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

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)
• 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)
• 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)
• 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)
• 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 and CDPH 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, and all death counts come from CDPH, 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.

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 and our overview of court-supervised probate. Families in Southern California weighing their options can also see our county-by-county guide for Southern California, and our broader statistics page for figures beyond filings, such as costs and timelines. If you are unfamiliar with the terms in the tables above, our glossary defines probate and 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
• How Long Does Probate Take in California?
• Probate Timeline California: Complete Guide for 2026
• California Probate Fee Calculator
• Do You Need Probate in California?
• The California Probate Code Sections That Actually Come Up

Methodology

Filing, disposition, and case-type figures are from the Judicial Council of California, 2026 Court Statistics Report (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 (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.