How the rules on this site are verified

Each state record has seven sourced fields — limit, waiting period, will rule, real-estate rule, form, statute, filing office — and one flag: whether the row was re-read on the official page on the review date. Rows that weren't are still built from the statute and the court's instructions, but they say so, in the data and on the page.

Sources, in order of preference

1. The statute (Estates Code, Probate Code, RCW, MCL, SCPA and so on) for the limit, wait and eligibility.
2. The court system's self-help page or official form instructions for the procedure and fee.
3. County clerk pages for the office, local fee and local form versions.
4. Legal-aid organizations (Texas Law Help, Illinois Legal Aid Online, WashingtonLawHelp, Michigan Legal Help) as a cross-check.

What we don't do

• We don't infer a fee from a neighboring county or a limit from last year's figure without marking it ≈.
• We don't publish a state until its statute has been read; states not yet read are listed as pending, not guessed.
• We don't remove a corrected error silently — the review date on each page moves, and the dataset's version changes.

Report an error

If a county office, fee or form has changed, tell us: support@smallestateplan.com. Corrections go live with the next build and the row's review date updates.