Probates at court house

[Marques Johnson]

How does going to the actual court house (instead of just buying an online list) and getting probate leads work?

[Jerry Holt]

@Marques Johnson

If you are looking for probates in Clayton county you will need to go to the probate court. They may have the documents scanned and available on a computer terminal. If not, you will need to research the actual paper files. I would start with the most recent probate filings and work backwards in dates. 

In Georgia the document you are looking for is the "Petition to Probate". On this document you will find the executor and attorney mailing addresses. Many times you can also get the executor's phone number on the page where the executor signs the petition. The document will generally also list the address of the decedent when he/she passed. Keep in mind that not all probates have real property attached to them so you will need to run the address through the Clayton county assessor to make sure the decedent owned the property. On mine I also run my own current owner title search to make sure the property hasn't been recently sold. 

What I do to save a whole heap of time bring a camera with me and I take pictures of the documents. When I work Fulton or Gwinnett counties in Georgia I might take 500 pictures during the course of a day. Afterwards I sort them out, verify property ownership and then enter the probate data into a spreadsheet.

So, in a nutshell, that's the basics. Not an easy process, but with time and trial and error you'll get it figured out. Good luck!