Tennessee timeline
Tennessee probate timeline: the 45-day wait and creditor deadlines
The simplified route starts 45 days after death.
Tennessee creditor deadlines are set out below against the event each one runs from.
Sources reviewed August 9, 2026. Latest primary-source re-fetch October 3, 2026.
The one date this page can source
The small estate probate — petition for limited letters of administration/testamentary (tenn. code ann. tit. 30, ch. 4, "the small estate probate act," enacted by 2023 pub. ch. 297) route requires 45 days to elapse from the date of death. This is a precondition: the affidavit or petition cannot be presented before it runs, regardless of how straightforward the estate is.
Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 30, Chapter 4, is amended by deleting the chapter and substituting: 30-4-101. This chapter is known and may be cited as "The Small Estate Probate Act."Tenn. Pub. Ch. 297 (2023) (HB 337; Tenn. Code Ann. tit. 30, ch. 4) — Tennessee Secretary of State; PUBLIC CHAPTER NO. 297.
Creditor deadlines
- From publication of notice to creditors
- Four months from first publication of notice to creditors (Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-307; general text not verifiably harvested this session).
- From actual notice to a known creditor
- Shorter of the general period or a period running from the date actual notice was received (Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-307).
- Outer limit, running from death
- For the Bureau of TennCare: the earlier of twelve (12) months from the decedent’s date of death or four (4) months from the date the bureau received the notice to creditors (Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-310 as amended by Pub. Ch. 102 (2021)).
How these combine. Tennessee runs multiple separately-triggered claim deadlines that cannot be collapsed: a four-month period from first publication of the notice to creditors and an actual-notice period (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 30-2-306, 30-2-307), the ultimate bar (§ 30-2-310(a)-(b)), and the TennCare-specific limits (§ 30-2-310(c)). Only the TennCare framework (Pub. Ch. 102 (2021), which merely ADDS § 30-2-310(c)) was machine-harvestable; the general publication/actual-notice bar in §§ 30-2-306/307/310(a)-(b) lives in the Lexis-locked code and no enacted Public Chapter restating it was located across GA 100–114.
Twelve (12) months from the decedent's date of death; or (B) Four (4) months from the date when the bureau received the notice to creditorsTenn. Pub. Ch. 102 (2021) (Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-310) — Tennessee Secretary of State; This act shall take effect upon becoming a law, the public welfare requiring it..
The Tennessee creditor period is not restated here
Tennessee’s notice-to-creditors and claim-limitation provisions are in Title 30, Chapter 2. As with the rest of the Tennessee Code Annotated, the text is not served by a state-run host: the advertised free access route returns a JavaScript shell rather than the section.
Creditor deadlines are the highest-consequence figures on this site. Getting one wrong by a month can expose the person administering the estate personally, so a period that could not be read from the code is not published here in any form.
The structure of the question is still worth knowing even without the Tennessee numbers: a claim period usually runs from a published notice, a separately served notice can create its own later window, and an outer limit measured from the date of death sits behind both. Which of those controls is the thing the statute decides.
For a live estate, the clerk of the probate court in the county of venue and the notice actually published in that county are the authoritative record of the dates that apply.
Authority that would settle this: Tenn. Code Ann. tit. 30, ch. 2 (notice to creditors; claims). The access attempt described above was made on 2026-09-17. Nothing is quoted from it, because nothing could be read from it; a figure restated from a secondary summary would look like a sourced answer without being one.
General sequence: first week, how long probate takes.
Tennessee record: 4/4 verified, 16 matched checks, latest source re-fetch October 3, 2026. Source record · method · report a correction