Executor Fee in Pennsylvania (2026)

Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: Pennsylvania has no statutory percentage for the executor. Compensation must be “reasonable and just.” The widely quoted Johnson estate schedule is an Orphans’ Court custom that courts often reference — it is not enacted law, and calling it “Pennsylvania’s statutory schedule” is simply wrong.

What the statute says

20 Pa.C.S. §3537 directs the court to allow compensation that is reasonable and just to the personal representative, and to attorneys. No percentage appears anywhere in it, for either role.

The Johnson schedule, described accurately

Johnson comes from an Orphans’ Court opinion. Courts across the Commonwealth commonly consult it as a sanity check on reasonableness, which gives it genuine practical weight — but it binds nobody by its own force. A fee inside it can be challenged; a fee outside it can be approved. The distinction is not pedantry: it is the difference between a number you must justify and a number you may simply claim.

What to do with that

Document the work. In a reasonableness state the record of hours, decisions and complications is the justification, and an executor who kept none is arguing from memory against a beneficiary’s objection.

What the whole process costs in this state: Pennsylvania probate cost. Every state’s fee model side by side: probate cost by state.

Work out the number: the executor fee calculator. How the standard is applied where no schedule exists: reasonable-compensation states. Whether to take the fee at all: when the executor is also an heir, and how the fee is taxed.

Statutory text read at each state’s own legislature or official code publisher. General information, not legal advice; a court retains the final say on what compensation is allowed.