Arkansas has 75 counties and no separate probate court. Every county runs a Probate Division inside its circuit court, and the file is held either by the circuit clerk or by the county clerk.
Jonathan Khorsandi on May 13, 2026
Arkansas has 75 counties, and every one of them runs a Probate Division inside its circuit court. There is no separate probate court and no separate probate database. What varies is which clerk holds the file: in some counties the circuit clerk, in others the county clerk sitting as ex officio clerk of the probate division. Estates are filed in the county where the decedent was domiciled at death.
There is a single statewide case search, Search ARCourts, and it is free. It is also thinner than it looks. It searches by participant name or case number only, coverage depth varies by county, and document images are posted for some courts and some cases rather than all of them.
That gap between "a statewide portal exists" and "the statewide portal will find your estate" is where most agents give up. It is also why the ones who work Arkansas properly still combine the portal with the clerk's counter.
Yes. Probate filings in Arkansas are public records held by the clerk of the circuit court in the county of administration, and anyone can inspect them. You do not need to be an heir, an attorney, or a party.
A standard file contains the petition for probate and appointment, the original will where the decedent was testate, the Letters Testamentary or Letters of Administration naming the personal representative, the inventory of estate assets, creditor claims, court orders, and the final accounting and distribution order. The inventory is the document that matters most for property work, because it identifies parcels tied to the estate.
Two limits apply. Material that is not public under Arkansas Supreme Court Administrative Order 19 is not posted online and is not handed over at the counter without a court order. And public does not mean digitised: Search ARCourts links to documents for some public court records only, so a case that shows a docket online may still need a courthouse visit or a mailed request to read in full.
In the county where the decedent was domiciled at death. Venue is set by Ark. Code Ann. § 28-40-102, and estate administration generally runs under Title 28 of the Arkansas Code, with administration of decedents' estates in Subtitle 4.
Arkansas has no standalone probate court. The Probate Division is part of the circuit court. The clerking arrangement is the part that trips people up: Ark. Code Ann. § 21-6-403(h) defines "circuit court clerk" to include the circuit clerk and, for probate matters, any county clerk who serves as ex officio clerk of the probate division. Benton County works that way, with the County Clerk holding probate. Pulaski County has a combined Circuit and County Clerk, so one office holds both. Before you call, confirm which clerk holds probate in that county. The statewide circuit clerk directory is the authoritative contact list.
One geography check worth making. Rogers, Bella Vista, Centerton and Siloam Springs are Benton County. Fayetteville is the seat of Washington County, and Springdale straddles the line with most of its population in Washington County. They are the same Northwest Arkansas metro, and they file probate in a different clerk's office. Searching Benton County for a Fayetteville decedent returns nothing, and the empty result tells you nothing about whether the estate exists.
Testate estates, where a valid will exists, produce a petition to probate, a named executor, and Letters Testamentary. Direction is usually settled from the outset.
Intestate estates produce a petition for Letters of Administration and a court-appointed administrator. These are often the more productive filings, because several heirs who never planned for the situation now jointly own a house none of them lives in.
There is also a route that generates almost no record at all. Under Ark. Code Ann. § 28-41-101, where the value less encumbrances of all property owned at death does not exceed $100,000, excluding the homestead and statutory allowances, and 45 days have passed since death, heirs can use the Affidavit for Collection of Small Estate by Distributee, Official Probate Form 23. Those estates never open a full administration, so courthouse research will not surface them.
Start with Search ARCourts, the statewide public case search run by Arkansas Court Automation Programs. It replaced the retired Public CourtConnect platform, so if you have an old bookmark or an old guide referring to CourtConnect, that is the same system under its current name.
Four things to know before you rely on it:
The two counties below are the ones ProbateData covers.
Benton County anchors the Northwest Arkansas metro. Bentonville is the county seat and home to Walmart's global headquarters, and Rogers, Bella Vista and Centerton have carried sustained population and property value growth. Probate here is held by the County Clerk, not the Circuit Clerk.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Probate custodian | Benton County Clerk, clerk for the Probate Division of the Circuit Court |
| Address | 215 E. Central Ave., Room 217, Bentonville, AR 72712. A courthouse counter is also listed at 102 NE A Street, Room 206, Bentonville, AR 72712 |
| Phone | 479-271-1013 |
| Hours | Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., open through lunch |
| Online estate search | None county-run. Search ARCourts only |
| Circuit Clerk (non-probate) | 102 NE "A" Street, Room 201, 479-271-1015 |
| Historic records | County Clerk Archive, 2111 West Walnut St., Rogers, AR 72756, probate 1860 to 1980, archives line 479-271-1710 |
Benton County publishes no separate online probate index on either clerk's site. Your access paths are Search ARCourts, the Bentonville counter, and the Rogers archive for anything older than 1980. The County Clerk's office is listed at two addresses in official county sources; 215 E. Central Ave. is the primary office and Room 206 at 102 NE A Street is the courthouse location. Call ahead before making the trip.
Benton County does not publish a reachable fee schedule. The $165 filing figure below is drawn from Pulaski County's published schedule and the uniform statewide filing fee, so treat it as an estimate for Benton and confirm the current amount with the clerk.
Pulaski is the most populous county in Arkansas and home to Little Rock, the state capital, which makes it correspondingly the state's largest source of probate filings. One office, the Pulaski Circuit and County Clerk, holds both circuit and county records.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Probate custodian | Pulaski Circuit and County Clerk |
| Address | 401 W. Markham St., Suite 100, Little Rock, AR 72201 |
| Phone | (501) 340-8500. Central Receiving (501) 340-8412, Court Clerks (501) 340-8431 |
| Hours | Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. |
| Online estate search | Search ARCourts, by participant name or case number |
| Property cross-reference | pulaskideeds.com real estate index, run by the same clerk |
| Fees | Published fee schedule |
The clerk's department directory lists no probate desk. Filings route through Central Receiving or the Court Clerks, so use the main line rather than asking for a probate division.
The clerk's own deed index at pulaskideeds.com is the more useful of its two public search tools for this work, because it is the property side of the cross-reference. The county court order search on the same domain does not include probate.
| County | Probate custodian | Online case search | Online document images |
|---|---|---|---|
| Benton | County Clerk | Search ARCourts only, no county system | Varies by case, not guaranteed |
| Pulaski | Circuit and County Clerk | Search ARCourts only, no county system | Varies by case, not guaranteed |
Neither county runs its own probate portal. Both depend on the same statewide search, with the same name-only entry point and the same variable document coverage. In practice that means Arkansas probate research is a two-step job everywhere: find the docket online, then call or visit for the file.
Opening a probate estate costs $165 at the counter in Pulaski County. That figure is not one statute. The uniform circuit court filing fee is $150 under Ark. Code Ann. § 21-6-403(b)(1), and additional statutory fees under §§ 21-6-402, 21-6-413 and 21-6-416 bring the total the clerk collects to $165. The published Pulaski schedule dates from 2019, so confirm the current amount before filing.
Other fees the Pulaski clerk publishes:
| Item | Fee |
|---|---|
| Initiating any civil, domestic or probate cause of action | $165.00 |
| Small estates | $25.00 |
| Certified copies of all letters | $5.00 |
| Affidavit of claim against an estate | $5.00 |
| Subpoena or summons in a probate case | $5.00 |
| Will deposited for safekeeping | $5.00 |
| Reopening a cause of action | $50.00 |
| Guardianship accounting | $50.00 |
Two cautions on copies. The Pulaski schedule is expressly a partial list and posts no general per-page copy fee, so the $5.00 certified figure covers Letters specifically rather than any document. And the statutory copy scale under Ark. Code Ann. § 21-6-402 is not the $0.25 figure that circulates in secondhand guides: $0.25 is the indexing charge per page, while the transcript and copy scale starts at $2.50 per page for the first 1,000 pages and steps down for longer records, with $5.00 for a certificate and seal. Call the clerk for the per-page charge you will actually be quoted.
Search ARCourts itself is free.
The statutory deadlines are fixed and public. The total duration is not.
| Stage | Statutory position |
|---|---|
| Publish notice to creditors | Once a week for two consecutive weeks in a county newspaper, § 28-40-111 via § 28-1-112(b)(4) |
| Mail copies of the notice | Within one month of first publication, to each heir and devisee whose name and address are known and to all known unpaid creditors, § 28-40-111 |
| File inventory | Within two months of the personal representative's qualification, or as the court directs, § 28-49-110(a)(1) |
| Creditor claim period | Six months from the date of first publication, § 28-50-101(a)(1) |
| Outer bar, known creditors | Two years from first publication regardless of actual notice, § 28-50-101(h) |
| Outer bar, no administration | Five years after death where no administration was commenced or no notice published, § 28-50-101(d) |
Note the wording on the inventory: the clock runs from qualification, meaning acceptance and bond, not from the date of appointment. Those can be different dates.
Arkansas courts publish no official average duration for probate, and any tiered table you see quoting six to nine months for simple estates and two years for complex ones is a practitioner estimate rather than a court statistic. The one hard number is the six-month claim period, which sets a practical floor for most formal administrations, with closing time on top. ProbateData's own guidance to subscribers is to plan around roughly a year for a typical formal administration and to treat anything faster as the exception.
For outreach, the useful window sits between the petition and the inventory. That is when the personal representative is actively taking control of assets and a sale is a live question. Much later and the property may already be listed.
The docket tells you an estate exists. Four more steps tell you whether it is worth your time.
1. Confirm the county of domicile, not the property county. An estate filed in Benton can hold a house in Washington County, and a Fayetteville decedent files in Washington County even though the metro is shared. Search where the person lived, then follow the assets.
2. Get the file, not the docket entry. Search ARCourts may show you a case number, a filing date and a status without the documents behind them. The inventory is what identifies parcels and appraised values, and on many Arkansas cases you will need to request or read it at the clerk's counter. Check whether Letters have actually issued, because until they have, nobody has authority to sell.
3. Cross-reference the county property index. In Pulaski, the clerk's own deed index at pulaskideeds.com matches the decedent's name and last known address to the parcel. In Benton, that cross-reference runs through county property records rather than a clerk-run search. This is also how you catch estates where the inventory is thin or has not been filed yet.
4. Identify who can actually sign. The personal representative named in the Letters is the only person with authority to convey estate property. Where an attorney of record appears in the filing, they are usually the better first contact on larger estates, and probate attorneys carry several clients who need to sell.
Be realistic about what Arkansas records will not give you. There is no probate-only browse, no case-type filter and no address search, so every search cycle starts from a name you have to source somewhere else. Restricted filings under Administrative Order 19 stay offline. And small estates under $100,000 handled by affidavit generate almost no court record at all, which means a meaningful share of Arkansas estate property never appears in the index you are searching.
Follow-up is where most of this falls apart. An administration that runs a year is a year of changing circumstances, and a personal representative who says no in month two is a different conversation in month seven. A 90-day cadence across both counties separates the agents who close probate deals from the ones who collect lists.
Two: Benton and Pulaski. Between them they cover the Northwest Arkansas metro and Greater Little Rock, the state's two largest 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 most recent owner of record, 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.
Working the manual process across both counties means one statewide portal with no case-type filter, no county-run probate search in either jurisdiction, a clerk visit or mailed request for most complete files, property cross-referencing on every case, and skip tracing after that. The research is legitimate and it works. It is also most of a working week each month.
You can see the full coverage list at probatedata.com/counties, or start a 7-day trial for $1 and search the Arkansas counties directly.
For the wider method across every state, see the national guide to finding probate records by county.
Yes. Probate filings are public records held by the clerk of the circuit court in the county of administration, and anyone can inspect them without being an heir, an attorney or a party. The petition, the will, the Letters, the inventory, creditor claims and the final accounting are all open. Material that is not public under Arkansas Supreme Court Administrative Order 19 is the exception, and it is neither posted online nor released at the counter without a court order.
Start with Search ARCourts, the free statewide case search at caseinfo.arcourts.gov/opad, which replaced the retired Public CourtConnect platform. It requires no login and searches by participant name or case number only. Neither Benton nor Pulaski County runs its own probate portal, so the second step is always the clerk: the Benton County Clerk on 479-271-1013 or the Pulaski Circuit and County Clerk on (501) 340-8500.
It depends on the county. Ark. Code Ann. 21-6-403(h) defines the circuit court clerk to include the circuit clerk and, for probate matters, any county clerk who serves as ex officio clerk of the probate division. In Benton County the County Clerk holds probate. Pulaski County has a combined Circuit and County Clerk, so one office holds both. Check the statewide circuit clerk directory before calling.
No. Search ARCourts offers participant name and case number search only, with no address field and no case-type filter. To work backwards from a property you have to identify the decedent's name first, through county property records or obituaries, then search the index by name.
Arkansas courts publish no official average. The hard number is the six-month creditor claim period running from the date of first publication under Ark. Code Ann. 28-50-101(a)(1), which sets a practical floor for most formal administrations, with closing time on top. ProbateData's own guidance is to plan around roughly a year for a typical formal administration. Tiered estimates of six to nine months for simple estates are practitioner rules of thumb, not court statistics.
The Pulaski Circuit and County Clerk collects $165 to initiate any civil, domestic or probate cause of action. That is a total, not a single statutory fee: the uniform circuit court filing fee is $150 under Ark. Code Ann. 21-6-403(b)(1), and additional fees under sections 21-6-402, 21-6-413 and 21-6-416 make up the balance. The published schedule dates from 2019, and Benton County publishes no reachable schedule, so confirm the current amount with the clerk.
Under Ark. Code Ann. 28-41-101, heirs can use the Affidavit for Collection of Small Estate by Distributee where the value less encumbrances of all property owned at death does not exceed $100,000, excluding the homestead and statutory allowances, and 45 days have passed since death. The form is Official Probate Form 23. These estates never open a full administration, so they generate almost no court record.
No. Neither county publishes a county-run online probate index. Both rely on the statewide Search ARCourts, which posts document images for some courts and some cases rather than all. Benton County also holds historic probate records from 1860 to 1980 at the County Clerk Archive in Rogers, and the Pulaski clerk runs a separate real estate deed index at pulaskideeds.com that is useful for cross-referencing parcels but does not contain probate cases.
