Are Wills Public Record in SC and How to Access Them

Yes, wills are public record in SC once they’re filed with a probate court after the person’s death. During the writer’s lifetime the document stays private, but South Carolina law requires anyone holding a will to deliver it to the probate court within thirty days of learning of the death, and from that point on the contents are open to anyone who asks.¹ You don’t need to prove a relationship to the deceased to see the file.

When a Will Becomes Public

The trigger is filing, not death. A custodian can deliver the will directly to the probate court or hand it to the person named as personal representative, who then has the same duty to file it.¹ Once the court has it, the probate court is the permanent custodian. Beneficiary names, descriptions of assets, and the identity of the personal representative all become accessible.

If probate proceedings don’t begin within thirty days after filing, the probate judge must publish a notice of the will’s delivery and filing in a local newspaper once a week for three consecutive weeks.¹ That notice tells the community the document exists and can be inspected at the courthouse.

Which County Court Holds the File

South Carolina has forty-six counties, and each has its own elected probate judge handling estate matters for that jurisdiction.² Probate is filed in the county where the deceased lived at the time of death.³ If you don’t know the county of residence, a death certificate, obituary, or funeral home record will usually identify it.

There’s one wrinkle. When someone lived in another state but owned property in South Carolina, an ancillary probate proceeding may have been opened in the South Carolina county where that property sits.³ If the original will was already probated in the home state, an authenticated copy of that will and the probate order can be filed here to handle the local assets. Those ancillary filings are public too.

Searching Online First

Before driving to a courthouse, check the electronic records. The South Carolina Judicial Branch maintains an online system where you can look up probate cases by county. Results typically show the case number, case name, parties involved, filing date, case type, and status. That’s enough to confirm a case exists and to identify the personal representative, but the full text of the will usually isn’t viewable on screen.

Three pieces of information make the search go faster:

Full legal name, including middle names, suffixes, and any maiden name that would distinguish the person from others in the system.
The correct county, since online systems are organized by jurisdiction.
The approximate year of death, since most systems group cases by filing year.

If nothing comes up, the case may predate digital records. Older files may exist only in paper form at the courthouse or in the state archives.

Requesting the File in Person or by Mail

For the actual will text and supporting estate documents, visiting the county probate court in person is the most reliable route. Ask the clerk to pull the physical file or point you to a public access terminal. Appointments are typically not required, and you don’t have to explain any connection to the deceased.

Many county probate courts also accept requests by mail. Richland County, for example, requires a written request form along with a $3.00 search fee; staff locate the file, bill you for copying costs, and mail the copies after payment.⁴ Each county sets its own procedure, so a quick call to the probate clerk saves time.

What Copies Cost

Fees vary by county, but the range is narrow. Standard photocopies run between $0.25 and $0.50 per page. A certified copy, stamped with the court’s official seal and needed when a bank, title company, or another court wants proof, costs around $5.00 on top of the per-page charge.⁵⁶ A typical will of five to ten pages runs a few dollars for plain copies or roughly $7 to $10 for a certified version. Turnaround is usually quick for active files and several business days for anything moved to off-site storage.

What You Won’t See in the File

Public doesn’t mean unrestricted. South Carolina’s privacy rule requires certain identifiers to be stripped before filings become viewable. Under Rule 41.2:

Social Security numbers appear only as the last four digits.
Financial account numbers appear only as the last four digits.
Dates of birth show only the year.
Home addresses of minors, sexual assault victims, and non-parties show only the city and state.

The attorneys and parties filing documents are responsible for making these redactions, not the court clerk.⁷ Note that addresses of adult beneficiaries who are parties to the estate proceeding are not automatically redacted; only non-party addresses are protected by default. A judge can seal a specific document or a whole file on motion, but that takes a compelling reason beyond ordinary privacy preferences.

Small Estates May Not Show Up in a Case Search

Not every estate goes through full probate. When the total probate estate, meaning property passing under a will or by intestacy minus debts, is worth $45,000 or less, a successor can collect assets using an affidavit rather than opening a formal probate case.³ The affidavit must be approved and countersigned by the probate judge in the county where the deceased lived, and it’s filed with that court, so it’s still a public record.

The practical catch: because no full case is opened, small estate affidavits may not surface in the standard online case search. If you suspect a modest estate, call the county probate clerk and ask specifically about affidavit filings.

Wills Kept in a Safe Deposit Box

Sometimes the will hasn’t been filed because no one can reach it. If the deceased stored the will in a bank safe deposit box, an interested person can petition the probate court for an order to open and examine the contents. The examination happens in the presence of a bank officer, and the bank must deliver any document that appears to be a will either to the executor named in it or directly to the probate court.⁸ Nothing else in the box can be removed until a personal representative has been officially appointed and makes a claim.

Very Old Wills

For deaths that happened decades or centuries ago, the county courthouse may no longer hold the original files. The South Carolina Department of Archives and History keeps county probate records going back to the colonial era, including will books from the 1700s and 1800s.⁹ Many older will books have been microfilmed and can be viewed at the Archives’ Research Room in Columbia; the Archives also accepts research requests by phone at 803-896-6104 or through an online form.

Keeping Your Own Will Out of Public View

If you’re reading this because you don’t want your own estate exposed, the standard workaround in South Carolina is a revocable living trust. A trust document is never filed with the probate court. You transfer assets into the trust during your lifetime, and at death the successor trustee distributes them under the trust’s terms, outside probate and outside public view.

The trade-off is upfront work: setting up the trust and retitling assets takes more legal effort than drafting a simple will. Most trust-based plans also include a pour-over will as a safety net, catching anything you forgot to transfer and directing it into the trust. That pour-over will does get filed and becomes public, but it usually contains only a general instruction to fund the trust rather than a detailed list of assets or beneficiaries. The trust itself, where the substance lives, stays private.

1
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code Section 62-2-901 – Delivery of Will to Judge of Probate; Filing
2
South Carolina Judicial Branch. Probate Court
3
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code of Laws – Title 62, Article 3
4
Richland County SC. Estate Records
5
Horry County SC.Gov. Probate Court Fees
6
Charleston County Probate Court. Probate Court Fee Schedule
7
South Carolina Judicial Branch. Rule 41.2 – Privacy Protection for Filings
8
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code of Laws – Title 34, Chapter 19 – Safe Deposit Boxes
9
South Carolina Department of Archives and History. Genealogy Resources