If you have just been named executor, the question is never “what is probate?” — it is “what do I have to do, by when, and who says so?” These pages answer that for your state, with the statute behind every deadline and the date we last read it.
Settle builds this checklist into a plan you can actually work
The steps above, ordered for your situation in your state, with the deadlines on a calendar, your documents attached to the step that needs them, and an expense ledger for everything the estate owes you back. The plan itself is free.
Most executor advice online is uncited, undated, and often wrong — Florida's summary-administration threshold moved to $150,000 in July 2026 and pages still quote $75,000. So everything on these guides carries the statute it came from and the month we last read it, and anything we recorded from a secondary source without reading the primary text is tagged not yet confirmed rather than quietly presented as checked.
The complete registry, gaps included, is at Where the state information comes from.