Full probate in Oregon runs nine to eighteen months. A four-month creditor claim period sets the floor — and the small estate shortcut caps real property at $200,000.
If you’re asking how long probate takes in Oregon, the honest answer starts with what the law does and does not set.
Oregon sets no deadline for closing an estate, and the courts don’t publish average times. What the law sets is a floor. Creditors get four months from the date notice is published (ORS 115.005), and the final account needs at least 20 days’ notice before the objection date (ORS 116.093). Almost no full Oregon probate closes in under about five months.
Oregon probate attorneys generally describe six to twelve months as typical. Contested estates, tax problems, or real property that won’t sell push past eighteen.
And there’s a second thing most heirs find out too late — the shortcut everybody plans on using probably doesn’t apply to your house.
This decides which court sets your timeline, and most people assume there’s only one answer. There are four.
ORS 113.015 allows probate to be filed in the county where the person was living, in any county where they owned property, in the county where they died, or in a county where a related injury claim could be brought.
That second one matters if you’re an heir. If your mother lived in Coos Bay and owned a rental in Portland, the case does not automatically have to run through Coos County.
It matters because county court calendars are not the same speed. A high-volume county has more staff and more backlog. A small rural county has fewer cases but may have a judge on the bench part-time. The statute is identical everywhere in Oregon. The wait is not.
Here is the part you cannot engineer around.
Once the personal representative is appointed, they must publish a Notice to Interested Persons in a newspaper in the county where the probate is pending (ORS 113.155). Creditors then have four months from the date of that publication to present claims against the estate (ORS 115.005(2)(a)).
For creditors the personal representative has to notify directly in writing, the deadline is the later of two dates: four months from publication, or 45 days from the date that written notice was delivered or mailed (ORS 115.005(2)(b)). The notice itself has to say so — ORS 115.003 requires it to state that claims not presented within 45 days may be barred.
That’s your minimum. No attorney is fast enough to beat it.
So when someone tells you probate takes “a few months,” they’re describing the statutory floor and nothing else.
The four months is the part the law controls. The rest is people and paperwork:
Oregon has a simplified path — the simple estate affidavit, formerly called the small estate affidavit — governed by ORS 114.505 to 114.560. It skips full probate and is dramatically faster and cheaper.
Oregon is unusual in that it can include real property, not just bank accounts. That’s genuinely useful.
But ORS 114.510 caps it:
Read that second number again. A $200,000 cap on real property, in Oregon, in 2026.
Across the 72 Oregon cities we track market data for, the overwhelming majority have median home prices well above $200,000 — from Portland and Lake Oswego down the I-5 corridor to Medford, out to Bend, and across most of the coast.
Which means the simple affidavit — the fast, cheap route heirs are counting on — is off the table for most Oregon houses that still have equity in them. It still works for a modest home in a lower-priced market, or a house with enough debt against it that the equity stays under the line.
Everybody else gets full probate.
If someone told you “we’ll just do the simple estate thing,” check the number against what the house is actually worth before you plan around it.
This is the part that changes people’s situation, and the part nobody explains.
A house can be sold during an open probate. The personal representative, once appointed and holding authority, can market and sell estate real property. Depending on how that authority is granted the sale may need court confirmation — that’s a conversation for the estate’s attorney — but the idea that the house is frozen until the case closes is simply wrong.
Our full walkthrough of the process is here: how to sell an inherited property in Oregon.
That matters because the house doesn’t stop costing money while the court works. Mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities and upkeep keep running the whole time. On a typical Oregon house that’s $20,000 to $40,000 of carrying cost over a year, paid out of an estate that may not have the liquidity to cover it.
Standard homeowner’s policies contain a vacancy clause, and an inherited house sitting empty is exactly what it’s written for.
Under the common industry form, once a dwelling has been vacant for more than 60 consecutive days — some older forms say 30 — the policy stops covering vandalism and malicious mischief, glass breakage, and depending on the form water damage and theft, and pays 15 percent less on other covered losses.
The policy isn’t cancelled. But the coverage that matters most for an empty house is exactly what falls away.
One important distinction: policies treat vacant (empty of people and contents) differently from unoccupied (furnished, nobody living there), and the specific policy language controls. If you’re holding an empty property, call the carrier and get vacancy coverage in writing rather than assuming.
We buy inherited and probate properties across Oregon and can work around an open probate rather than waiting for it to close. We’ve handled estates where the heirs are in three different states and nobody has seen the house in years.
If the house needs work, that’s fine — we buy as-is, and an estate shouldn’t be spending its own money fixing a roof for somebody else’s inspection.
Oregon’s HB 4058 requires a registered residential property wholesaler to disclose in writing before you sign, and gives you three business days to cancel for any reason. I’m registered with the Oregon Real Estate Agency, #201264508, personally.
Dealing with an Oregon probate and not sure what the house is costing you? Call and ask for Gerren — (541) 250-3067. I’ll tell you what it’s worth as-is and what the monthly carry looks like, whether or not you sell to us.
Every legal claim above links to the statute it came from. Check them yourself:
General information about Oregon probate procedure, not legal advice. The six-to-twelve-month range reflects Oregon practitioner experience, not an official statistic — no Oregon court publishes average probate durations. Every estate is different. Talk to a probate attorney about yours.
