In Administrative Order 2017-133, the Court ordered a comprehensive review of the Probate Rules, which led to the adoption of these rules. Like the former Probate Rules, the 2020 rules must be construed with the Civil Rules and applicable statutes.

Although these rules are based on an earlier set of Probate Rules, there are significant changes, both stylistic and substantive.

The most obvious change is a reorganization of the rules. The 55 rules are organized by subject matter and presented in the order in which events occur in a probate proceeding. Some provisions have been added, and some former provisions have been abrogated, relocated, consolidated, or bifurcated. The new rules incorporate any important substantive provisions that were contained in the former comments, and therefore most comments have been deleted. The former comments and case law continue to be authoritative unless rendered inapplicable by changes in the 2020 rules. Except for several new rules that have no corollary in the earlier Probate Rules, the correlation table accompanying the 2020 rules identifies the source of each new rule by reference to the former rules.

The other noticeable change is restyling. The new Probate Rules add informative titles and subheadings to make rules and sections easier to locate, and they use clearer language, uniform formatting, and consistent terminology. The wording of an amended rule may vary slightly or substantially from the rule it replaces. The purpose of these differences is to make the new probate rules easier to understand and use.