San Bernardino County Probate: Courthouse and Fee Guide

San Bernardino County probate cases are no longer filed downtown — the probate clerk’s office left the San Bernardino Justice Center in February 2024, and where your case goes now depends entirely on the decedent’s ZIP code.

If you have inherited a house anywhere from Chino Hills to the High Desert to the Colorado River communities and no trust, joint tenancy, or Transfer on Death deed covers it, here is exactly which courthouse hears the case, what filing costs, and the local rules that decide whether you ever have to show up to a hearing at all.

Your ZIP Code Picks the Courthouse

General Order GO26-032, effective January 1, 2026 through December 31, 2027, assigns every probate case in San Bernardino County by the decedent’s ZIP code, splitting the county’s roughly 20,000 square miles between two main courthouses.

The Fontana District, at 17780 Arrow Boulevard, Fontana, CA 92335, handles the valley and mountain communities — San Bernardino, Fontana, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Chino and Chino Hills, Upland, Rialto, Colton, Redlands, Highland, Loma Linda, Yucaipa, Grand Terrace, Montclair, and the mountain towns of Lake Arrowhead, Crestline, and Running Springs.

Less intuitively, Fontana also handles the Morongo Basin — Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, Yucca Valley, Morongo Valley, and Landers — rather than the geographically closer High Desert courthouse.

The Victorville District, at 14455 Civic Drive, Victorville, CA 92392, serves the High Desert: Victorville, Hesperia, Apple Valley, Adelanto, Phelan, Wrightwood, Barstow, Big Bear City and Big Bear Lake, Lucerne Valley, Fort Irwin, Trona, and Baker.

A limited calendar at the Needles Courthouse, 1111 Bailey Avenue, hears only guardianships, small-value real property affidavits, succession petitions, spousal property petitions, and fact-of-death petitions for the Colorado River communities — Needles, Havasu Lake, Big River, Earp, Parker Dam, Vidal, Essex, Cima, and Nipton.

A full decedent’s-estate probate for those river communities is still filed and heard in Victorville, even though routine matters can be handled locally in Needles.

Venue is proper in San Bernardino County when the decedent was domiciled here at death under Probate Code § 7051, or owned county real property as a non-resident, which triggers ancillary administration even when the main estate is being probated elsewhere.

The $435 Fee, and the Local Surcharge Hiding Inside It

The filing fee for the first Petition for Probate in San Bernardino County is $435, the same statewide figure set under Government Code § 70650(a) that applies in every California superior court.

What is different here is that San Bernardino is one of a small number of counties that layers on a local courthouse-construction surcharge under Government Code § 70624 — in this case, $35.

That surcharge is offset against the county’s share of the state construction-fund distribution, so the total a filer actually pays still comes to the same $435, rather than $470.

A Petition to Determine Succession to Real Property under Probate Code § 13151 carries the same $435 first-paper fee, while a petition for special letters of administration without the powers of a general personal representative runs $200 under Government Code § 70657.5(a)(3). Fee waivers are available on Judicial Council forms FW-001 and FW-003.

Beyond the first-paper fee, an uncontested estate typically accumulates several hundred to over a thousand dollars more in court-related costs by the time it closes — a probate referee’s appraisal fee set by statute as a percentage of the appraised estate value, publication costs for the required notice to creditors, and filing fees for any additional petitions such as one to confirm a sale or to close the estate — all separate from whatever an attorney charges to handle the filing itself.

E-Filing, Paper-Only Documents, and a Death Certificate Requirement

E-filing became mandatory for attorneys in probate case types on June 16, 2025, under Local Rule 1810.B, through an Odyssey eFileCA service provider. Self-represented filers may e-file voluntarily or still file on paper, in person or by mail, at the courthouse their ZIP code assigns. Original wills and codicils, certified death certificates, surety bonds, and DE-305 small-value real property affidavits are always paper-only and cannot be e-filed under any circumstances.

San Bernardino’s Local Rule 20-615 adds a requirement that catches out-of-county filers specifically: a copy of the decedent’s death certificate, with the Social Security number redacted, must accompany every Petition for Probate, succession petition, and spousal or domestic partner property petition, and a spousal petition additionally requires a copy of the marriage certificate.

Skipping this attachment is one of the more common reasons a first-time filing comes back with a deficiency note.

The Hearing You May Never Have to Attend

San Bernardino County runs a probate examiner system under Local Rule 20-102: examiners review every petition and post Probate Notes to the Court Access Portal (cap.sb-court.org) roughly two weeks before the scheduled hearing, searchable by case number under the Documents tab.

When a decedent’s-estate petition is recommended for approval in those notes, the petitioner may elect not to appear at all — non-appearance is deemed submission on the examiner’s recommendation under Local Rule 20-102(c). Guardianship and conservatorship appointments do not get this option; those always require an appearance.

Questions about a specific posted note go to ProbateNotes@sb-court.org, while general probate, conservatorship, and guardianship questions for the entire county share a single phone line: (909) 521-3388. For matters that do require a hearing, Zoom links are published per department on the court’s Civil and Probate Courtroom Zoom Links page; appearing remotely means checking in 15 minutes early, and evidentiary hearings and trials cannot be handled remotely at all.

A Four-Week Floor on Continuances

Local Rule 20-616 sets a real cost to showing up unprepared: a matter that is not ready at the call of the calendar is continued at least four weeks, not the few days a filer might expect, and a matter continued twice for unreadiness can be ordered off calendar or denied outright.

Combined with the examiner-note system, this makes clearing deficiencies before the hearing date the single biggest factor in whether a San Bernardino County probate runs on one hearing or several months longer than it needed to.

What the Statutory Attorney and Executor Fees Cost Here

California sets probate attorney and personal representative compensation by statute under Probate Code § 10810, on a sliding scale: 4% of the first $100,000 of the estate’s appraised value, 3% of the next $100,000, 2% of the next $800,000, and lower percentages above that, with the attorney and the representative each separately entitled to the full amount.

San Bernardino County’s generally lower home values compared with coastal counties cut the dollar impact: on a $450,000 Rancho Cucamonga or Redlands-area house with no other significant assets, the calculation runs roughly $4,000 + $3,000 + $7,000 = $14,000 for the attorney and another $14,000 for the representative, a combined $28,000 — a meaningful cost, but well under what the same formula produces on a comparably situated $900,000 coastal property.

The fee is calculated against the full appraised value, not the equity remaining after any mortgage, which can disproportionately affect a leveraged property.

When San Bernardino County Estates Skip Probate Entirely

Not every inherited San Bernardino County property needs full probate. A house held in a revocable living trust passes to the successor trustee with no court filing. Joint tenancy or community property with right of survivorship lets the surviving owner record an affidavit of death and sell as sole owner.

A recorded Transfer on Death deed passes the house to its named beneficiary after California’s required waiting period, outside probate entirely.

Short of those, Assembly Bill 2016 raised the threshold for the simplified Petition to Determine Succession to Real Property under Probate Code §§ 13150–13157 to $750,000 for a decedent’s primary residence, effective for deaths on or after April 1, 2025, while the personal-property small-estate affidavit under § 13100 covers up to $208,850 for deaths on the same date forward and bypasses the court altogether, going directly to banks and other asset holders.

San Bernardino County’s home values, well below the coastal-county medians, mean a meaningfully higher share of inherited houses here clear the $750,000 ceiling and qualify for the simplified route compared with Los Angeles, Orange, or San Diego Counties.

Selling the House While the Case Is Open

A house does not have to wait for the entire probate case to close before it can be marketed.

A personal representative with full authority under the Independent Administration of Estates Act can typically sell the property by serving a Notice of Proposed Action and proceeding if no one objects within 15 days.

Without full IAEA authority, the sale instead needs a court-confirmation hearing, where the court can accept competing overbids from the floor and the originally accepted offer is not final until the judge confirms it — worth flagging to a prospective buyer before escrow opens, since finding out mid-transaction that an accepted offer could still be outbid in open court derails deals that did not see it coming.

Local Forms, Bond Waivers, and the One That Is Actually Mandatory

San Bernardino County publishes a longer list of local probate forms than most California counties, but unusually few of them are mandatory for a standard decedent’s-estate petition.

The county’s Confidential Information Sheets — form 13-20593-360 for an intestate estate, 13-20594-360 when there is a will — are both marked optional on the forms themselves; they simply give the court a confidential list of heirs or beneficiaries up front.

The one local form that is genuinely mandatory applies only in a specific situation: form 13-10840-360, the Declaration of Diligent Search and Request to Dispense with Notice, is required whenever a petitioner asks the court to excuse notice to an heir who cannot be located after a diligent search.

A personal representative asking the court to waive bond needs to support that request with the specific solvency-and-creditors declaration content required by Local Rule 20-401 — the county’s optional form 13-16779-360 is built to cover exactly those required elements, and skipping that content (even while using a generic bond-waiver request) is a common source of an examiner note on an otherwise straightforward petition.

What Happens If Heirs Disagree

A single San Bernardino County house frequently passes to multiple siblings or heirs, and California law has a built-in answer when they cannot agree on whether to sell, rent, or keep it. While the estate is open, any heir can petition the court for instructions.

Once probate closes and title has transferred to the heirs as co-owners, a partition action — a separate civil proceeding from the probate case — can force a sale.

It is generally a last resort; a buyout between the heirs, or a straightforward agreement to sell and split proceeds, is almost always faster and cheaper than litigating a partition through to a forced sale.

Disagreement surfaces more often than families expect in San Bernardino County specifically, because a single inherited property here often spans a wide range of values depending on where it sits — a modest Barstow or Needles-area house, a mid-range Rialto or Colton property, or a larger Rancho Cucamonga or Redlands home can all be part of the same extended family’s estate planning, and heirs who disagree about value are frequently disagreeing about different comparable markets entirely, not just about whether to sell.

Out-of-County and Out-of-State Heirs

Because the case is filed where the decedent resided rather than where the heirs live, an heir in another state deals with whichever of San Bernardino County’s two courthouses their ZIP code assigns, regardless of their own address.

In practice this is manageable: the non-appearance rule for recommended petitions, the availability of e-filing, and Zoom appearances for hearings that do require one mean a petition can often move from filing to Letters without anyone setting foot in Fontana or Victorville.

What a remote process does not solve is the house itself — an out-of-area heir still needs someone local to keep it insured, maintained, and checked on, since a vacant home sitting through a multi-month case is its own liability separate from anything happening in court.

A single probate phone line covering a county of roughly 20,000 square miles also means hold times vary a great deal, and (909) 521-3388 fields conservatorship and guardianship calls alongside decedent’s-estate questions — a long hold is usually about overall call volume, not a problem specific to your case.

1. Confirm which courthouse the decedent’s ZIP code assigns under GO26-032 before filing anything at the old downtown location
2. Attach a copy of the death certificate, Social Security number redacted, to every petition as Local Rule 20-615 requires
3. Check whether the primary residence falls under the $750,000 AB 2016 threshold before assuming full probate is necessary
4. Watch the Court Access Portal for Probate Notes about two weeks before the hearing, and clear any deficiency well before the calendar call to avoid the four-week continuance floor
5. Keep the property insured and maintained throughout the case — a vacant house sitting through a multi-month probate is a real liability on its own

Whether a San Bernardino County estate qualifies for the simplified succession petition or needs full probate, the first practical step is the same: confirm exactly how title is held before assuming either way.

A direct sale is not automatically the better path once Letters issue — if the house is in good condition and the estate has full IAEA authority, listing with an agent will often net more once the statutory fees are paid, since those apply regardless of how the sale happens.

A direct sale tends to help most in San Bernardino County probate specifically when the house needs repairs a conventional lender would flag, when out-of-area heirs cannot manage a vacant property through a long case, or when a fast, certain buyer willing to work through a court-confirmation hearing is hard to find otherwise.

Either way, escrow on a probate sale still routes through the same closing mechanics as any other California home sale, including the withholding rules under FTB Form 593 that an estate’s representative should expect to see in the closing package.

Probate procedure is detailed and San Bernardino County’s local rules change periodically, so nothing here substitutes for confirming your specific situation with a California probate attorney before committing to a filing strategy.

If you are an heir deciding whether to list or sell directly once you have authority to act, inherited home buyers serving San Bernardino County is something Cash Home Buyers CA handles regularly, including coordinating around Notice of Proposed Action timelines and court-confirmed sales.

We buy directly or bring a vetted cash buyer, and when you sell to us, we pay the standard closing costs, including the county and city transfer taxes, escrow and title.

Look up Cash Home Buyers CA on Google, or call (424) 435-2326 with questions about an inherited San Bernardino County property.