Michigan files every decedent estate in the probate court of the county where the person was domiciled at death. There are 83 counties, no statewide probate database, and no single search box.
Jonathan Khorsandi on Jul 31, 2026
Michigan files every decedent estate in the probate court of the county where the person was domiciled at death. There are 83 counties, no statewide probate database, and no single search box. A few low-population counties share a probate court district under MCL 600.807, so there are slightly fewer courts than counties, but the practical unit is still the county.
The three Metro Detroit counties that carry most of the state's estate volume run three unrelated systems. Wayne has a name-searchable docket portal. Oakland requires a case number and routes name searches to a separate statewide tool. Macomb has a party-name index that covers probate directly.
That split is why most agents work one county and guess at the other two. It is also why the reader who learns all three finds estate property before it reaches the MLS.
Yes. Decedent estate files are public records held by the county probate court, and anyone can inspect them without being an heir, a beneficiary or an attorney. Wayne publishes a public Case Access portal, Macomb publishes a public party-name index, and Oakland County Probate Court states plainly that its name search carries no fee.
What is public includes the petition to open the estate, the will where one exists, the Letters of Authority naming the personal representative, the inventory, the accountings and the closing documents. The inventory is the one that matters most here, because it lists the real property with values.
Three limits are worth knowing before you plan around online access.
Some case types are excluded. Oakland's Court Explorer states that Personal Protection Orders, juvenile matters and probate mental health records are not available through it. Standard estate administration is not excluded.
Public does not mean readable on screen. Oakland's Probate Access page says outright that it is not possible to view or order documents from that site. Wayne's records are entirely electronic and released after payment. Documents are ordered, not browsed.
Oakland's terms prohibit commercial use. Court Explorer carries the notice that "Data obtained on this site is for personal information/use only. Bulk data downloads and commercial use of data from this site are prohibited." If you are prospecting Oakland County, that restriction applies to you. Read the terms on the page before you build a list from it, and treat Court Explorer as a tool for checking a case you already know about rather than a source you harvest.
In the county where the deceased was domiciled at death, not where they died and not where the property sits. Venue is set by MCL 700.3201. Someone who lived in Wayne County and died in a Washtenaw County hospital has the estate opened in Wayne. The same section governs venue for a non-resident decedent who owned Michigan real property.
Michigan uses the term personal representative, not executor. The terminology runs throughout the Estates and Protected Individuals Code, and the appointment document is SCAO form PC 572, Letters of Authority for Personal Representative. If a Michigan docket says "executor", it is loose language, not a different office.
Testate, meaning a will exists, produces a petition to probate the will and a named personal representative. Direction is usually settled from the start.
Intestate, meaning no valid will, produces a petition for letters of administration and a court-appointed personal representative. These are frequently the more productive filings, because several heirs who never planned for the situation now jointly own a house none of them lives in.
County by county, using whichever system that court runs. Michigan's statewide tool, MiCOURT Case Search, is a free name-based lookup covering participating courts, and Oakland County Probate Court sends its own users there for name searches. It returns case-level information, not documents.
The three counties below are the ones ProbateData covers.
Michigan's most populous county, covering Detroit, Dearborn, Livonia, Westland, Taylor and Canton. Highest filing volume in the state.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Court | Wayne County Probate Court |
| Address | 1305 Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, Two Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI 48226 |
| Phone | (313) 224-5706 counter and case initiation; (313) 967-4041 Records Department |
| [email protected] (counter), [email protected] (records) | |
| Online search | Case Access portal, described by the court as the full electronic docket for all civil case types |
| Hours | Filing 8:00am to 4:00pm. Customer service 8:00am to 12:30pm and 1:30pm to 4:00pm |
| Copies | $2.00 per page plain; $10.00 plus $1.00 certification per page certified; Letters of Authority $12.00 |
Note the address detail. The court is inside the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, and the Records Department is Room 1307. Note the lunch closure as well: customer service shuts from 12:30pm to 1:30pm, so a 12:45pm arrival is a wasted trip.
Wayne states that all of its official records are electronic. Copy requests go in on form WCPC81, staff calculate the fee, and copies are issued electronically, normally by email, only after payment is received. There is no same-day counter copy to plan around. Mail requests go to Wayne County Probate Court, Attn: Records Dept., Room 1307, Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, 2 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48226.
North of Wayne, covering Southfield, Troy, Royal Oak, Pontiac, Farmington Hills, Auburn Hills and Rochester Hills. Higher-value residential stock than the other two.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Court | Oakland County Probate Court |
| Address | 1200 N Telegraph Rd, Dept 457, Pontiac, MI 48341 |
| Phone | 248-858-0260 main; 248-858-0282 Register; 248-858-0582 Clerk Legal Records |
| [email protected] for record copies | |
| Name search | Probate Access routes to MiCOURT, free |
| Case-number search | Court Explorer, probate is case number only |
| Hours | Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm |
| Copies | $1.00 per page; certified $10.00 per case number plus $1.00 per page; online orders add 3.5% card or $2.50 ACH |
Oakland is a two-step county and there is no way around it. Court Explorer's own search interface offers Business Name, Person's Name and Case Number for Circuit Court, but Case Number only for Probate Court. So you run the name in MiCOURT first, take the case number, then open Court Explorer.
Be clear about what Court Explorer then gives you: the register of actions, the parties and attorneys, and the ability to purchase documents for mail or email delivery. Nothing is readable free on screen. Its public records run back to the early 1990s. Oakland also moved to mandatory e-filing through MiFILE on 12 June 2025, with narrow exceptions, which is where new documents now originate.
And to repeat the point above, because it changes what you may do with the output: Court Explorer prohibits bulk data downloads and commercial use of its data.
The northeastern corner of the tri-county area, covering Warren, Sterling Heights, Roseville, Clinton Township, St. Clair Shores and Eastpointe. A large base of long-tenure homeowners.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Court | Macomb County Probate Court |
| Address | 40 N Main St., 5th Floor, Mt. Clemens, MI 48043 |
| Phone | 586-469-5290 |
| Online search | CourtView, party-name index covering estate, trust and guardianship cases |
| Records requests | Requesting Probate Court Records |
| Hours | Monday to Friday, 8:00am to 12:00pm and 1:00pm to 4:30pm |
| Copies | $1.00 per page; certified $12.00 first page plus $1.00 each additional; certified Letters of Authority $12.00 |
Macomb is the most straightforward of the three for name-based research. CourtView draws on the records of both the 16th Judicial Circuit Court and the Probate Court and permits searching the party name index for estate, trust and guardianship cases.
Its records process is also the only one of the three with a published turnaround. A request must carry the case number, the "In matter of:" name and your contact details including phone and email; court staff process requests within 48 hours; and fees are paid before records are sent. Macomb closes for lunch from 12:00pm to 1:00pm.
| County | Search system | Name search online | Documents online |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wayne | Case Access at public.wcpc.us/eservices | Yes | No, ordered on form WCPC81 and delivered after payment |
| Oakland | MiCOURT for names, Court Explorer for case numbers | Yes, via MiCOURT | No, purchased for mail or email delivery |
| Macomb | CourtView at courtpa.macombgov.org | Yes | No, requested from the court, 48-hour processing |
| Other Michigan counties | MiCOURT, where the court participates | Usually | No |
All three counties are desk-researchable for identifying cases. None of the three lets you read the inventory on screen without paying. Plan the workflow around free identification and paid retrieval, and only pay on the cases that clear your criteria.
Two separate costs, and the second is the one people miss.
Copy fees are set by each court. Wayne charges $2.00 per page for plain copies, twice what Oakland and Macomb charge at $1.00. Certified copies run $10.00 plus $1.00 per page in Wayne and Oakland, and $12.00 for the first page plus $1.00 for each additional page in Macomb. Certified Letters of Authority are $12.00 in both Wayne and Macomb. Oakland's online document orders add a 3.5% card service fee or a $2.50 ACH fee. The SCAO publishes the statewide reference in its Probate Court Fee Tables.
The inventory fee is Michigan's signature probate cost, and it is a percentage of the estate. Opening a decedent estate costs $175.00 plus an inventory fee under MCL 600.871, calculated on the gross value of the estate's assets.
| Estate value | Inventory fee |
|---|---|
| Less than $1,000 | $5.00 plus 1% of the amount over $500.00 |
| $1,000 to under $3,000 | $25.00 |
| $3,000 to under $10,000 | $25.00 plus 5/8 of 1% of the amount over $3,000.00 |
| $10,000 to under $25,000 | $68.75 plus 1/2 of 1% of the amount over $10,000.00 |
| $25,000 to under $50,000 | $143.75 plus 3/8 of 1% of the amount over $25,000.00 |
| $50,000 to under $100,000 | $237.50 plus 1/4 of 1% of the amount over $50,000.00 |
| $100,000 to under $500,000 | $362.50 plus 1/8 of 1% of the amount over $100,000.00 |
| $500,000 and above | The schedule continues in $100,000 increments. Check the SCAO fee tables or MCL 600.871 for the exact figure |
The detail that matters in a conversation with a personal representative: the fee is charged on gross value, with no deduction for the mortgage. An estate whose only asset is a $300,000 house with $250,000 still owed pays on $300,000, which works out at roughly $612.50. The estate has almost no equity and still owes the court a four-figure sum against filing and inventory fees combined. That is a real cash-flow pressure point, and it is one of the reasons estate property sells rather than sits.
Michigan sets no maximum completion deadline, but it sets a floor and two interim deadlines, and those are what keep generating public filings on estates that stall.
| Stage | Statutory position |
|---|---|
| Inventory | Within 91 days of the date the Letters of Authority are issued, MCL 700.3706(1) and MCR 5.307 |
| Creditor notice | Claims presented within 4 months of first publication, MCL 700.3801(1) |
| Claim bar | Claims not presented in that window are barred, MCL 700.3803(1)(a) |
| Earliest close | No earlier than 5 months after the personal representative's original appointment, MCL 700.3954(1) |
The binding constraint on closing is the 5-month mark, not the 4-month creditor window. Publication follows appointment, so the two run on different clocks and the longer one governs.
Straightforward estates commonly run 5 to 12 months from appointment to distribution, and contested estates run one to three years or longer. Those ranges are practitioner observation rather than statute; Michigan law fixes only the 5-month floor.
Under MCL 700.3706(2) the personal representative must send the inventory to presumptive distributees and may file the original with the court. It reliably reaches the file anyway, because MCR 5.307 and the inventory-fee computation duty require the valuation information to go in. The SCAO inventory form is PC 577.
This distinction decides whether the personal representative can actually sign a deal, and it is invisible unless you look for it.
In unsupervised administration, MCL 700.3715(y) lets the personal representative sell, mortgage or lease estate property without a court order, unless the will or a formal-proceeding order restricts them.
In supervised administration, ordered under MCL 700.3502, the personal representative holds the ordinary powers but MCL 700.3504 bars distribution without a prior court order, and any further restriction the court imposes must be endorsed on the letters of appointment.
The practical instruction: read the Letters of Authority before you write an offer. Restrictions are printed on the letters themselves. A deal negotiated with a restricted supervised personal representative does not close without going back to the court, and that adds weeks you did not budget for.
The filing tells you an estate exists. Five more steps tell you whether it is worth your time.
1. Search the county of domicile, not the property county. An estate filed in Macomb can hold a house in Wayne. Start where the person lived, then follow the assets.
2. Confirm real property is actually in the estate. The inventory is the document that names properties and assigns values. Property held in a trust generally bypasses probate and never appears in the court file, so an estate with no real property in the inventory is not a lead regardless of how the petition reads.
3. Read the Letters of Authority. Confirm who holds authority and whether the administration is supervised or restricted. This is the step that separates a signable deal from a court-order problem.
4. Check the case is still open. A closed estate has already distributed. On Wayne's Case Access and Macomb's CourtView you can see this from the docket without ordering anything.
5. Identify the attorney of record where one is named. On larger Oakland and Wayne estates there usually is one, and the attorney is often the better first contact. Probate attorneys carry several clients who need to sell and refer the professionals they trust.
Timing follows the statute. The inventory lands by day 91, the creditor window closes four months after first publication, and nothing can close before month five. The stretch between the inventory filing and the end of the creditor period is when the personal representative knows what is in the estate, knows what the inventory fee cost, and has started thinking about the house. A personal representative who says no in month two is a different conversation in month seven, so run a 90-day follow-up cadence rather than a single pass.
Be honest with yourself about the manual load. Three counties, three systems, a name lookup in MiCOURT before Oakland will answer, paid document retrieval in all three, and Oakland's own terms telling you not to build a commercial list from its data.
Three: Wayne, Oakland and Macomb. Together they are the Metro Detroit tri-county market and 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.
You can see the full coverage list at probatedata.com/counties, or start a 7-day trial for $1 and search the Michigan counties directly.
For the wider method across every state, see the national guide to finding probate records by county.
Yes. Decedent estate files are public records held by the county probate court, and anyone can inspect them without being an heir or an attorney. Some case types are excluded from public search: Oakland County's Court Explorer states that Personal Protection Orders, juvenile matters and probate mental health records are not available through it. Public also does not mean readable on screen, since all three Metro Detroit counties release documents only on a paid request.
County by county. Michigan has no statewide probate database. Wayne County estate cases are searchable on the Case Access portal at public.wcpc.us/eservices, and Macomb County estate, trust and guardianship cases are searchable by party name on CourtView at courtpa.macombgov.org. Oakland County's Court Explorer accepts only a case number for probate, so Oakland Probate Court directs users to MiCOURT Case Search for a free name-based lookup first.
No. Court Explorer's own notice states that data obtained on the site is for personal information and use only, and that bulk data downloads and commercial use of data from the site are prohibited. If you are prospecting Oakland County, read the terms on the page before building any list from it. The site is appropriate for checking a case you already know about, not for harvesting.
A decedent estate filing costs $175.00 plus an inventory fee. The inventory fee is set by MCL 600.871 as a percentage of the gross value of the estate's assets, running from $5.00 on the smallest estates to $362.50 plus one eighth of one percent of the amount over $100,000 in the $100,000 to $500,000 bracket. The fee is charged on gross value with no deduction for a mortgage, so an estate holding a $300,000 house with $250,000 still owed pays on the full $300,000, roughly $612.50.
Michigan sets no maximum, but it sets a floor. Under MCL 700.3954 a personal representative cannot close by sworn statement earlier than 5 months after the original appointment. The inventory is due within 91 days of the Letters of Authority under MCL 700.3706 and MCR 5.307, and creditors have 4 months from first publication to present claims under MCL 700.3801. Straightforward estates commonly run 5 to 12 months in practice, and contested estates run one to three years or longer.
In unsupervised administration, MCL 700.3715 allows the personal representative to sell, mortgage or lease estate property without a court order, unless the will or a formal-proceeding order restricts them. In supervised administration, ordered under MCL 700.3502, the personal representative cannot make a distribution without a prior court order under MCL 700.3504, and any further restriction must be endorsed on the letters of appointment. Read the Letters of Authority before writing an offer, because the restrictions are printed there.
All official records of the Wayne County Probate Court are electronic. Submit copy request form WCPC81 to the Records Department, and court staff calculate the fee and notify you of the amount due before releasing anything. Copies are issued electronically, normally by email, after payment is received. Plain copies are $2.00 per page, certified copies are $10.00 plus a $1.00 certification fee per page, and a certified copy of Letters of Authority is $12.00.
Personal representative. The Estates and Protected Individuals Code uses that term throughout, and the appointment document is SCAO form PC 572, Letters of Authority for Personal Representative. The role is the same as an executor elsewhere: the person appointed by the probate court to administer the estate, pay debts and distribute assets. On estate property, the personal representative is the correct contact, subject to any restriction endorsed on the letters.
