California's Busiest Probate Courts, FY2025

California's four busiest county probate courts by fiscal year 2025 filings: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino, compared with fiscal year 2016.

Every year, California's superior courts open tens of thousands of new probate cases: decedent's estates, trusts, and other probate matters. The Judicial Council of California publishes county-level filing counts for this case type as part of its trial-court operational-metrics reporting, and the file labels each fiscal year by the calendar year it ends in; this page uses the same labels. The dataset's current edition covers fiscal year 2024-2025, and this page uses that full run, fiscal year 2016 through fiscal year 2025.

The four counties compared below are the county superior courts with the most probate filings in fiscal year 2025, by this dataset: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino. That is the same four counties fiscal year 2024 alone would surface, and it is not a ranking by county population, and it is not the same four counties a reading of this file's "Combined" column alone would surface. Both points are explained below.

How the totals below were compiled

For a given county and fiscal year, this data file reports probate filings one of three ways: as a single "Combined" figure only, as four separate category rows only ("Decedent's Estate", "Trust", "Other Probate with Hearing", "Other Probate without Hearing"), or, in a small number of county-years, as both at once. This page uses whichever the file provides for that county and year: the "Combined" figure where only it is populated and greater than zero, the sum of the four category rows where only they are populated, or, where both are populated, the sum of the two, as in the two exceptions detailed next.

Los Angeles County's fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2025 rows are the two exceptions among the figures used on this page: for both years, a "Combined" figure and four category rows are both populated for that county, and in each case the two are not the same cases counted twice. In fiscal year 2016 the category rows are 706 for Decedent's Estate, 353 for Other Probate with Hearing, 75 for Other Probate without Hearing, and 332 for Trust, which add to 1,466; added to the "Combined" figure, 7,158, that gives 8,624, a total that fits smoothly against Los Angeles County's filings in the surrounding years (8,562 in fiscal year 2017, 8,677 in fiscal year 2018, both reported under category rows only that year). In fiscal year 2025 the category rows are 1,446 for Decedent's Estate, 910 for Other Probate with Hearing, 93 for Other Probate without Hearing, and 735 for Trust, which add to 3,184; added to the "Combined" figure, 8,867, that gives 12,051. Reading either "Combined" figure alone, without checking for the category rows, would understate the county's filings: 7,158 instead of 8,624 for fiscal year 2016, and 8,867 instead of 12,051 for fiscal year 2025.

Reading the "Combined" column alone, without checking whether category rows are also populated, would also change which counties are visible in a size ranking. Orange County and San Bernardino County both report fiscal year 2025 filings under category rows only, with "Combined" blank; a ranking built from the "Combined" column alone would miss both of them, even though both file more fiscal-year-2025 probate cases than San Francisco County, which does have a populated "Combined" figure that year.

Filings, fiscal year 2016, 2024 and 2025

County	FY2016	FY2024	FY2025
Los Angeles	8,624	13,092	12,051
Orange	1,969	2,814	2,893
Riverside	1,869	2,658	2,849
San Bernardino	1,521	2,499	2,723

"Probate" is the Judicial Council's own case-type category for decedent's-estate, trust, and other probate matters; the same source tracks conservatorship and guardianship separately. See the paragraphs above for how each figure was compiled from the source file, and "What this data does not show" below for what it does not count.

Every county in this comparison recorded more probate filings in fiscal year 2025 than in fiscal year 2016: Los Angeles grew from 8,624 to 12,051, Orange from 1,969 to 2,893, Riverside from 1,869 to 2,849, and San Bernardino from 1,521 to 2,723. The most recent year was not uniformly a further increase, though. Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino each grew again between fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025 (Orange from 2,814 to 2,893, Riverside from 2,658 to 2,849, San Bernardino from 2,499 to 2,723), but Los Angeles's total fell, from 13,092 in fiscal year 2024 to 12,051 in fiscal year 2025. Los Angeles remains far above the other three counties, and far above its own fiscal year 2016 total, in every year shown; the single most recent year-over-year change is the one that moved down rather than up.

What this data does not show

This is a count of case filings, not a count of disputes. Opening a probate case is the routine first step for any estate that has to pass through court, whether or not anyone involved disagrees about anything. The source file does not separate contested matters from uncontested ones, and this page does not estimate what share of these filings became a will contest, a trust dispute, or any other kind of litigation.

Figures above are Probate case filing counts from the Judicial Council of California's own public data file, fiscal years 2016, 2024 and 2025. For how a will contest and a trust dispute differ procedurally, see will disputes and trust disputes differ.

Source: Judicial Council of California, Trial Court Operational Metrics public data file