Updated September 7, 2026. Quick answer: In Mississippi, once the personal representative publishes notice to creditors, a creditor has 3 months to file a claim.
What is the creditor-claim deadline in Mississippi?
| Once notice to creditors is published | 3 months |
| If notice is never published (absolute deadline) | No independent death-based bar; see note below |
| Creditor personally mailed notice | No separate mailed-notice deadline |
“All claims against the estate of deceased persons, whether due or not, shall be registered, probated and allowed in the court in which the letters testamentary or of administration were granted within ninety (90) days after the first publication of notice to creditors to present their claim. … Otherwise, the same shall be barred…even though the existence of the claim may have been known to the executor or administrator.”
What makes Mississippi different
Mississippi’s bar is anchored entirely to publication and is severe once triggered: a claim is barred at 90 days even if the executor already knew about it.
A note on sourcing: Verified via two independent mirrors (Justia and FindLaw) whose quoted text is word-for-word identical; the official Mississippi Code portal could not be directly fetched this session.
Does this deadline apply the same way if the estate never opens probate?
These deadlines are creatures of the probate process itself; they run once an estate is opened (by publication, mailing, appointment, or the grant of letters, depending on Mississippi’s own rule above). A creditor of a decedent whose estate never enters probate at all is not cut off by this particular statute, though the underlying debt’s own ordinary statute of limitations still applies.
Sources
| Statute | Miss. Code Ann. §§ 91-7-145, 91-7-151 |
| Mississippi courts (general reference) | Mississippi judicial branch |
| Confidence | Medium |
Every statute quoted on this page was read directly from the state’s own legislature/code site this session, or, where that site blocked automated access, from a reputable legal-citation mirror quoting the same official text with its official citation (disclosed below). General information, not legal advice; the exact deadline in a given estate can turn on facts (whether a personal representative was appointed, whether notice was ever published or mailed) that only your own probate court file can confirm.
Related: how long you have to contest a will in Mississippi.