Muskingum County, OH Probate Information

These are the duties Muskingum County adds to what Ohio law already asks of an executor or administrator, all taken from the court's own local rules. They are procedural rather than onerous, but two of them shift work onto you that other counties handle at the counter.

Serve the inventory-hearing notice and prove it. After you file the inventory on Form 6.0, you must serve notice of the hearing on it on all heirs in an intestate estate, all beneficiaries in a testate estate and the surviving spouse, by one of the methods in Civil Rule 73, using the court's own Notice of Hearing (Inventory and Appraisal) form, and then file the court's Affidavit of Service (Inventory and Appraisal) with the waivers or service proof attached as Civil Rule 73(F) requires. Waivers on Standard Probate Form 6.2 are accepted in place of notice. The court may order notice to additional people it designates (Local Rule 29.2).

Give the heirs the account, then notice the hearing. When you file an account under R.C. 2109.301 you must provide a copy of it to each heir of an intestate estate or each beneficiary of a testate estate at the time of filing, unless an R.C. 2109.32(B) exception applies. The account is set for hearing not earlier than thirty days after filing. No notice is required for a hearing on a partial account, but notice of the hearing on a final account must go to all heirs in an intestate estate, all residuary beneficiaries in a testate estate and the surviving spouse, on the court's own Notice of Hearing on Account form, or its Notice of Hearing on Account (Prior Accounts) form where prior accounts are involved, served by a Civil Rule 73 method, with copies of the accounts served alongside the notice (Local Rule 32.2).

Watch the account-extension rules. An application to extend the time for filing an account will not be accepted unless every fiduciary signs it. If you file that application more than thirty days after the account was due, it will not be approved unless the attorney and all fiduciaries appear personally before the court, and the same personal-appearance requirement applies to a second extension request for the same account. No partial account is accepted if its ending date is more than ninety days before the filing date (Local Rule 32.1). Receipts and vouchers are not required with your estate account, but the court may require them in its discretion, so keep them.

Give the seven days' notice if the family is out of state. Where you apply for letters of administration and neither a surviving spouse nor any known next of kin resides in Ohio, you must cause seven days' written notice of the time and place of the hearing to be served on the spouse and all competent next of kin living outside Ohio who are known to you (Local Rule 27.1).

Bring an appraiser's qualifications with the request. Where an appraisal is needed, you may request the appointment of any qualified person as appraiser, but the appointment is subject to the court's approval and the appraiser's qualifications must be attached to the request (Local Rule 28.1). Where you sell real estate under a power of sale, file a report of the sale before or with the final account, setting out the type of sale, the sale price, the appraised value, the purchaser's name and address and enough of the legal description for a title examiner to identify the property (Local Rule 33.1).

Finish inside one year and nine months if you can. An estate that is current on its accounts but still open past that point is set for a status conference which you and your attorney must attend with a written status report (Local Rule 46.1). And expect the court to apply its attorney-fee guideline to any fee your estate pays counsel, with a fee above the guideline requiring the written consent of the fiduciary and all residual beneficiaries, filed with the court (Local Rule 40.1).

Muskingum County publishes no local application forms for opening an estate, but it does publish its own notice forms, and you are required to use them. Ohio uses one set of Standard Probate Forms prescribed by the Supreme Court of Ohio in all 88 counties, and the Muskingum County Probate Court neither maintains an estate form library of its own nor requires a local cover sheet to open a case. So for a family settling an estate the starting point is the statewide set. The court's own site carries a Link To Probate Forms, which lands on the Supreme Court's whole probate forms index where Decedent's Estate is one of sixteen categories, so go straight to the decedent's estate set linked below.

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), Form 6.0 (Inventory and Appraisal), Form 6.2 (Waiver of Notice of Hearing on Inventory), 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 county's own forms are bound into its local rules rather than posted as a separate library. Local Rule 29.2 requires the fiduciary to give notice of the inventory hearing on the court's Notice of Hearing (Inventory and Appraisal) form and to prove it with the court's Affidavit of Service (Inventory and Appraisal). Local Rule 32.2 requires the court's Notice of Hearing on Account form for a hearing on a single account, and its Notice of Hearing on Account (Prior Accounts) form where prior accounts are involved. All four are printed inside the local rules PDF, immediately behind the rule that requires them, so download the rules as well as the statewide forms. The rules also carry the court's guardianship rules, Local Rules 66.01 through 66.20, and a local Multi-Guardian Annual Registration Form, which matter for a guardianship rather than a decedent's estate.

Muskingum County Probate Court publishes its own dollar cost schedule inside its local rules, so what it costs to open an estate here is knowable before you drive to Zanesville. Local Rule 25.1, amended the 1st day of January, 2016 and retrieved July 2026, requires an advance deposit for costs and sets it at $215.00 for an estate with or without a will, $175.00 for a release of an estate from administration and $150.00 for a summary release from administration. Neighboring lines in the same schedule cover related probate filings: $150.00 for a will contest, $150.00 for a land sale proceeding and $74.00 for a summary land sale, $88.00 for a wrongful death, $150.00 each for a declaratory judgment, a will construction, a determination of heirs or a concealment of assets, $240.00 for the guardianship of an incompetent, $190.00 for the guardianship of a minor or a conservatorship, $150.00 for a trust, $88.00 for a minor's claim and $60.00 for a marriage license. The schedule also lists a will file only filing at $33.00, a tax only filing at $33.00 and a will and tax only filing at $38.00; those tax lines predate the repeal of Ohio's estate tax for deaths on or after January 1, 2013 and do not apply to a current death.

Read the county's figures as deposits, not as the final bill. Local Rule 25.1 says service by certified mail is charged according to the number of notices required, that all other probate proceedings are on a cash basis due at the time of hearing, that additional deposits will be requested when an advance deposit is depleted, and that any balance left when a case terminates is returned to the attorney of record, or to the fiduciary if the fiduciary advanced it, with no further accounting required. Two more local dollar figures are worth knowing: Local Rule 21.1 requires a $10.00 deposit where personal service of summons or notice is needed on someone who does not live in the county, so that the sheriff of that county can serve it, and Local Rule 20.1 (amended August 29, 2011) sets copies of any open record at ten cents per page plus postage where applicable, which is cheap for a family pulling an old estate file.

Those county deposits sit on top of Ohio's statutory fee items rather than replacing them. R.C. 2101.16(A) fixes most probate fee items statewide, including $35.00 to appoint a fiduciary, $15.00 to probate a will, $60.00 to relieve an estate from administration or grant a summary release, $10.00 for an inventory with appraisement and $7.00 without, $12.00 for an account, and $1.00 per page for certified copies with a $1.00 minimum. Of the $60.00 release fee, $20.00 goes to the county's indigent guardianship fund (R.C. 2101.16(C)). A probate court may also add a computerization charge and a clerk's-office computerization charge (R.C. 2101.162) and a dispute-resolution charge on the filing of each action (R.C. 2101.163); Muskingum County's rules do not mention either, so ask whether one is collected. R.C. 2101.16(E) caps an advance deposit for costs required by local rule at $125.00 where the deposit is taken at the time application is made for appointment as executor or administrator or a will is presented for probate, and Muskingum County's published $215.00 estate figure is a deposit against the whole case's costs, topped up when depleted and refunded to the extent costs come in lower. Fees are waived for combat-zone military casualties (R.C. 2101.164).

One more schedule shapes what an estate pays out, and it is not a court cost. Local Rule 40.1 (amended May 24, 2007) publishes a guideline for attorney fees in a decedent's estate or a release from administration: 6 per cent of the first $4,000.00, 4 per cent of the next $16,000.00 and 3 per cent of the excess over $20,000.00. The rule says plainly that the schedule is a guide and is not to be considered as setting minimum or maximum fees. The computation may use the highest valuation of all property, real and personal, so non-probate assets can enter the calculation, and where they do the rule requires a description and computation for the court's review. The court may approve a fee that follows the guideline without a hearing where the fiduciary and the attorney have both signed the final and distributive account, while a fee above the guideline needs the written consent of the fiduciary and all residual beneficiaries, stating the guideline figure and the amount by which the request exceeds it, filed with the court. If you are hiring an attorney for a Muskingum County estate, this is the yardstick the court will apply, so ask for the calculation in writing. Confirm every figure on this page at (740) 455-7113 before you file, because the cost schedule carries a 2016 amendment date.

1. Seven days before a hearing on an application for letters of administration, where neither a surviving spouse nor any known next of kin resides in Ohio: written notice of the time and place of hearing must be served on the spouse and all competent next of kin living outside Ohio who are known to the applicant (Local Rule 27.1).
2. Within thirty days after letters are granted, or after an application for release or summary release is filed, where the decedent or the decedent's spouse was subject to Medicaid estate recovery: the medicaid estate recovery notice form is submitted (R.C. 2117.061(B)) and certified to the court on Form 7.0.
3. Within three months after appointment: the inventory is filed on Form 6.0 (R.C. 2115.02). Muskingum County's Local Rule 29.1 states the three-month period in the court's own words.
4. Before the inventory hearing: the fiduciary serves the court's Notice of Hearing (Inventory and Appraisal) on all heirs in an intestate estate, all beneficiaries in a testate estate and the surviving spouse, and files the court's Affidavit of Service, unless notice is waived on Standard Probate Form 6.2 (Local Rule 29.2).
5. Up to five days before the inventory hearing: any interested person may file exceptions to the inventory or to the allowance for support under R.C. 2106.13, per the court's own notice form. The fiduciary and any witness may be examined under oath at the hearing.
6. Within six months after the date of death: all creditor claims must be presented or be forever barred (R.C. 2117.06), subject to the Medicaid estate recovery exception in R.C. 2117.061(D). This runs from the death, not from your appointment.
7. Within six months after appointment: the final and distributive account is due (R.C. 2109.301). An application to extend the time must be signed by all fiduciaries; if it is filed more than thirty days after the account was due, the attorney and all fiduciaries must appear personally before the court, and a second extension application for the same account also requires personal appearance (Local Rule 32.1).
8. Not earlier than thirty days after an account is filed: the court holds the hearing on it. No notice is required on a partial account; notice of the hearing on a final account goes to all heirs in an intestate estate, all residuary beneficiaries in a testate estate and the surviving spouse, on the court's own Notice of Hearing on Account form, and exceptions are filed at least five days before the hearing (Local Rule 32.2).
9. No partial account is accepted for filing if its ending date is more than ninety days before the filing date (Local Rule 32.1).
10. Within thirty days after objections to an inventory or an account are filed: the court sets a pre-trial conference and, at that conference, sets the matter for an evidentiary hearing (Local Rule 46.1).
11. Within thirty days after a wrongful-death settlement is filed on Form 14.0: the hearing is held, or within fifteen days after appointment where a guardian or guardian ad litem must first be appointed (Local Rule 46.1).
12. After one year and nine months: any decedent's estate that is current on its accounts but still open is subject to a status conference, at which the fiduciary and the attorney must appear and submit a written status report (Local Rule 46.1). Plan to close inside that window.

Page last reviewed: July 2026.