Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: two things are worth knowing before you hire one. Whether the occupation is licensed at all depends on your state, and there is no published hourly rate — not because nobody has collected it, but because at least one state forbids courts from setting one.
Two states we verified, and they work differently
California licenses it. The Professional Fiduciaries Bureau, a bureau of the California Department of Consumer Affairs issues a Licensed Professional Fiduciary credential under Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code 6500-6592 (Professional Fiduciaries Act). A licence is required to act as guardian, conservator or personal representative for TWO OR MORE unrelated persons at the same time, or as trustee or power-of-attorney agent (financial or health care) for FOUR OR MORE unrelated persons at the same time (6501).
Licensure requires:
- a licensing exam
- 30 hours of Bureau-approved prelicensing education, including one hour of cultural competency
- a Live Scan fingerprint background check
- a $600 application fee and a $1,300 initial licence fee
- 15 continuing-education hours a year to renew, including two of ethics and cultural competency
There is a public licence check at search.dca.ca.gov, selecting the Professional Fiduciaries Licensing Bureau. Use it.
Arizona certifies it through the courts instead. Under A.R.S. 14-5651 fiduciaries are certified by the Arizona Supreme Court, through its Fiduciary Certification Program – a court programme, NOT an occupational licensing board. Certification requires:
- at least 21 years old and a US citizen
- no felony conviction and no civil judgment for fraud, misrepresentation, misappropriation, theft or conversion
- state and federal fingerprint background checks
- an initial training session plus biennial training
- consent to the court’s jurisdiction, and appointment of the programme coordinator as agent for service
Financial institutions are exempt, and the Court may exempt others for good cause.
azcourts.gov returned 403 on every path attempted, so the implementing rules – including the bond or cash deposit the statute directs the Court to set – are unconfirmed. And on the California side: Whether the Bureau itself imposes a bond could not be confirmed. Bonding for court-appointed guardians and conservators is handled separately at the court level under Probate Code 2320.
What we are not going to tell you
Only California and Arizona were verified. NO count of how many states regulate or do not regulate this occupation is published: not finding a scheme in a state that was not checked is not evidence of absence.
Plenty of pages state a confident number of states that regulate this. We checked two and are reporting two.
If your state has no scheme
Even where the occupation is not licensed, anyone who actually serves as agent, trustee, guardian or executor is bound by trust, probate and agency law, which impose duties of loyalty and care on the role itself. What may be missing in an unregulated state is pre-appointment credentialing – an exam, a background check, a bond – specific to the business of doing this for pay.
That distinction is the practical one. The duty attaches to the role; the screening may not attach to the business. So in an unlicensed state the questions to ask are the ones a licensing board would otherwise have asked for you: what training, what background check, what bond, what insurance, how many clients, and who audits the accounts.
The fee, and the rule that explains why there is no benchmark
Conservator and guardian compensation is court-approved against nine non-exclusive factors – the size and nature of the estate, benefit to the conservatee, necessity of the service, time spent, skill required, relevant experience, the fiduciary’s own estimate, and prevailing local rates for comparable services among them.
And critically, under California Rule of Court 7.756, courts may not adopt “an inflexible maximum or minimum compensation or a maximum approved hourly rate”.
Courts may NOT adopt one. So the absence of a benchmark is a deliberate feature of how the fee is set, not a gap in the research – and any page quoting a confident national hourly rate for this profession is quoting something no authority publishes.
No dollar hourly figure could be verified from any government or board source, and none is published. Ask for the rate in writing before engaging, and if the appointment is court-supervised, ask how fees get approved and how often.
What to ask before hiring one
- Are you licensed or certified, and where can I check? In California the answer is a lookup you can run yourself.
- How are you paid, and does a court review it?
- Are you bonded and insured, and for how much?
- How many clients do you serve? This is a workload question and a regulatory-threshold question at once.
- Who takes over if you retire or die? The reason you are hiring is continuity.
Where a professional fiduciary sits among the options · the institutional alternative and what it charges.
General information drawn from IRS, Medicare, HUD and state statute and regulation, not legal, tax or financial advice. Continuing-care law is state law and differs materially between states; every figure here is year-labelled and every source named. Fiduciary licensing, executor compensation and intestacy are STATE law and differ materially between states. Fee figures are quoted from published schedules on the dates stated and change without notice; nothing here is a substitute for advice on your own facts.