Every probate case for a person domiciled in Multnomah County is filed with the Multnomah County Circuit Court, Oregon's 4th Judicial District. Multnomah filings sit in the statewide Oregon eCourt system with every other circuit court case.
Jonathan Khorsandi on Aug 21, 2026
Every probate case for a person domiciled in Multnomah County is filed with the Multnomah County Circuit Court, Oregon's 4th Judicial District, at 1200 SW 1st Avenue in Portland. There is no separate probate court and no county-run records database. Multnomah filings sit in the statewide Oregon eCourt system alongside every other circuit court case, which means the search route is the same one used in all 36 counties.
The court recorded 1,863 Administration of Estates filings in 2025, roughly 155 a month, per the Oregon Judicial Department's 2025 cases filed report. That is the number that matters for property work. OJD's wider Probate case class for Multnomah, 2,219, also counts adult protective proceedings, which are guardianship and conservatorship matters for living people and produce no estate property to sell.
This guide covers Multnomah County only. For Oregon's statewide framework, the circuit and county court split, the filing fee tiers and the simple estate affidavit, see the Oregon probate records guide.
Yes. Oregon eCourt Case Information is the official ORS 7.020 register of actions for every Oregon circuit court, and probate is a public case category. OJD withholds adoption, juvenile, mental health and VAWA records from public search. Probate is not on that list.
What is public includes the petition to appoint a personal representative, the party names, the filing date, the case status, the register of actions showing each entry in the case, the inventory, and the judgment appointing the personal representative.
Two limits are worth knowing before you build a workflow around online access. Public does not mean the documents are online: the free statewide search returns case information, not filed images. And public does not mean free at the document level, because copies carry per-page and certification fees set out below.
At the Central Courthouse, 1200 SW 1st Avenue. Filings are made under the county of the decedent's domicile, not the county where the property sits, so a Portland resident who owned a rental in Clackamas still files in Multnomah.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Court | Multnomah County Circuit Court, 4th Judicial District |
| Address | 1200 SW 1st Ave, Portland, OR 97204 |
| Probate Department | 971-274-0605, [email protected] |
| Records Department | 971-274-0570, [email protected], Room 3315, third floor |
| Courthouse in-person hours | 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday to Friday |
| Records counter hours | 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM, Monday to Friday |
| Phone hours | 8:30 to 10:30 AM and 1:30 to 4:00 PM |
| Records mailing address | 1200 SW 1st Ave, Room 3315, Portland, OR 97204 |
Three cautions on those details, all of which cost people trips.
The old courthouse is not the courthouse. A large number of third-party directories still list Multnomah probate at 1021 SW 4th Avenue. That is the 1914 building, which the Central Courthouse replaced when it opened to the public on 5 October 2020. Circuit court operations, probate included, have not been conducted there in nearly six years.
Confirm the phone before relying on it. OJD publishes 971-274-0605 for Probate on its current Business Hours PDF, and a 2020 department directory still shows the same digits with a 503 prefix. Every other Multnomah department in both documents uses the 971-274 block, so 971-274-0605 is the number to try, and the contacts page email addresses are unambiguous if you would rather write. Phone service is only open in the two windows above.
Do not plan around a Probate floor number. OJD publishes Room 3315 for Records on the third floor, but publishes no room or floor for the Probate Department anywhere. Ask at the counter.
Deeds are a separate office. Property transfers out of an estate are recorded with the county's Division of Assessment, Recording & Taxation, not the court, at 501 SE Hawthorne Blvd Suite 175, Portland, OR 97214, open 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM.
Start with the free statewide search, then decide whether you need documents.
The free tool is OJD Online Records Search, the Odyssey portal at webportal.courts.oregon.gov. It states plainly that sign-in and registration are not required, and it covers all circuit courts and the Tax Court.
Results are limited case information and OJD warns they are not an official register, so treat the portal as the index and the court file as the record.
One thing to avoid. publicaccess.courts.oregon.gov/PublicAccessLogin/Login.aspx looks like the public search and is not. It is the OECI sign-in for paid subscribers, with a user ID and password form and no free-registration path. A third address on the same domain, publicaccess.courts.oregon.gov/PublicAccess/default.aspx, is the circuit and tax court hearing calendars. Neither is the free case search.
OJCIN OnLine is the subscriber product, and it is the umbrella rather than a layer above OECI: it comprises OECI for circuit and tax courts and ACMS for the appellate courts. It carries the full register of actions and judgment records, and document access on top where approved. Subscriber support runs 1-800-858-9658 or [email protected], Monday to Friday, 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM.
When you need the filed document itself, the Records Department takes orders through five channels: the online request form, email to [email protected], the printed mail-in form, phone on 971-274-0570, and the walk-in counter in Room 3315.
| Route | What it returns | Registration | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| OJD Online Records Search, webportal.courts.oregon.gov | Limited case information: case number, parties, filing date, status | None | Free |
| OECI through an OJCIN subscription | Full register of actions and judgment records, documents where approved | Subscriber account | $170 setup plus monthly |
| Records Department, Room 3315 | Copies of filed documents, certified or plain | None | Per page, see below |
| publicaccess.courts.oregon.gov calendars | Hearing calendars only | None | Free |
For most agents the honest answer is the first and third rows. The free portal tells you an estate exists and who the parties are; the counter or a mail order gets you the petition and the appointment judgment.
Copy fees at the Multnomah Records Department, per the court's current records fee sheet:
Filing fees are a different matter, and they are statewide rather than local. The petition to appoint a personal representative is tiered by estate value under ORS 21.170(1), per the OJD circuit court fee schedule effective 1 January 2026:
| Value of the estate | Statute | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Less than $50,000 | ORS 21.170(1)(a) | $278 |
| $50,000 to $999,999 | ORS 21.170(1)(b) | $591 |
| $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 | ORS 21.170(1)(c) | $882 |
| $10,000,000 or more | ORS 21.170(1)(d) | $1,176 |
| Simple estate affidavit | ORS 114.515(5) | $124 |
Given Portland-area property values, most full probates in Multnomah land in the $591 tier. A separate line item of $281 for "any other appearance in a probate proceeding" is often mistaken for the petition fee; it is not.
If you are weighing an OJCIN subscription, the OJCIN fee schedule effective 1 September 2025 sets a non-refundable setup fee of $170.00, monthly minimums from $29.00 at the lowest access level, $17.00 per additional user profile and $75.00 to reactivate a lapsed account. Document access is not part of a general subscription: under CJO 2025-025 it is an additional $81.00 per month and requires approval, and it is scoped to designated government users, Oregon State Bar members and subscribers with a specific statutory need. Documents are also only available from each court's own eCourt implementation date, which ran from December 2012 to July 2016.
Price that against the free portal plus occasional counter orders before subscribing.
Longer than the state as a whole. OJD's 2025 time to disposition report puts Multnomah at 55.4% of Administration of Estates cases closed within 360 days, against 63.3% statewide and a 75% goal. At 720 days Multnomah is at 81.9% against 86.6% statewide, meaning 18.1% of Multnomah estates are still open after two years, compared with 13.4% across Oregon.
For lead work that is the useful part: the average Multnomah estate stays open long enough that a filing you find in month two is still live in month seven.
The interim deadlines are statutory and they generate the public filings you can track.
| Stage | Statutory position |
|---|---|
| Publish notice to interested persons | Once, upon appointment, ORS 113.155 |
| File inventory | Within 90 days of appointment, unless the court grants longer, ORS 113.165 |
| Creditor claim period closes | Four months after the date of publication, ORS 115.005 |
| Final account and distribution | After claims are resolved and the court approves |
Two of those are commonly reported wrong. Notice to interested persons is published once, not for three consecutive weeks: the three-week rule was amended out of ORS 113.155 by 2023 c.18 ยง1, and any guide still repeating it is describing repealed law. The inventory deadline is 90 days, not 60.
The case number tells you an estate is open. Five steps tell you whether it is worth a stamp.
1. Confirm the estate is an estate. OJD's Probate class for Multnomah mixes decedent estates with adult protective proceedings. A guardianship or conservatorship case involves a living protected person and no estate property to sell. Filter to Administration of Estates before you do anything else.
2. Check that letters have been issued. Only the court-appointed personal representative can sign a purchase agreement on behalf of the estate. Heirs cannot, and neither can a surviving spouse who was never appointed. The register of actions shows the appointment entry; read it before you talk price with anyone.
3. Find the real property. The petition may not itemise real estate. Search the decedent's name at multcoproptax.com for account values and tax status, and multcorecords.com for documents recorded since February 2002. A personal representative's deed already on record means the property has moved and the lead has passed.
4. Understand what the personal representative can do without the court. Under ORS 114.325, a personal representative has power to sell, mortgage, lease or otherwise deal with estate property without notice, hearing or court order, subject to the bond requirement in ORS 113.105. The exceptions are narrow: a sale that contravenes the will, or property specifically devised where the will does not authorise its sale. That is a real selling point in a first conversation, because the personal representative does not have to go back to court to close. Note that guidance saying the court must first grant authority to sell has the rule backwards.
5. Check the market before you call. Run the address against RMLS. Multnomah is an active market and a property can move from listing to pending inside a research cycle, so a lead you pulled three weeks ago is worth a re-check before outreach.
One statewide factor worth carrying into the conversation: Oregon's estate tax starts at a gross estate of $1 million under ORS 118.160, which a Portland house plus other assets clears more often than people expect. Estates in that range usually have an attorney and an accountant involved, and the attorney of record is often the more productive first contact.
Follow-up is where this falls apart for most people. With 18.1% of Multnomah estates still open after two years, a personal representative who says no in month two is a different conversation in month seven. A 90-day cadence is the difference between working probate and collecting case numbers.
Two: Multnomah and Washington, the Portland metro's highest-volume probate markets.
Every lead is a verified court filing with a case number, not a death record or a pre-probate prediction. Each one carries the property records matched to the estate, the personal representative skip traced with mailing address, phone and email where available, the attorney of record where one is named, and MLS tracking so you can see whether the property has already listed.
Done manually in Multnomah alone, that is a portal search, a case-type filter to strip out protective proceedings, a DART cross-reference, a records order for the petition where the register is thin, and skip tracing after that, across roughly 155 estate filings a month. The research is legitimate and it works. It is also most of a working week each month before a single call is made.
You can see the full coverage list at probatedata.com/counties, or start a 7-day trial for $1 and search Multnomah directly.
For Oregon's statewide rules, see the Oregon probate records guide. For the wider method across every state, see the national guide to finding probate records by county.
Yes. Oregon eCourt Case Information is the official ORS 7.020 register of actions for every Oregon circuit court, and probate is a public case category. The Oregon Judicial Department withholds adoption, juvenile, mental health and VAWA records from public search, and probate is not on that list. Public does not mean the documents are online, though: the free search returns case information rather than filed images.
Use the free OJD Online Records Search at webportal.courts.oregon.gov/portal/, which states that sign-in and registration are not required. Limit the location to Multnomah County, then search by the decedent's surname or by filing-date range. For the filed documents themselves you need either an OJCIN subscription with approved document access or a copy order from the Records Department in Room 3315.
At the Multnomah County Central Courthouse, 1200 SW 1st Ave, Portland, OR 97204, which is Oregon's 4th Judicial District. The court is not at 1021 SW 4th Ave, the historic building the Central Courthouse replaced when it opened to the public on 5 October 2020. The Oregon Judicial Department publishes 971-274-0605 for the Probate Department and 971-274-0570 for Records, with phone service only from 8:30 to 10:30 AM and 1:30 to 4:00 PM. An older OJD directory shows the Probate digits with a 503 prefix, so confirm the number or email [email protected].
No. The sign-in page at publicaccess.courts.oregon.gov is the OECI subscriber login and has no free registration path. The free public search is the separate OJD Online Records Search at webportal.courts.oregon.gov/portal/. A third address on the publicaccess domain serves the circuit and tax court hearing calendars, which is a different tool again.
The OJCIN fee schedule effective 1 September 2025 sets a non-refundable setup fee of $170.00, monthly minimums from $29.00 at the lowest access level, $17.00 per additional user profile and $75.00 to reactivate a lapsed account. Document access is not included in a general subscription: under CJO 2025-025 it is a further $81.00 per month and requires approval, and it is scoped to designated government users, Oregon State Bar members and subscribers with a specific statutory need. Documents are only available from each court's own eCourt implementation date, which ran from December 2012 to July 2016.
Filing fees are statewide, not county-specific. The petition to appoint a personal representative is tiered by estate value under ORS 21.170(1): $278 below $50,000, $591 from $50,000 to $999,999, $882 from $1 million to $9,999,999, and $1,176 at $10 million or more. A simple estate affidavit costs $124. The $281 figure often quoted is the generic fee for any other appearance in a probate proceeding, not the petition fee.
Multnomah closes 55.4% of estate administration cases within 360 days, against 63.3% statewide and a 75% goal, and 18.1% of its estates are still open after two years compared with 13.4% across Oregon. The statutory floor is the four-month creditor claim period under ORS 115.005, which runs from the date of publication of notice to interested persons.
Usually yes. ORS 114.325 gives a personal representative power to sell, mortgage, lease or otherwise deal with estate property without notice, hearing or court order, subject to the bond requirement in ORS 113.105. The exceptions are a sale that contravenes the will, or property that is specifically devised where the will does not authorise its sale. Guidance saying the court must first grant authority to sell states the rule backwards.
