Updated July 30, 2026. Quick answer: Probate court filing fees run about $50–$1,200 depending on the state, seven states set attorney and executor fees as a statutory percentage of the estate, and small-estate limits now reach $400,000. Below, the key probate-cost numbers for the United States, formatted for citation. Every figure below is drawn from Clear Money Guide’s statute-cited state tables — probate cost by state and small-estate limits by state — where each underlying statute is linked. All figures are free to cite with attribution (how to cite).
Headline statistics
- $50 to $1,200 — the range of probate court filing fees across the 50 states and DC.
- 12 states — California, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina and Wyoming — set personal-representative compensation by a statutory schedule whose text we read at the official state legislature source, so the cost is computable in advance; our executor fee calculator computes 17 states in all. Ranked, with what each schedule produces on one identical estate: states where probate costs the most.
- $26,000 — the combined statutory fee on a $500,000 California estate ($13,000 for the attorney and $13,000 for the executor), before court costs and extras such as bonds, appraisals and publication.
- Under $50,000 to $400,000 — the range of small-estate limits that let heirs skip or shorten probate; Wyoming’s $400,000 is the highest, and several states index their limits annually.
- 2025–2026 brought major small-estate increases: Arizona to $200,000 personal / $300,000 real property, California to $208,850, Wyoming to $400,000, Illinois to $150,000 of personal property, and Florida to $150,000 effective July 1, 2026 (from $75,000).
What estate planning costs, for comparison
The usual reason to plan around probate is cost, so the two sets of numbers belong together. Per LegalTemplates’ 2026 nationwide study of 909 law firms, whose national table was re-read at the source on 13 August 2026:
- $625 — median attorney fee for a simple will bought as a single document (middle half of firms: $450–$1,000, from the 307 firms that priced one). The same study prices a will package at a median of $1,000 (middle half $750–$1,500, 319 firms) — compare package to package, or single document to single document, never one to the other.
- $2,700 — median for a revocable living trust package (middle half: $2,500–$3,500, from the 221 firms that priced a package).
- $250–$400 per hour — typical attorney hourly billing for estate work.
- $0–$599 — the DIY platform range, from free wills to a couples’ trust plan.
Full pricing detail and sources: how much estate planning costs. To compute a specific state’s numbers: the probate cost calculator and the will vs trust breakeven calculator.
Cite this data
Free to cite with attribution and a link. Suggested citation: “Probate Cost Statistics,” Clear Money Guide, 2026, clearmoneyguide.com/probate-cost-statistics/.
The underlying dataset — statutory fee models, filing fees and small-estate limits for all 50 states and DC, with statute citations — is downloadable as a free CSV; the column schema is on the data page. Questions about the data: [email protected].
License: the datasets and tables published on this page are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, republish, and adapt them — including commercially — with attribution to Clear Money Guide and a link to clearmoneyguide.com. Statutes and primary-source citations remain public domain; the compilation, verification, and presentation are ours.
Archived, citable copy. This dataset is deposited with a permanent DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21744062. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Citable figures: our statistics index collects 20 measured figures from four open datasets, each with the DOI to cite and all free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Where a real attorney schedule exists. Four states we have read set a fee schedule for the estate’s attorney specifically: California (Cal. Prob. Code §10810), Florida (Fla. Stat. §733.6171(3)), Nevada (NRS 150.060(4)) and Wyoming (Wyo. Stat. §2-7-804). Nevada’s is elective rather than presumptive: probate attorney fees in Nevada. Florida’s is a presumption its own statute requires the attorney to disclose as non-mandatory — which is why Florida, not California, tops our ranking of statutory probate bills.