Small Estate Affidavit Limits by State (2026): Thresholds & Statutes

Updated August 7, 2026. Quick answer: Every state lets small estates skip some or all of formal probate through a small-estate affidavit or summary administration — though “skip probate” is not literal everywhere: Texas requires a judge to approve the affidavit, and South Dakota bars the route entirely if the decedent owed the state for nursing-home care — but the dollar limits range from under $50,000 to Wyoming’s $400,000, several states index them annually, and 2025–2026 brought major increases (Arizona to $200,000 personal/$300,000 real property; California to $208,850; Wyoming to $400,000). The statute-cited table below lists the current limit, instrument, and waiting period for all 50 states and DC, last verified July 23, 2026.

Fast routes: Probate cost by state | How much estate planning costs | Methodology | Ancillary probate calculator

Small estate limits by state (2026)

† Rows for Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Tennessee rely partly on secondary legal-reference sources rather than the official code text; verify with the statute or the local probate court before relying on them. North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island lost their dagger on 12 August 2026 when their statutes were read at the official state source.

Ranked rather than alphabetical: states with the highest small estate limits ranks the 28 jurisdictions whose statute we read at the official state source, and names the 23 that carry no figure and why.

How small-estate procedures work

Two instruments dominate. A small-estate affidavit is a sworn statement heirs present directly to banks, brokers, and the DMV to collect assets — usually with no court proceeding at all, after a short waiting period (commonly 30–45 days). Summary administration is a shortened court proceeding for estates under the threshold. Most states apply the limit to personal property only and exclude solely owned real estate; a growing minority (Arizona, California’s $750,000 primary-residence petition) now offer simplified real-property transfers too. The limit is usually measured net of liens, and assets passing by beneficiary designation don’t count against it.

Recently changed limits worth double-checking

Legislatures have been raising these thresholds aggressively: Arizona’s HB 2116 (2025) more than doubled its limits, California’s indexed threshold rose to $208,850 for deaths on or after April 1, 2025 (with the separate $750,000 primary-residence petition added by AB 2016), Wyoming moved to $400,000 effective July 1, 2025, Illinois raised its affidavit limit to $150,000 in August 2025, and Florida’s disposition-without-administration limit doubled effective July 1, 2026. Indexed states (California, Colorado, Alabama, and others) adjust routinely — if a death occurred near a change date, the year-of-death rules control, so check the cited statute.

Work out the number for your estate

Seven states publish a statutory percentage schedule, so probate cost there is arithmetic you can check — and in several of them the attorney and the personal representative are each entitled to the full amount, which doubles it. The probate cost calculator does that math for all 51 jurisdictions, cites the statute beside each result, and tells you whether your estate is small enough to skip full probate altogether.

Whether the threshold reaches a house

A dollar threshold on its own does not tell you whether a solely owned house can pass this way. 19 of 51 jurisdictions restrict the route to personal property, 8 clearly reach it, 5 reach it only on stated conditions, and for 19 the state’s own published text did not settle the question — which we say rather than guess. Each state page states which, with the statute:

• Alabama
• Alaska
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• District of Columbia
• Florida
• Georgia
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Montana
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• New York
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Washington
• West Virginia
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming

Methodology

This page was materially reviewed on July 23, 2026. Limits, instruments, and waiting periods were compiled from state statutes and official court forms, cited in the table, with daggered rows flagged where only secondary legal references could be checked; recency-sensitive changes (Arizona, California, Wyoming, Illinois, Florida) were verified against enrolled acts or official announcements. Where a state indexes its limit, the figure shown is the current published amount with its effective period. Nothing here is legal, tax, or personalized financial advice; statutes change and county practices vary, so verify with official sources before acting. See our Editorial Policy, Corrections, Affiliate Disclosure, and Disclaimer.

The procedure layer: what the instrument actually is, and where it goes

The table above is the dollar limit. This one is the procedure — verified from each state’s own statute or official court materials for 38 of 51 jurisdictions as at August 3, 2026, plus South Carolina, verified on 4 August 2026 after the dataset below was deposited.

Two columns matter more than the rest. The wait is the most common reason one of these fails — using the instrument before the period has run lets a bank refuse it and can expose the person who signed. And where it goes splits the country almost evenly: 15 states are direct-to-holder with no court involved, while 15 require a court filing and 5 offer both.

You should not have to pay for the form. We verified a free official state or court form in 8 of these states (Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan). Where none is listed, ask the probate court or register of wills in the county where the person lived — many states publish through county offices rather than a single statewide page. Commercial sites sell these forms; the state usually gives them away.

Coverage, stated honestly. 15 jurisdictions are not in the procedure table: Alabama, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Wyoming. Their dollar limits remain in the table above and are unaffected. The procedure is missing because their statute or court sites could not be read — several serve no statute text on the page itself, several blocked us, one would not answer securely and one did not resolve at all. Absence here means we did not verify it, not that the state lacks a procedure.

How it works step by step: the five stages. Which instrument applies: affidavit versus summary administration.

Cite this dataset

The procedure table above is published as an open dataset under CC BY 4.0, covering the 38 of 51 jurisdictions verified from statute or official court materials. The 13 unverified jurisdictions are named in the dataset README and excluded rather than estimated.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21783319 (always resolves to the latest version)

Clear Money Guide (2026). Small-Estate Affidavit Procedure by US State (2026): 38 of 51 Jurisdictions Verified [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21783319 — version 1.1 (4 August 2026) added Texas, Oklahoma and South Dakota. That DOI is the concept DOI and always resolves to the current version.

Changelog correction, 7 August 2026. This page displayed an earlier “Updated” date than its last material change. The date is now correct. The cause was structural rather than careless: our edit discipline replaces a table or appends sections in place so that earlier verified work survives, and it was preserving the dateline along with it. On a page whose value is being current, that understates the very thing readers came for — so the rule now is that any change to a tracker updates its date in the same operation.

How this page is kept current

What moves it: Two different clocks. Four states index the threshold and move every year — Alabama, Colorado, Maine and Michigan — and those are the rows we return to. The other forty-seven are fixed by statute and only change when a legislature changes them, so an annual pass over them would be wasted effort.

What we do not promise. There is no automated watcher behind this page. What exists is a dated register of changes we already know are coming, checked at every batch close rather than waited on, plus a re-read whenever we touch the page for another reason. We would rather describe that plainly than claim a monitoring cadence we do not run — a tracker that overstates its own maintenance is the thing this page class exists to avoid.