Probate Leads

What it means

Probate cases are filed at the county court level and become public record shortly after filing. The lead isn't the deceased — it's the personal representative (executor) and the heirs, who collectively decide what happens to the inherited property.

What does a probate timeline look like?

A probate timeline opens with a petition; within weeks to a couple of months, the court appoints a personal representative — issuing letters testamentary when there's a will, letters of administration when there isn't. The representative then publishes notice to creditors, inventories the estate's assets, and waits out a claim window that commonly runs three to six months depending on the state. Only after debts and taxes are settled can the property be sold or distributed — which is why routine estates take six months to a year, and contested ones far longer. For an investor, the practical outreach window opens once the representative is appointed: before that, no one has legal authority to sell, and immediately after the death, no one wants to hear from you.

Who is the probate lead, exactly?

The probate lead is the personal representative, usually an adult child, frequently out of state, suddenly responsible for a house with decades of belongings, deferred maintenance, and property taxes still due — while also grieving and coordinating siblings. Many inherited homes carry no mortgage, and the heirs rarely chose the house; they inherited an obligation. A respectful cash offer that removes the cleanout, the repairs, and the coordination problem genuinely solves something.

Why are probate leads hard to reach?

Probate leads are hard to reach for two reasons. First, court filings list the deceased's last address, not the heirs' addresses — and often route correspondence through the estate attorney — so you need an identity-graph step to resolve the actual family. Second, heirs are emotionally raw and hostile to clumsy marketing, making the quality of the contact (right person, right relationship context, right timing) far more important than volume. The working cadence reflects that: monthly courthouse pulls, resolve the heirs, open with mail, follow with a call, and keep follow-up windows long — estates move in months, not days.

How do you skip trace a probate lead, step by step?

You skip trace a probate lead by starting from the deceased owner of record and resolving outward to the living family, because the name on the filing is the one person you cannot call. At Ava Data, LLC that takes two paid steps: a Probate & Death Records pull at 1 credit (2¢) per record, then a Deep Search at 10 credits (20¢) per match. The five steps below are the working order.

1. Pull the filings. List Builder's Probate & Death Records list returns homes with a probate filing (such as a petition, letters or a court order) or a death record from the last 12 months, at 1 credit (2¢) per record pulled; new filings can take 2–4 weeks to appear. A monthly courthouse pull works too. Keep the deceased's name, the last address and the filing date.
2. Resolve the family. Run a Deep Search on the deceased's name and last address: 10 credits (20¢) at Ava Data, charged only on a match, returning the surviving spouse, adult children and siblings with their own phones and emails.
3. Identify the representative. The letters testamentary or letters of administration name the person with authority to sell. Match that name against the related people the Deep Search returned, and work that record first.
4. Open with mail, follow with a call. Each returned phone carries a line type — mobile, landline or VoIP — so the texting list and the calling list separate before the first touch.
5. Re-trace before each follow-up wave. The identity graph refreshes every 24 hours, and an estate runs for months; a number that was current at the petition is not necessarily current at the sale.

How much does a probate list cost to trace?

A probate list costs 20¢ per record at most to trace through Deep Search, and 4¢ per record at most through the post-probate inherited quick list. The difference is what each one answers: Deep Search resolves a court filing to a family, while the quick list starts from property already transferred to an heir.

Every figure is a ceiling: a record that returns no match is not charged, and components are charged separately, so a record that returns a phone but no email is charged for the phone alone. The $9/month plan includes 100 credits, which covers ten Deep Searches or fifty pulled-and-traced inherited records. The skip tracing cost guide sets these figures against what other providers publish.

Probate leads compared with the other distress lists

Probate differs from every other distressed-property list in one way that changes the workflow: the owner of record is deceased, so there is no owner to trace and the whole lead depends on the relational step. A pre-foreclosure or tax-delinquent record names a living owner you can call directly; a probate filing names someone you cannot. That is why Deep Search, not a phone append, is the entry point here, and why the cost per usable record is higher than on any other list.

How Ava Data handles probate leads

Ava Data's relational layer is purpose-built for probate. Give us the deceased's name and last address, and a Deep Search (10 credits, 20¢) returns the surviving spouse, adult children, and siblings with their current contact info — resolving the court filing to the family members who actually hold the decision. For inherited property that has already transferred, List Builder includes an inherited quick-list, so you can build the post-probate segment by state, county, city, or ZIP and trace it in bulk at 2¢ (1 credit) per match or 4¢ (2 credits) with email.

You pay only on match, and the identity graph refreshes every 24 hours — which matters in a lead type where the family's phones and addresses are often changing in the very months you're working the case. In the dashboard, a Deep Search result lays the family out as cards you can scan and prioritize before reaching out. Through the API, the same data comes back as JSON ready to feed a probate-specific cadence in your CRM — or let a Follow Up Boss tag trigger the lookup automatically.

For developers: example API call

If you'd rather click than code, the Ava Data dashboard returns the same data without a single line of JSON. The snippet below is for teams wiring Ava Data into a CRM, dialer, or AI pipeline.

{
  "firstName": "Robert",
  "lastName": "Johnson",
  "address": "456 Elm St",
  "city": "Phoenix",
  "state": "AZ"
}

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "matchFound": true,
    "creditsCharged": 10,
    "subject": { "deceased": true },
    "relatedPeople": [
      { "firstName": "Sarah", "lastName": "Johnson", "relationship": "Child", "phones": [{ "number": "6025551234", "lineType": "Mobile", "disconnected": false }] },
      { "firstName": "Michael", "lastName": "Johnson", "relationship": "Child", "phones": [{ "number": "6025559876", "lineType": "Mobile", "disconnected": false }] }
    ]
  }
}

Related terms

• Distressed Property Leads — Distressed property leads are owners of homes facing financial or physical distress — pre-foreclosure, tax-delinquent, code-violation, vacant, or inherited — and are the highest-converting segment for wholesalers and cash buyers.
• Relational Mapping — Relational mapping expands a skip trace from a single subject to their household and immediate network — spouses, siblings, parents, adult children, and known associates — to give you a back-door path when the primary number is dead.
• Absentee Owner — An absentee owner is the legal owner of a property whose mailing address differs from the property address — typically a landlord, an inherited-property holder, or an out-of-state investor — and a top target for off-market acquisitions.

Frequently asked questions

How do I skip trace a probate lead?

To skip trace a probate lead, pull the filing from Ava Data's Probate & Death Records list (1 credit, 2¢, per record) or the courthouse, then run a Deep Search on the deceased owner's name and last address. For 10 credits (20¢), charged only on a match, it returns the spouse, adult children and siblings with their own phones.

How much does it cost to skip trace a probate list?

A probate list costs 20¢ per record at most at Ava Data, because the entry point is a Deep Search at 10 credits. A record that returns no match is not charged, so 20¢ is a ceiling rather than an estimate. The $9/month plan includes 100 credits, which covers ten Deep Searches.

Where do probate leads come from?

Probate leads come from county probate court filings, which become public record shortly after a petition is filed. Investors pull them from the courthouse, from a court-records provider, or from Ava Data's Probate & Death Records list, which covers probate filings and death records from the last 12 months at 1 credit (2¢) per record pulled. A Deep Search then resolves the deceased owner to the living family members.

When is the right time to contact a probate lead?

The right time to contact a probate lead is after the court appoints the personal representative, which typically happens within weeks to a couple of months of the petition. Before the appointment nobody holds authority to sell the property, and in the first days after a death nobody wants to hear an offer.

Which family member should you contact first on a probate lead?

Contact the personal representative first on a probate lead, because that is the person the court has authorised to sell. The letters testamentary or letters of administration name them. Ava Data's Deep Search returns the spouse, adult children and siblings with relationship labels, so you can match the court's name to a current phone.

What is the difference between probate leads and inherited property leads?

Probate leads are estates still in court, where the owner of record is deceased and a Deep Search at 20¢ resolves the family. Inherited property leads are homes already transferred to an heir, so Ava Data's inherited quick list pulls them at 1 credit (2¢) per record and traces them for 1 credit more per match.