It was repealed in 2023. If you came here holding a form you downloaded, or planning to walk one into a bank, that is the thing to know before you spend another hour on it.
Public Chapter 297, effective April 28, 2023, rewrote the Small Estate Probate Act. The affidavit you presented directly to a bank is gone. In its place is a sworn petition filed with the court clerk, who then issues Limited Letters. You take the Limited Letters to the bank instead.
Under the old process you filled out an affidavit, had it notarized, and presented it to whoever held the money. No judge, often no courthouse. That is what nearly every form site and half the search results still describe.
Under the current statute you file a petition with the clerk in the county where the person lived. The petition lists every asset with its value and every known debt with the creditor's name, address, and amount. The court can require a bond, payable to the clerk, and it can require one even when the will says bond is waived. The clerk then issues Limited Letters, and those are what the bank accepts.
The practical difference is a courthouse trip, a filing fee, and a form the clerk's office is directed by statute to help you complete. It is still far shorter than a full administration.
If additional assets turn up later that push the total past $50,000, the matter converts to a full administration. Counting carefully at the start is worth an afternoon.
Check which path this estate takesProbate is a subject with enormous search traffic and no one checking the answers. Pages get generated, they describe a process that was accurate before April 2023, and nothing in the machinery that ranks them cares that the statute moved. Several sites currently near the top for Tennessee small estate questions still tell readers to take an affidavit to a bank.
Two names on the same page are a tell. Some counties still title the line item on their fee schedule "Affidavit for Small Estate" because the schedule was never renamed, while the form underneath it is a petition for Limited Letters. The fee schedule is old wording. The form is the law.
The way to be sure, always, is the clerk's office in the county where the person lived. They have the current form, and the statute tells them to help you fill it in.
With a will, what issues is Limited Letters Testamentary. Without one, Limited Letters of Administration. The petition is slightly different; the asset and debt lists are the same work either way.
In the county where the person lived, and the office differs by county more than most guides admit.
The petition stands or falls on two lists: what the person owned, valued at the date of death, and what they owed, with addresses and amounts. Building those from a shoebox of statements is the part that takes a week of evenings.
$249 flat. Nothing owed until you have seen it.
Send the county and roughly what the estate holds, and I will tell you exactly what to scan and what to leave alone.