Build a Tampa probate list from Hillsborough County records

What you’ll make

A spreadsheet of new estate cases filed in Hillsborough County, one row per case, with the person who died, the petitioner, the attorneys and, where the address allows it, the property at that address. You can build it by hand from free public files, or with our actor on Apify. Both start from the same source: the Hillsborough County Clerk of Court’s daily probate files.

Behind each case is a family that has lost someone, often in the last few months. Not every probate case means an estate is being settled or that a house will be sold. Treat the list as public records to research, and read Before you write to anyone before you use it.

1. Download the Clerk’s daily files

The Clerk publishes one file of new probate filings for each day on the Clerk’s daily probate files page. No account is needed. Files are named by date, such as ProbateFiling_20261027.csv, and each one is a CSV you can open in a spreadsheet app.

When we checked on 28 October 2026, the page listed the last 30 days of files, and most were posted shortly after midnight. A weekend or holiday file can hold only the header row. That is a real zero, not a missing file.

2. Turn party rows into cases

Each row in a file is a person on a case, not a case. One estate usually takes several rows: the decedent, each petitioner, and any beneficiaries, next of kin or trustees. Sort by CaseNumber and read the rows of one case together. PartyType says who each person is, and PartyAddress on the Decedent row is the address the Clerk has for the person who died.

The files also list guardianship, incapacity, risk protection, minor settlement and habeas corpus cases. Those concern living people, so leave them out. CaseTypeDescription names the estate cases: Formal Administration, Summary Administration (greater or less than $1000), Disposition w/o Administration, Ancillary Administration, Caveat, Wills on Deposit, Notice of Trust and Curatorship.

Compare FilingDate with the file’s date. A file can list a case filed a few days earlier, so a case can appear in a later file than you expect.

3. Look up each address with the property appraiser

The Clerk’s file has an address for most decedents but no parcel number. To find the property, search each decedent address on the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser’s property search. Search by street address without the unit number, then open the parcel that matches, and note the parcel ID, the owner of record, the owner’s mailing address and whether the property has a homestead exemption.

An address that matches a property does not prove the decedent owned it. The person may have rented, or lived in a relative’s home. Compare the owner’s name with the decedent’s name before you rely on the match.

Expect gaps. In the week of files we checked (21 to 27 October 2026), the Clerk listed no address for 50 of the 137 estate cases, and 48 of those 50 were wills on deposit. That still left 87 addresses to look up that week, and the lookups are most of the work.

If you are building the list by hand, it is done. Read Before you write to anyone next.

4. Or let our actor do steps 1 to 3

We built Florida Probate Leads: Hillsborough County (Tampa), an Apify actor that does that work for you. Final Dynamics makes and sells it; it is not affiliated with the Hillsborough County Clerk, the Property Appraiser, or the Florida Department of Revenue, which publishes the county tax roll the actor reads. It reads the same daily files, keeps the estate case types above, groups the party rows into one row per case, and compares each decedent address with every property on the county’s tax roll. Paste this into its JSON input.

{
  "lastDays": 7,
  "maxResults": 200
}

lastDays is how many days of the Clerk’s daily files to read, from 1 to 30, ending yesterday in Eastern time. maxResults caps the rows you pay for, and the newest filings come first. 200 covers a week like the one we checked (137 cases) and keeps this run to at most $0.61.

Two optional filters apply to matched properties. homesteadOnly keeps a property only when it has a homestead exemption, and minJustValue keeps it only when its just value (the property appraiser’s market value) is at least that many dollars. Cases with no single matched property are still returned, marked unverified in propertyFilterStatus, because the actor cannot tell whether their property would pass. The filters barely cut cost: on the week we checked, homesteadOnly with minJustValue 200000 still kept 115 of the 137 cases, 80 of them unverified, and every row is charged.

When this guide was written, the actor cost $0.01 per run plus $3 per 1,000 cases, charged for every case row, matched or not. The week of 21 to 27 October 2026 returned 137 cases, which would have cost $0.42. Check the actor page for current pricing and set a maximum charge before you start.

5. Export and check the match

When the run finishes, open its output dataset and inspect a few rows. Choose CSV or Excel from the export options. In Google Sheets, use File → Import → Upload. Keep case numbers, parcel IDs and ZIP codes as text.

matchStatus is matched when the decedent’s address is one property on the roll, ambiguous when it fits several (all of them are in parcelCandidates), and unmatched otherwise. The actor does not guess: a different unit number, a missing house number or a PO box is not a match. In the week we checked, 57 of the 137 cases matched one property. To work only with matches, filter on matchStatus in your spreadsheet.

Matched rows add the property’s details:

• parcelId: the county parcel ID.
• ownerName: the owner of record on the tax roll, who may not be the decedent.
• propertyAddress: the property’s street address, with propertyCity and propertyZip.
• ownerAddress1 to ownerZip: the owner’s mailing address on the roll.
• homestead: whether the owner claimed the property as their main home.
• justValue: the property appraiser’s market value, in dollars.
• lastSaleDate and lastSalePrice: the last sale on the roll, when it has one (8 of the 57 did).

Compare ownerName with decedentName: in that week, 17 of the 57 matched properties had an owner of record whose name shared no word with the decedent’s.

Every party is in parties, with the role the Clerk gave them, their address and their attorney. There are no phone numbers or email addresses. The tax roll is a snapshot, so it can show an owner who has since sold.

6. Get a new list every week

Save this input as an Apify task and add a weekly schedule, for example Mondays at 07:00 Eastern. Each run then reads the week of files since the last one.

{
  "lastDays": 7,
  "maxResults": 1000
}

For a daily list, use lastDays: 1 and a daily schedule; for any other schedule, use the number of days between runs. Schedule runs after 03:00 Eastern so yesterday’s file is posted. If a scheduled run stops, run it again the same day so the window doesn’t shift.

The actor does not remember earlier runs. If two runs read the same days, the second returns those cases again and charges for them again. Match on caseNumber when you add a run to an existing sheet.

Before you write to anyone

Read the case type first. Administrations (formal, summary and ancillary) are the cases where an estate is settled through the court. A disposition without administration releases a small estate’s assets without appointing a personal representative. A will on deposit is an original will filed with the Clerk after the death, and on its own it does not open an estate. A caveat asks the court to give notice before a will is admitted, and a notice of trust tells the court the person had a trust.

Check the dates too. A case can be filed long after the death: in the week we checked, the median gap was about five months, and 47 of the 136 cases with a date of death were filed more than a year after it.

The petitioner is often a relative handling an estate while grieving. If you are a lawyer, the Florida Bar’s advertising and solicitation rules apply to any letter you send. If you are not, those rules don’t cover you, and other rules may. Ask a Florida lawyer which ones apply before you start a mailing. Whoever you are, say plainly who you are and how you found the case, and don’t make a letter look like a court or government notice.

If a run stops or a case is missing

If yesterday’s file is not posted yet, the run stops and says so; run it again later in the morning. If a file in your window is missing, or the Clerk’s file has a case type or layout the actor does not recognize, the run stops before saving any rows and costs only the $0.01 start fee.

A case missing from your export may be outside the lastDays window, past your maxResults cap, one of the case types about living people that the actor leaves out (guardianship, incapacity and the others in step 2), or cut off by the maximum charge you set. Names and addresses appear as the Clerk and the property appraiser recorded them, typos included.