Mercer County, OH Probate Information

The statewide duties of an Ohio fiduciary, an executor named in a will or an administrator appointed where there is no will, are covered on the Ohio state page, and the Mercer County Probate Court restates them on its own estate administration page: determine the heirs, take possession of and conserve the property, have property appraised where the value is not readily ascertainable, file the inventory within three months of appointment, receive and determine the validity of claims, file the tax returns, distribute to the proper beneficiaries, and file an account of all receipts and disbursements. What follows are the additions Mercer County's own local rules impose on top of that.

Serve a copy of every account and certify that you did. Local Rule 64.1(E) says no account will be approved unless the fiduciary or the fiduciary's counsel files a certificate that a copy of the account as filed was personally served or mailed by ordinary mail: in an intestate estate, on the surviving spouse and all next of kin; in a testate estate, on the surviving spouse and all beneficiaries at the addresses listed in the file, except corporate and charitable beneficiaries and beneficiaries who need not be notified under R.C. 2109.32(B)(1). Every account must be personally signed by the fiduciary, and where multiple fiduciaries were appointed all of them must sign.

Keep the vouchers but do not file them. Under Local Rule 64.3 the court does not require vouchers, cancelled checks or receipts to be filed with a partial or final account, but they must be available for the court's review on request. Local Rule 64.5 requires all assets to be documented at the time a partial account is filed and available to be shown to a deputy clerk on the court's order or request. Where a bond is required, Local Rule 64.4 will not accept an account for filing unless the bond covers twice the value of the personal property assets on hand plus one year's projected income, or another amount the court sets.

Watch the paperwork mechanics. Attach the court costs to any account, certificate of termination or report of distribution (Local Rule 64.6). Include a prior instrument reference and a tax parcel number on any certificate of transfer submitted for the court's approval (Local Rule 57.4). Include a self-addressed stamped envelope if you want file-stamped copies back (Local Rule 57.2). And if you are handling the estate yourself, note Local Rule 54.2: you may represent yourself, but no one who is not a licensed Ohio attorney may assist you in a matter before the court unless appointed as a fiduciary or guardian ad litem or otherwise ordered.

Mercer County publishes no local estate forms, and its local rules say so in effect. Ohio uses one set of Standard Probate Forms prescribed by the Supreme Court of Ohio and used in all 88 counties, and Local Rule 51.1 states that approved forms for use in the Mercer County Probate Court are available at the Probate Clerk's Office on the third floor of the courthouse and through the link on the court's website. That link goes to the Supreme Court of Ohio's own probate forms library. So for a family settling an estate here the answer is simple: download the statewide forms, complete them, and file them in Celina.

The load-bearing statewide items for a decedent's estate are Form 1.0 (Surviving Spouse, Children, Next of Kin, Legatees, and Devisees), Form 2.0 (Application to Probate Will), Form 4.0 (Application for Authority to Administer Estate), Form 4.5 (Entry Appointing Fiduciary; Letter of Authority), Form 5.0 (Application to Relieve Estate From Administration) with Form 5.1 (Assets and Liabilities of Estate to be Relieved from Administration), Form 5.10 (Summary Release From Administration) with Form 5.11 (Entry Granting Summary Release From Administration), Form 6.0 (Inventory and Appraisal), Form 7.0 (Certification of Notice to Administrator of Medicaid Estate Recovery Program), Form 12.0 (Application for Certificate of Transfer) and Form 13.0 (Fiduciary's Account). Confirm the current version on the Supreme Court of Ohio forms page before you file, because form numbering and titles are revised from time to time.

The one estate-side document Mercer County publishes of its own is Appendix A to its local rules, an attorney fee calculation sheet headed "ATTORNEY FEES FOR ESTATES" that Local Rule 71.1 requires be used as the format for any fee application. Three local rules shape how the statewide forms are presented: Local Rule 51.1 requires two-sided forms to be converted to one-sided; Local Rule 52.1 requires computer-generated forms to carry the exact wording and the same blank lines as the uniform forms, with the filer's signature certifying compliance; and Local Rule 100, added in the June 1, 2026 revision, requires an attorney or a self-represented litigant who used generative artificial intelligence in preparing anything submitted to the court to disclose that use at the time of submission and to attach a certification that the materials were reviewed for accuracy, validity and relevancy.

Mercer County Probate Court publishes its own security deposit schedule, which makes the cost of a filing here easy to plan, but the court publishes it in two places that no longer agree. Ohio fixes the fee items by statute, including $35.00 to appoint a fiduciary and $15.00 to probate a will (R.C. 2101.16(A)) and $60.00 to relieve an estate from administration or to grant a summary release, and lets each probate court require an advance deposit for costs by local rule, capped at $125.00 at the time of application (R.C. 2101.16(E)), plus optional computerization and dispute-resolution charges (R.C. 2101.162, R.C. 2101.163). What a filer actually hands over in Celina is the court's own security deposit, and Local Rule 58.1 is blunt about it: if the deposit is not provided, the filings will not be accepted.

The figures below are the estate and related lines of Appendix B to the court's local rules, whose cover reads effective June 1, 2026 and which Local Rule 5.2 dates to an original adoption effective March 1, 2026 (read on the court's own site and verified July 2026). Treat them as the current schedule and confirm the total before you file. The court's Security Deposits web page still shows the pre-2026 figures, including $200.00 for a full administration rather than $225.00, and archived copies of that page show the same $200.00 as far back as August 2022; the copy of the court's rules hosted by the Supreme Court of Ohio is older still, a 2004 set last amended in 2016 whose deposit schedule has been superseded twice over, so do not rely on it for any figure.

Two follow-on rules matter. Local Rule 64.6 says no account, certificate of termination or report of distribution will be accepted for filing without the appropriate court costs attached, and that at the conclusion of a case any remaining cost deposit balance of $10.00 or less is transferred to the Mercer County Indigent Guardian Fund. So budget for costs at the close of the estate, not only at the opening.

Attorney fees and fiduciary fees are not court costs, but Mercer County regulates how they are presented. Local Rule 71.1 requires any fee calculation to be submitted in the format of Appendix A to the local rules, an attorney fee worksheet, and its guideline percentages for ordinary administration services are 4 per cent of the first $50,000 of probate personal property and gross proceeds of real estate sold, 3 per cent above $50,000 and not exceeding $100,000, 2 per cent above that, 2 per cent on real property distributed and not sold, and 1 per cent on non-probate property included in a federal estate tax return. The rule states expressly that the schedule is not a minimum or maximum and that a fee above the schedule needs an explanation or a time itemization, and the court's own estate administration page adds that attorney fees are not permitted to be paid until the attorney has prepared the final account for filing, unless the court first authorizes it. The fiduciary's own commission is statutory, not local (R.C. 2113.35), and the fiduciary may waive it.

1. Inventory: within three months after appointment (R.C. 2115.02), on Form 6.0. Local Rule 78.1(C) says the court will grant a 60-day extension for good cause shown on a first application, and that any later application must contain a detailed explanation of the issue and how long it will take to resolve, with the extension left to the court's discretion.
2. Hearing on the inventory: once the inventory is filed, the probate court sets a day for a hearing on it not later than one month after the filing (R.C. 2115.16). That hearing date is also the cutoff for an interested party to ask in writing that property valued from the Mercer County Auditor's records be appraised by a disinterested appraiser instead (Local Rule 61.1(H)).
3. Creditor claims: within six months after the date of death (R.C. 2117.06), subject to the R.C. 2117.061 exception for the Medicaid estate recovery administrator. This runs from death, not from your appointment, so it may be well under way by the time you are appointed.
4. Final account or certificate of termination: six months from the date of the fiduciary's appointment (R.C. 2109.301, Local Rule 64.1(C)). If it cannot be filed in six months, Local Rule 64.1(C) requires either an application to extend administration or a notice to extend administration, a status report with any partial account filed later, and all subsequent accounts on an annual basis unless the court orders otherwise. Accounts not filed in compliance are subject to citation, and Local Rule 64.2 says no expenditure, sale, distribution or fee will be approved while the fiduciary is delinquent in filing an account.
5. Objections to an inventory or to an account: the court sets a pre-trial conference within 30 days after the objection is filed and, at that conference, sets the matter for an evidentiary hearing within 30 days afterward (Local Rule 78.1(C)).
6. Estate still open after 13 months: an estate that is current as to filed accounts but still open past 13 months is subject to a status conference unless a written status report is filed annually with each partial account (Local Rule 78.1(C)).
7. Land sale that has not closed: any land sale not concluded within one year from the date of filing is set for a pre-trial conference within ten days after the year expires, the attorney of record and the fiduciary must attend, and a written status report addressing the efforts to sell and when the case will close is filed at least seven days before (Local Rule 78.1(B)).
8. Wrongful death settlement: the hearing is held within 30 days of the filing of Form 14.0, or within 30 days of filing or 15 days after appointment, whichever is later, where a guardian or guardian ad litem has to be appointed first (Local Rule 78.1(D)).
9. Motions in a contested probate matter: responses are due within 14 days, and the court sets a hearing within 30 days after a request or, if there is no request, decides the matter as soon as practical (Local Rule 78.1(G)).

Page last reviewed: July 2026.