Probate is the court supervised process of settling an estate after someone dies. In Virginia it runs through the circuit court in the city or county where the person lived, and it lands on whoever qualifies as executor or administrator, usually a family member who has never done it before and is doing it while grieving.
The job has a shape to it: qualify at the courthouse, notify the people entitled to notice, inventory what the person owned, pay valid debts and taxes in the right order, account to the Commissioner of Accounts, and distribute what is left. Each step has a deadline, and missing one creates work rather than disaster if it is caught early.
Not everything goes through probate. Property held jointly, accounts with named beneficiaries, and assets already in a trust generally pass outside it, which is why two estates of the same size can take very different amounts of work.
The articles below cover qualifying, the filing deadlines, what probate costs in Virginia, how long it takes, and when a small estate procedure lets a family skip most of it. If you have been named executor and want help, our probate and estate administration services page explains how we work with families.
