You Inherited a House in Montgomery County and the Other Heirs Won’t Sell

In Montgomery County everything happens in one building. The Register of Wills, the Orphans’ Court and the Circuit Court are all at 50 Maryland Avenue in Rockville — and the first two publish the same phone number. What changes from one path to the next is not where you go. It is which proceeding you are in, and what that proceeding can do. This page is the county map: which office, which room, what it costs, and who you are actually in front of.

Investors: we don’t publish or sell heir lists, and we name no one from a probate docket. This page is for the family that owns the house.

Free and no-obligation. If holding the house together is the better move, we will tell you that.

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One Building, One Bench

Three offices that matter to an heir in Montgomery County sit at the same Rockville address. That is unusual, and it removes a problem that costs families weeks in other Maryland counties.

The estate: Register of Wills, North Tower Room 3220

The Register of Wills for Montgomery County is at 50 Maryland Avenue, North Tower, Room 3220, Rockville, MD 20850. Main line 240-777-9600, toll free 888-892-2180, fax 240-777-9602, Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Register is the Honourable Paul J. Dollahite.

One small thing worth knowing: the street address and the mailing address are the same, and the office publishes no separate post-office box. If you have dealt with Prince George’s County, that is a real difference — filings there go to a P.O. Box that is not the counter address. Here, one address does both jobs.

The probate court: Orphans’ Court, Judicial Center Room 322

Maryland’s probate court is the Orphans’ Court, and Montgomery’s sits in Room 322 of the Judicial Center at the same 50 Maryland Avenue, and it publishes the same phone number as the Register, 240-777-9600.

And here is the part that is genuinely different from most Maryland counties. In Prince George’s County the Orphans’ Court has three elected judges who do that work and only that work. Montgomery’s Orphans’ Court is staffed by rotating Circuit Court judges. There is no separate elected probate bench to learn. The judge hearing an estate dispute is a Circuit Court judge sitting in the Orphans’ Court that day.

The partition: Circuit Court for Montgomery County

A partition — the case that resolves what happens when co-owners cannot agree — is not an Orphans’ Court matter anywhere in Maryland. It belongs to the circuit courts, so it is filed with the Clerk of the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, 50 Maryland Avenue, Rockville, MD 20850, main line 240-777-9400.

Same building. Same bench, drawn from the same pool of judges.

What that actually changes for you

Two practical consequences, and they cut in different directions.

The good one: one address for all three offices, and the same published number for both estate offices, removes most of the “you’re in the wrong building” problem that defines this process in other counties.

The one to be careful about: the same building is not the same proceeding. An Orphans’ Court judge sitting on your estate matter cannot resolve a co-ownership dispute between people who already hold the deed — that requires a partition action filed on the civil side. The offices being neighbours makes it easier to assume one conversation covers both. It does not.

There is a second, quieter consequence of the rotating bench. In counties with a dedicated elected probate bench, families sometimes try to work out which judge tends to hear what, and plan around it. That exercise does not transfer to Montgomery. The assignment comes from the Circuit Court, and the useful preparation is not learning a bench — it is arriving with the documents and the arithmetic in order.

Your first two calls

Both offices publish the same number, 240-777-9600, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

240-777-9400 is the Circuit Court clerk, in the same building, for anything on the partition side — including what a filing costs today.

And 27 Courthouse Square is the trip that is somewhere else. If property taxes are part of your problem, that is the Division of Treasury, and it is not in the courthouse complex.

Tell us where the estate stands and who is on the deed. An offer costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

Which Proceeding Do You Actually Have?

Two situations get confused constantly, and in Montgomery the shared address makes them easier to confuse, not harder.

The estate is still open, or was never opened. Nobody has been appointed, or a personal representative is in place and administering. This is estate work — the Register of Wills, and the Orphans’ Court if something is contested. Our Montgomery County probate guide walks that path in full.

The estate is closed and the deed is in several names. You and your siblings own it together now, and one of you will not sell. That is no longer an estate problem. It is a co-ownership problem, and in Maryland it is resolved — if it has to go to court at all — by a partition action in the Circuit Court.

What each co-owner can and cannot do alone, and the buyout right Maryland created in 2022, are set out on our main guide: what each co-owner can do alone. This page assumes you have read that and answers the county half.

One Maryland default worth stating because it surprises people: where a deed does not say otherwise, Real Property § 14-104 presumes co-owners hold in equal shares. “I paid more of the mortgage” is an argument to be made about contributions, not a change to what the deed says.

Why the distinction decides which building you should already be thinking about. If the estate is open, the questions in front of you are administrative — appointment, inventory, creditor claims, the Register’s fee — and they resolve at a counter. If the deed is already in four names, none of that machinery is available to you, because the estate that would have operated it is closed. The lever that remains is a civil action, and civil actions run on a different clock and a different budget.

A short test that usually settles it: pull the deed. If the property is still titled in the decedent’s name, the estate path is live. If it is titled in the heirs’ names, the transfer has already happened and you are in co-ownership, whatever the family still calls it.

What It Costs

These are two separate bills and they are routinely confused. Keep them apart.

Probate fees — paid to the Register of Wills, on the estate path only

Maryland’s probate fee is set by the value of the probate estate, on a statewide schedule — there is no Montgomery variant. For estates opened on or after October 1, 2022: under $50,000 the fee is $0; $50,000 to under $100,000 is $100; $100,000 to under $500,000 is $200; $500,000 to under $1 million is $1,000; $1 million to under $2.5 million is $2,000; $2.5 million to under $5 million is $5,000; $5 million to under $7.5 million is $7,500; $7.5 million to under $10 million is $10,000; above $10 million it is $10,000 plus 0.02% of the excess.

These are probate fees. Nothing on that list is a court filing fee for a partition.

Circuit Court filing costs — separate, and not published here

A partition is a civil action and carries its own filing costs, set by the Maryland Judiciary’s schedule of charges rather than by the probate brackets above. We are not publishing a figure. We could not verify a current partition-specific amount from the Judiciary’s own schedule, and a wrong number here would be worse than none. The Clerk of the Circuit Court on 240-777-9400 will tell you what a filing costs today. Ask them, not us.

The real money in a contested partition is the appraisal and the lawyers. Maryland requires the court to determine fair market value before the buyout step runs, ordinarily by ordering an appraisal, and that expense lands on the parties.

Maryland inheritance tax

Usually not an issue for close family. The inheritance tax is 10% of the clear value of property passing from a decedent, but spouses, registered domestic partners, children and lineal descendants, parents, grandparents, siblings and stepchildren are exempt. The Register of Wills determines and collects it. Nieces, nephews, cousins and friends are not exempt.

If the family needs a number to work from, that is a phone call. An offer costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

One of You Is Living in the House

This is the most common version of the standoff: one sibling has been in the house since the funeral, is not paying rent to anyone, and does not want it sold. The others want their share.

Maryland’s heirs-property statute is what governs whether a court divides a property or orders it sold, and the circumstances of the co-owners are part of that decision rather than a footnote to it.

We are not going to list the statutory factors here. We could not re-open the codified section on an official source when we fact-checked this page, and we would rather publish less than quote a statute we have not read that day. Your own counsel can pull the current text — ask for Maryland Real Property § 14-107.

What we can describe is how these tend to settle in practice, which is an observation and not a legal opinion. The sibling living in the house usually has more standing than the others expect. The siblings who have been paying the taxes and the insurance usually have more than they expect too — if they can prove it. Whoever has receipts is in a better position than whoever has arguments.

What “receipts” means concretely, because families rarely keep this in a usable form: the county tax bills and who actually paid them; the homeowner’s policy and the premium history; and for anyone claiming upkeep, the invoices — a new roof with a contract and a cancelled cheque is a different kind of evidence from a new roof everybody remembers being paid for in cash.

Because Montgomery’s Orphans’ Court judges are drawn from the Circuit Court bench, there is no practical sense in which the estate side and the partition side apply different temperaments to the same family. It is the same court, in the same building, reading the same statute. That is worth knowing before anyone spends money on the theory that a different forum will be friendlier.

If the House Is Behind on Property Taxes

An inherited house is often a house nobody has been paying the taxes on. This is the one part of the process that happens at a different address.

Montgomery’s tax sale is run by the Division of Treasury at 27 Courthouse Square, Suite 200, Rockville — not the 50 Maryland Avenue courthouse complex. If you have been going to the courthouse for everything else, this is the one trip that goes somewhere else.

Redemption interest. In its Notice of Tax Sale for the sale held on June 8, 2026, Montgomery County published a redemption interest rate of 6% per annum for owner-occupied property and 20% per annum for non-owner-occupied property, calculated daily, under Tax-Property § 14-820. Those are the figures from that sale’s notice — rates are set by County Council resolution and are re-published each cycle, so confirm the current figure with Treasury before relying on it.

We are not going to tell you which rate an heir gets. Montgomery’s published materials do not address heirs, and we are not going to infer an answer from a source that is silent on the question. Treasury is the office that can tell you, and that is a call worth making early — the difference between the two rates is large.

That June 2026 sale has passed, and the county has announced the next one: Monday, June 14, 2027. A property that was not sold, or that has fallen behind since, is exposed to that sale. If you are inside a redemption period now, the clock is already running against a certificate that exists.

One statewide protection worth knowing, stated carefully. Maryland law directs the collector to withhold from sale owner-occupied residential property and residential property occupied by an heir of a deceased owner — but only when the total taxes, interest and penalties on the property come to less than $1,000. That dollar condition is part of the provision and it is the whole limit on the protection; above it, the protection does not apply. Separately, § 14-811(i) directs the collector to withhold the dwelling of a homeowner enrolled in the Homeowner Protection Program, with no dollar cap — and the 2026 legislation opened that programme to heirs. For an heir owing more than $1,000, that is the route worth asking about.

We are not the county. Treasury is the office that can answer this one. What we can do is buy the house. Where a sale covers what is owed, the funded closing pays the debt and the process ends — it is the funded closing that does it, not a signed contract.

Our Montgomery County tax delinquency guide covers the sale process itself in full.

If Selling Is the Answer, Here Is What Dealing With Us Looks Like

We buy houses in Montgomery County directly from the people who own them, including houses held by several heirs and houses that need everything.

You deal with Jacob. Not a call centre, not a lead broker who sells your details on.

Most homeowners get an offer within 24 hours of telling us about the property. Most of our closings take two to three weeks; we’ve closed in as little as 7 days when a family needed it. We will not promise you a closing by a particular date to beat a deadline — anyone who does is guessing, and the consequences of guessing wrong land on you, not them.

You choose the closing date, within what the title work allows.

No repairs, no agent commissions, and we cover closing costs. If the house is full, leave what you do not want.

If several heirs are on the deed, everyone who needs to sign can be walked through it together — we would rather spend an hour on a call with four siblings than have a contract fall apart at signing.

On disclosure: Maryland has a residential property disclosure statute, and it applies to sales generally. We can tell you the statute exists and point you at it. We cannot tell you what it requires you to disclose about your particular house — that is a question for your own counsel, and “we buy as-is” does not make it go away.

And the honest part. If listing the house on the open market would net the family more than our offer, that is usually what we will tell you. If holding it together is the better move, we will tell you that too. We would rather be the call you make than the offer you regret.

Free and no-obligation.

Find Out Where You Stand — Free

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Who You Are Dealing With