# California Probate Filings by County (2026): All 58 Superior Courts, With Court Data

> All 58 California superior courts FY2024-25 probate filings by county, benchmarked against CDPH death data, with a 10-year statewide trend.

Source: https://ridleylawoffices.com/california-probate-filings-by-county/

By Eric Ridley, attorney, Ridley Law. Updated September 2026.

This page lists probate filings for all 58 California superior courts in fiscal year 2024-25, county by county, next to each county’s 2024 death count. Every figure links to its primary source: the Judicial Council of California’s caseload statistics or the California Department of Public Health’s death data. We update the table when the Judicial Council publishes each new annual Court Statistics Report.

**Cite this page:** Ridley Law, “California Probate Filings by County (2026): All 58 Superior Courts, With Court Data,” ridleylawoffices.com/california-probate-filings-by-county/, September 2026.

## Key findings

- California’s 58 superior courts logged 66,908 total probate filings in fiscal year 2024-25: 24,923 conservatorship and guardianship filings and 41,985 other probate filings, meaning decedents’ estates, trusts, and related matters. ([Judicial Council of California, 2026 Court Statistics Report, Table 12a](https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/csr_2026.pdf#page=166))
- Courts disposed of 52,995 probate matters that year, a caseload clearance rate of 79 percent statewide. ([2026 Court Statistics Report, Data for Figures 53-62](https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/csr_2026.pdf#page=90))
- Los Angeles County filed 12,051 other probate matters in FY2024-25, more than Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties combined (10,783). ([Table 12a](https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/csr_2026.pdf#page=166))
- Statewide, other probate filings rose 30 percent over the past ten fiscal years, from 32,278 in FY2015-16 to 41,985 in FY2024-25. Conservatorship and guardianship filings rose 60 percent over the same span, from 15,529 to 24,923. ([Data for Figures 53-62](https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/csr_2026.pdf#page=90))
- Other probate filings per 100 deaths, our own computation described below, ranged from 9.4 in Fresno County to 36.3 in Modoc County against a statewide figure of 14.6. ([Table 12a](https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/csr_2026.pdf#page=166) and [CDPH Death Profiles by County](https://data.chhs.ca.gov/dataset/death-profiles-by-county))

## Probate filings by county, fiscal year 2024-25

Sorted by other probate filings, highest to lowest. “Other probate” and “conservatorship and guardianship” are the Judicial Council’s own case-type categories and add up to the total probate column. Death counts are 2024 final counts by county of residence from the California Department of Public Health, not the county where the death occurred. All filing, disposition, and case-type figures in this table come from the Judicial Council of California, [2026 Court Statistics Report, Table 12a](https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/csr_2026.pdf#page=166), and all death counts come from [CDPH, Death Profiles by County](https://data.chhs.ca.gov/dataset/death-profiles-by-county). We cite each source once here rather than in every row because every row draws on the same two tables.

| County | Other probate filings | Conservatorship & guardianship filings | Total probate filings | 2024 deaths (CDPH, county of residence) | Other probate filings per 100 deaths |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Los Angeles | 12,051 | 6,253 | 18,304 | 67,773 | 17.8 |
| Orange | 2,893 | 1,443 | 4,336 | 21,988 | 13.2 |
| Riverside | 2,849 | 1,716 | 4,565 | 19,408 | 14.7 |
| San Bernardino | 2,723 | 1,845 | 4,568 | 16,088 | 16.9 |
| San Diego | 2,318 | 1,350 | 3,668 | 22,961 | 10.1 |
| Santa Clara | 1,802 | 897 | 2,699 | 10,841 | 16.6 |
| Contra Costa | 1,416 | 707 | 2,123 | 8,408 | 16.8 |
| Sacramento | 1,385 | 1,460 | 2,845 | 13,118 | 10.6 |
| Alameda | 1,322 | 879 | 2,201 | 10,454 | 12.6 |
| San Mateo | 1,057 | 447 | 1,504 | 4,998 | 21.1 |
| Kern | 952 | 828 | 1,780 | 6,945 | 13.7 |
| San Joaquin | 781 | 658 | 1,439 | 6,031 | 12.9 |
| Ventura | 737 | 415 | 1,152 | 6,428 | 11.5 |
| Fresno | 718 | 1,326 | 2,044 | 7,617 | 9.4 |
| San Francisco | 716 | 412 | 1,128 | 5,958 | 12.0 |
| Sonoma | 617 | 202 | 819 | 4,403 | 14.0 |
| Stanislaus | 565 | 387 | 952 | 4,601 | 12.3 |
| Tulare | 509 | 270 | 779 | 3,468 | 14.7 |
| Santa Barbara | 495 | 180 | 675 | 3,350 | 14.8 |
| Solano | 472 | 303 | 775 | 3,700 | 12.8 |
| Placer | 431 | 215 | 646 | 3,785 | 11.4 |
| Marin | 397 | 207 | 604 | 2,152 | 18.4 |
| Monterey | 388 | 263 | 651 | 2,779 | 14.0 |
| Butte | 343 | 173 | 516 | 2,235 | 15.3 |
| Shasta | 304 | 177 | 481 | 2,360 | 12.9 |
| San Luis Obispo | 279 | 103 | 382 | 2,689 | 10.4 |
| Merced | 273 | 194 | 467 | 1,986 | 13.7 |
| Santa Cruz | 267 | 68 | 335 | 1,979 | 13.5 |
| Napa | 243 | 70 | 313 | 1,267 | 19.2 |
| El Dorado | 231 | 73 | 304 | 1,839 | 12.6 |
| Humboldt | 220 | 99 | 319 | 1,409 | 15.6 |
| Imperial | 181 | 103 | 284 | 1,289 | 14.0 |
| Mendocino | 152 | 45 | 197 | 895 | 17.0 |
| Madera | 150 | 170 | 320 | 1,149 | 13.1 |
| Yolo | 150 | 177 | 327 | 1,449 | 10.4 |
| Lake | 143 | 51 | 194 | 843 | 17.0 |
| Siskiyou | 141 | 36 | 177 | 621 | 22.7 |
| Nevada | 137 | 81 | 218 | 1,206 | 11.4 |
| Kings | 130 | 73 | 203 | 963 | 13.5 |
| Sutter | 110 | 148 | 258 | 942 | 11.7 |
| Tuolumne | 107 | 33 | 140 | 743 | 14.4 |
| Tehama | 101 | 63 | 164 | 764 | 13.2 |
| Yuba | 99 | 63 | 162 | 743 | 13.3 |
| Calaveras | 90 | 37 | 127 | 550 | 16.4 |
| Amador | 75 | 34 | 109 | 476 | 15.8 |
| San Benito | 61 | 55 | 116 | 378 | 16.1 |
| Del Norte | 53 | 22 | 75 | 353 | 15.0 |
| Lassen | 51 | 24 | 75 | 273 | 18.7 |
| Mariposa | 46 | 11 | 57 | 211 | 21.8 |
| Modoc | 45 | 8 | 53 | 124 | 36.3 |
| Glenn | 44 | 24 | 68 | 275 | 16.0 |
| Plumas | 44 | 14 | 58 | 239 | 18.4 |
| Trinity | 38 | 5 | 43 | 138 | 27.5 |
| Inyo | 37 | 12 | 49 | 236 | 15.7 |
| Colusa | 20 | 12 | 32 | 182 | 11.0 |
| Mono | 16 | 1 | 17 | 74 | 21.6 |
| Sierra | 7 | 0 | 7 | 31 | 22.6 |
| Alpine | 3 | 1 | 4 | 19 | 15.8 |
| California total | 41,985 | 24,923 | 66,908 | 288,184 | 14.6 |

## Ten-year statewide trend: other probate and conservatorship and guardianship filings

Figures below are statewide filings for each fiscal year from 2015-16 through 2024-25, all from the 2026 edition of the Court Statistics Report. The Judicial Council revises prior years when it updates this report, so we used the 2026 edition’s numbers for every year in this table rather than mixing figures from older editions. Source for every row: [2026 Court Statistics Report, Data for Figures 53-62](https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/csr_2026.pdf#page=90).

| Fiscal year | Other probate filings | Conservatorship & guardianship filings |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 2015-16 | 32,278 | 15,529 |
| 2016-17 | 32,917 | 15,923 |
| 2017-18 | 34,657 | 16,821 |
| 2018-19 | 35,019 | 16,628 |
| 2019-20 | 32,864 | 14,992 |
| 2020-21 | 40,321 | 14,525 |
| 2021-22 | 42,318 | 15,516 |
| 2022-23 | 42,244 | 18,144 |
| 2023-24 | 42,978 | 20,749 |
| 2024-25 | 41,985 | 24,923 |

## Method: what “other probate” means and what the per-100-deaths figure does not show

The Judicial Council’s 2026 Court Statistics Report defines the case type this way: “other probate Includes decedent’s estate, trust and all other probate cases other than conservatorship, or guardianship.” That is the figure we used for the “other probate filings” column. It is broader than decedents’ estates alone. It also includes trust petitions and other probate matters that never involve a conservatorship or guardianship.

Filings per 100 deaths is an indicator, not a measure of how many estates actually go through probate. A single death does not always produce a filing: many California estates avoid probate entirely through trusts, joint tenancy, beneficiary designations, or the state’s small estate procedures. A single decedent’s estate can also produce more than one filing over its life, or generate filings in a fiscal year that does not match the calendar year of death. Treat the ratio as a rough way to compare filing activity against population turnover across counties, not as a probate rate.

We used deaths by county of residence rather than county of occurrence because a probate case is ordinarily filed near where the decedent lived, not necessarily where the death happened. That is our modeling choice for this comparison, not a claim about where any individual case was filed. CDPH also publishes an occurrence-basis version of the same 2024 data; we did not use it here.

## What this means in California

Probate filing volume varies a great deal by county, and a busy county docket is one reason cases can take longer to move. For general background on how the process works, see our [California probate guide](https://ridleylawoffices.com/probate-guides/) and our [overview of court-supervised probate](https://ridleylawoffices.com/court-supervised-probate-california-2026/). Families in Southern California weighing their options can also see our [county-by-county guide for Southern California](https://ridleylawoffices.com/probate-guide-socal/), and our [broader statistics page](https://ridleylawoffices.com/california-probate-statistics/) for figures beyond filings, such as costs and timelines. If you are unfamiliar with the terms in the tables above, our glossary defines [probate](https://ridleylawoffices.com/estate-planning-glossary-california/probate/) and [conservatorship](https://ridleylawoffices.com/estate-planning-glossary-california/conservatorship/) in plain language.

None of this changes where a given family’s case belongs. Probate is filed based on the decedent’s county of residence and the location of certain property, not based on filing volume. A high filing count in a county says something about that court’s overall workload. It does not tell you whether a particular estate needs to go through probate at all.

## Related pages on this site

- [What Probate Actually Costs in California](https://ridleylawoffices.com/guides/probate-costs/)
- [How Long Does Probate Take in California?](https://ridleylawoffices.com/how-long-does-probate-take-california/)
- [Probate Timeline California: Complete Guide for 2026](https://ridleylawoffices.com/probate-timeline-california-guide/)
- [California Probate Fee Calculator](https://ridleylawoffices.com/probate-calculator/)
- [Do You Need Probate in California?](https://ridleylawoffices.com/probate-screener/)
- [The California Probate Code Sections That Actually Come Up](https://ridleylawoffices.com/guides/california-probate-code-guide/)

## Methodology

Filing, disposition, and case-type figures are from the Judicial Council of California, [2026 Court Statistics Report](https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/csr_2026.pdf) (PDF), Table 12a (Probate and Mental Health Filings by County and Case Type, fiscal year 2024-25), Table 12b (dispositions), and the statewide “Data for Figures 53-62” table covering fiscal years 2015-16 through 2024-25. We downloaded the PDF directly from courts.ca.gov and checked every figure against the extracted text in September 2026. We summed all 58 county rows in Table 12a and confirmed they match the report’s own statewide totals exactly: 66,908 total, 24,923 conservatorship and guardianship, 41,985 other probate. The report showed no missing-county or rounding footnote for Table 12a.

Death counts are from the California Department of Public Health, [Death Profiles by County](https://data.chhs.ca.gov/dataset/death-profiles-by-county) (CalHHS Open Data Portal), using the final 2024 annual county-year file on a county-of-residence basis, revised March 19, 2026. We used the annual file rather than the county-month file because the county-month file suppresses small counts for several of California’s smallest counties; the annual file reports a complete count for all 58 counties with no suppression. All 58 county death counts summed to 288,184.

We excluded the report’s mental health, appeals, and habeas corpus filing figures because they fall outside this page’s scope of probate filings. We excluded Table 12b’s per-county disposition breakdown from the main table because several counties reported incomplete or missing disposition data for FY2024-25 (marked “-” or “(i)” in the source); the statewide disposition total in the key findings is complete and unaffected. We excluded any county-level attorney or courthouse detail; this page reports statewide court data only.

Next review: September 2027, when the Judicial Council is expected to publish its 2027 Court Statistics Report. To report an error, email eric@ridleylawoffices.com.