cases are filed in California each year?

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California courts recorded 41,985 estate and trust probate filings in fiscal year 2024 to 2025, according to the Judicial Council's 2026 Court Statistics Report. Counting conservatorship and guardianship matters as well, total probate filings reached 66,908. The estate and trust figure is the one that matters for inheritance and decedent estates.

Which California county has the most probate cases?

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Los Angeles County, by a wide margin. LA recorded 12,051 estate and trust probate filings in fiscal year 2024 to 2025, which is 28.7% of the entire state and more than Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties combined.

Which California county has the most probate filings per capita?

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Among counties with enough volume to be stable, Napa County has the highest rate, at roughly 183 estate and trust probate filings per 100,000 residents. Los Angeles leads on raw volume but ranks 26th per capita, near the statewide average of 106 per 100,000. The counties with the highest rates tend to have the oldest populations.

Are California probate filings increasing?

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Yes. Estate and trust probate filings rose from 32,278 in fiscal year 2015-16 to 41,985 in fiscal year 2024-25, a 30% increase over the decade, with a dip during the 2020 pandemic year. The long-term trend reflects an aging population and a growing number of estates entering probate.

Does California publish how long probate takes by county?

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No. California publishes probate filing and disposition counts, but it does not publish a probate time-to-disposition statistic. The state measures case-processing time for civil and criminal cases, not for probate, so no official source ranks counties by how fast a probate case actually moves. CSF's own review of 1,350 court dockets, described above, measures individual stages of a case but not the full timeline.

Where does California probate caseload data come from?

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The Judicial Council of California compiles it under a state constitutional mandate and publishes it each year in the Court Statistics Report. Individual superior courts report their caseloads to the Judicial Council rather than publishing their own, so the Court Statistics Report is the authoritative statewide source.

Do California county courts publish their own probate numbers?

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Only a handful. Of 58 superior courts, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Riverside, and San Benito publish their own caseload figures. Where their numbers can be compared, they match the Judicial Council's closely. San Francisco and Riverside each reproduce the state's probate filing count almost exactly.

How long does it take to get letters of administration in California?

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In CSF's review of 926 California estate cases, letters were issued a median of 84 days after the petition was filed, and about one case in six waited more than six months. The court's order appointing the personal representative came first, at a median of 62 days. The sample is weighted toward estates where an heir took an inheritance advance, so it is not a statewide average.

Probate in California is a growing wait for a growing number of families, and the court process exists to protect heirs by confirming that an estate is administered correctly before anything is distributed. While you wait, a probate advance from Catalina Structured Funding can put a portion of your inheritance in your hands now. We give a free quote within 24 hours, approval is based on the estate rather than your credit, and there is nothing to repay out of pocket because we are repaid directly from the estate. Learn more on our probate advances page or call (800) 991-5302.