Kansas has 105 counties, 31 judicial districts, and no standalone probate courts. Estate administration runs through the district court in the county where the deceased lived at death, however there is a statewide search tool.
Jonathan Khorsandi on Jul 09, 2026
Kansas has 105 counties, 31 judicial districts, and no standalone probate courts. Estate administration runs through the district court in the county where the deceased lived at death, under Chapter 59 of the Kansas Statutes Annotated, and every one of those 105 courts feeds a single statewide search tool.
That last part is unusual. Most states in this library are fragmented county by county. Kansas is not. Since November 2025 the judicial branch has run CaseSearch, which searches all 105 counties, filters by county, case type and filing-date range, and serves documents online for any case filed after that court joined the state case management system.
For agents working Johnson County in the Kansas City metro and Sedgwick County around Wichita, that means the research bottleneck is no longer courthouse access. It is knowing which filings matter and following up on them for the six to twelve months an estate stays open.
Yes. Probate filings are public records under the Kansas Open Records Act, held by the district court in the county of filing, and open to anyone. You do not need to be an heir, an attorney, or a party to the case.
What is public includes the petition for probate or administration, the letters testamentary or letters of administration naming the personal representative, the inventory and valuation, the docket history, and the final accounting.
One correction worth making, because it is widely repeated and wrong: CaseSearch requires no registration for public case searching. The site states that basic case details are available to all guests. Sign-in through ID.me exists, but it is limited to attorneys and justice-system partners under Supreme Court Rule 25 and Administrative Order 2025-RL-139. A real estate investor cannot register for elevated access, and does not need to.
The Kansas Judicial Branch lists the record categories that are genuinely not available: adoption records, certain criminal investigation records, expunged criminal records, many child-in-need-of-care and juvenile records, grand jury proceedings, and personal information about public employees. Guardianship, conservatorship and domestic cases are not on that list. Individual documents inside any case can still be restricted by Supreme Court Rule 22 or sealed by order, but the case types themselves are searchable.
In the district court of the county where the deceased was domiciled at death, not where they died and not where the property sits.
There is no separate probate bench. K.S.A. 59-104 opens with the phrase "no case shall be filed or docketed in the district court under the provisions of chapter 59," which is the whole structure in one line: Chapter 59 matters are district court matters. Johnson County sits in the 10th Judicial District with its county seat at Olathe. Sedgwick County sits in the 18th Judicial District, seated in Wichita.
Testate, meaning a valid will exists, produces a petition to probate the will, a named executor, and letters testamentary. Direction is usually set from the first filing.
Intestate, meaning no will, produces 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.
Not every death produces a filing. Living trusts, joint tenancy with right of survivorship, transfer-on-death deeds and beneficiary-designated accounts all pass outside probate. Kansas also allows a small-estate affidavit under K.S.A. 59-1507b where probate assets total $75,000 or less, raised from $50,000 in 2023. A blank search result means the assets moved another way, not that no estate exists.
Through CaseSearch, the Kansas district court case search, which covers all 105 counties from one form.
The article you may have read elsewhere, including an earlier version of this one, described a tool called the Kansas District Court Public Access Portal. On 25 November 2025 the judicial branch announced that CaseSearch would replace it, with both running in parallel for about a week. A few kscourts.gov pages still use the old name as a link label, but the link points at casesearch.kscourts.gov. The judicial branch's explainer page, Search District Court Records, explains how the tool works but is not itself the search.
What the search form actually gives you:
| Field | Available |
|---|---|
| Party or business name | Yes |
| Case number | Yes |
| County | Yes, dropdown covering all 105 |
| Case type | Yes, including "Probate or Mental Health" |
| File date from and to | Yes |
| Date of birth | Yes |
| Asset type or property held | No |
County, filing-date range and a probate case-type filter all exist. That is enough to pull a cohort rather than chase a single name, which is the difference between a lookup tool and a working prospecting list. What you cannot do is filter by whether the estate holds real property, so asset screening still happens after the search.
This is the point where the old courthouse-visit advice breaks down. The judicial branch states that records, meaning the filed documents themselves, are available through CaseSearch for any court operating on the Kansas eCourt case management system, and the launch release describes CaseSearch as serving case information "and documents" online.
The go-live dates decide what you can read from a desk:
| County | eCourt go-live | Documents online for cases filed after |
|---|---|---|
| Sedgwick | 7 August 2023 | 7 August 2023 |
| Johnson | 5 November 2024 | 5 November 2024 |
Johnson County was the last court in Kansas to migrate. In practice that covers essentially every currently active estate, which is the only cohort that matters for prospecting. Anything filed before those dates, and anything restricted by statute, rule or seal, still requires a records request or a courthouse visit.
The most affluent county in Kansas, with a 2025 population of 636,906 per the US Census Bureau, and one of the fastest-growing suburban markets in the Midwest.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Court | Johnson County District Court, 10th Judicial District |
| Address | 150 W. Santa Fe St., Olathe, KS 66061 |
| Clerk of the District Court | 913-715-3500, fax 913-715-3401, per the judicial branch directory |
| General courthouse line | 913-715-3300, per jocogov.org. Confirm which line routes to probate before relying on either |
| Online case search | CaseSearch, documents for cases filed after 5 Nov 2024 |
| Records request | Johnson County records request form |
| Courthouse hours | Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., per jocogov.org |
The two official phone numbers disagree, and both are correct for their own office. The judicial branch publishes 913-715-3500 for the Clerk of the District Court, which is the office a records request reaches. Johnson County publishes 913-715-3300 as the courthouse line. Call and confirm before building a workflow around either.
On market context, the Johnson County Appraiser's Office reported that homes appraised above $1.1 million rose more than 21% in a single year, from 5,642 in 2024 to 6,832 in 2025. Those are appraised values set by the county, not asking or sale prices. A commercial MLS report puts the median home sale price at $505,500 in July 2026.
Wichita and its surrounds. Lower prices than Johnson County and higher transaction volume, which makes it the better county of the two for building repeatable weekly volume.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Court | Sedgwick County District Court, 18th Judicial District |
| Address | 525 N. Main St., Wichita, KS 67203 |
| Records Department | 6th floor, (316) 660-5900, fax (316) 941-5358 |
| Clerk of the District Court | (316) 660-5801, per the judicial branch directory |
| [email protected] | |
| Records hours | Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed weekends and federal holidays |
| Online case search | CaseSearch, documents for cases filed after 7 Aug 2023 |
| Records page | dc18.org/records |
Sedgwick requires records requests in writing, one form per case number. The court gives an estimate first and takes payment before filling the request. Requests go by email, by mail to the Clerk of the District Court, Records Department, 525 N. Main, Wichita KS 67203, in person on the 6th floor, or into the black drop box on Main St. in front of the courthouse near the crosswalk.
Sedgwick County separately runs a Subscriber Access Network, flat-fee remote view-only access to county public records. That is a property and assessment tool, not court probate records, but it cross-references usefully against estate filings.
| County | Case search | Documents online | Records request route |
|---|---|---|---|
| Johnson | CaseSearch, no registration | Cases filed after 5 Nov 2024 | Online form at courts.jocogov.org |
| Sedgwick | CaseSearch, no registration | Cases filed after 7 Aug 2023 | Written request, email or mail, $30 retrieval fee |
Both counties are desk-workable for current filings. Neither requires a courthouse trip for an estate opened in the last two years.
K.S.A. 59-104(a)(1) sets the docket fee for probate of an estate or of a will at $109.50. The same statute sets the simplified routes lower:
| Filing | Docket fee |
|---|---|
| Probate of an estate or of a will | $109.50 |
| Determination of descent of property | $49.50 |
| Refusal to grant letters of administration | $48.50 |
| Termination of joint tenancy | $48.50 |
| Filing a will and affidavit under K.S.A. 59-618a | $48.50 |
The docket fee is uniform statewide, and 59-104(a)(2) says it is the only fee collected and may be set only by the legislature. That does not make it the total cost. 59-104(d) expressly allows the court to tax additional costs, including publication of legal notice, service, appraiser fees, and executor and attorney fees. Publication rates are set by the newspaper of general circulation used for the notice, not by any statewide schedule, so ask the court rather than budgeting from a national average.
For copies, the judicial administrator's statewide fee schedule is:
District courts may set fees higher or lower. Sedgwick County matches the $0.25 and $10.00 figures and adds a $30.00 per case file document retrieval fee, which is the single largest cost anyone pulling files in volume will hit. Johnson County does not publish a fee schedule at any URL we could reach, so confirm with the clerk before ordering a batch.
The practical implication: at $30 a file in Sedgwick, speculative pulling is expensive. Read what CaseSearch serves for free first, then order only on cases that already look like they hold real property.
Two statutory dates govern the timeline, and both are worth knowing before you plan outreach.
| Deadline | Statutory position |
|---|---|
| Petition for probate or administration must be filed | Within six months of death, K.S.A. 59-2239 |
| Publication notice to creditors | Demands exhibited within four months of first publication, K.S.A. 59-2236 |
| Claims by a known creditor given actual notice | Later of the four-month window or 30 days after actual notice, K.S.A. 59-2239 |
| Completion of administration | No statutory deadline |
The six-month rule is the one that shapes prospecting. Creditor claims are barred entirely unless a petition is filed within six months of death, which means families that intend to open probate at all generally do so inside that window. If nothing is on the docket six months after a death, the assets almost certainly moved outside probate.
The four-month creditor period is the other fixed point. It runs from first publication, and until it closes the personal representative usually cannot distribute or clear a sale cleanly. That is the window in which an approach is early enough to matter and late enough to be welcome.
ProbateData's own guidance, based on how these files move rather than on any statute, is that a straightforward Kansas estate runs six to twelve months from filing to distribution, and contested estates run longer. The judicial branch publishes no completion statistic, so treat that as a working assumption rather than a fact.
The filing tells you an estate exists. Four more steps tell you whether it is worth your time.
1. Search by county and date range, not by name. Set the county dropdown, set the case type to Probate or Mental Health, and set a file-date range covering the last 30 days. That gives you a cohort of new filings rather than a single case, which is the whole point of a statewide search that filters.
2. Open the documents, not just the docket. For anything filed after November 2024 in Johnson or August 2023 in Sedgwick, the filed documents are online. The inventory and valuation is the one that itemizes assets and usually carries the property address. On an older case, or a document restricted under Rule 22, fall back to a records request.
3. Cross-reference the county appraiser. The Johnson County and Sedgwick County appraiser databases are both free and both list the most recent owner of record. Match the decedent's name and last known address to find the parcel and its appraised value. Sedgwick's Subscriber Access Network is the paid route if you are doing this at volume.
4. Identify who can actually sign. Only the personal representative named in the letters has authority to sell. The letters are in the file. Where an attorney of record is named, that attorney is usually the better first contact, because probate attorneys carry several clients who need to sell and refer the professionals they trust.
Follow-up decides the outcome. A personal representative in month two is still inside the four-month creditor window and cannot close anyway. The same person in month six has a clear title path and a distribution to make. A 90-day cadence across both counties separates the agents who close probate deals from the ones who collect lists.
Two: Johnson and Sedgwick. Between them they cover the Kansas City metro's Kansas side and the Wichita market, which is the bulk of the state's estate volume.
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.
Kansas is genuinely easier to work manually than most states in this library, and this guide is enough to do it. What it does not solve is the weekly repetition: running the date-range search in two counties, opening documents case by case, matching parcels in two appraiser databases, then skip tracing whoever is named. That is a few hours a week, every week, before a single conversation happens.
You can see the full coverage list at probatedata.com/counties, or start a 7-day trial for $1 and search Johnson and Sedgwick directly.
For the wider method across every state, see the national guide to finding probate records by county.
Yes. Probate filings are public records under the Kansas Open Records Act, held by the district court in the county of filing, and open to anyone without being an heir, an attorney, or a party to the case. The Kansas Judicial Branch lists adoption records, expunged criminal records, most juvenile and child-in-need-of-care records and grand jury proceedings as unavailable. Guardianship, conservatorship and domestic cases are not on that closed list, though individual documents in any case can be restricted under Supreme Court Rule 22 or sealed by order.
Use CaseSearch at casesearch.kscourts.gov, the Kansas district court case search, which covers all 105 counties from one form. No registration is required, and you can filter by county, by a Probate or Mental Health case type, and by a filing-date range. Filed documents are available online for cases filed after each court joined the Kansas eCourt system.
No. CaseSearch states that basic case details are available to all guests. Sign-in through ID.me exists for elevated access, but it is limited to attorneys and justice-system partners under Supreme Court Rule 25 and Administrative Order 2025-RL-139, so a member of the public cannot register for it and does not need to.
It was replaced. On 25 November 2025 the Kansas Judicial Branch announced that CaseSearch at casesearch.kscourts.gov would replace the Public Access Portal, with both running in parallel for about a week. A few judicial branch pages still use the old name as a link label, but the link points at CaseSearch.
For recent cases, yes. Documents filed in a case are available through CaseSearch only after that court began operating on the Kansas eCourt case management system. Sedgwick County went live on 7 August 2023 and Johnson County on 5 November 2024, which covers essentially every currently active estate. Older cases and documents restricted by statute, rule or seal still require a records request or a courthouse visit.
The docket fee for probate of an estate or of a will is $109.50 under K.S.A. 59-104. Simplified routes cost less: determination of descent is $49.50, and refusal to grant letters of administration, termination of joint tenancy, and filing a will with an affidavit under K.S.A. 59-618a are each $48.50. The docket fee is uniform statewide, but the court may tax additional costs including publication, service, appraiser fees, and executor and attorney fees.
The judicial administrator's statewide schedule sets plain copies at $0.25 per page and certified documents at $10.00 per document, not per page. Mailing is $0.50 for the first five pages, and document preparation is $20 per hour clerical or $60 per hour professional. District courts may set fees higher or lower, and Sedgwick County adds a $30.00 per case file document retrieval fee.
Kansas sets no deadline for completing an administration, but two statutory dates govern the timeline. A petition for probate or administration must be filed within six months of death under K.S.A. 59-2239, or creditor claims are barred entirely. Creditors then have four months from first publication of notice to exhibit demands under K.S.A. 59-2236, or 30 days after actual notice if that is later. A straightforward estate commonly runs six to twelve months from filing to distribution, though the judicial branch publishes no completion statistic.
