Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: $150.00 for the initial petition regarding the person, property, or person and property of an adult alleged to be incapacitated. Subsequent proceedings carry their own flat fees (inventory/returns $30.00 each; petition for leave to sell $70.00; petition/motion for attorneys’ fees $70.00). Set by the general probate-court cost statute, not the guardianship/conservatorship chapters themselves. The periodic accounting is annual. Everything on this page is quoted from Georgia’s own statutory text where it exists, and where Georgia publishes no figure this page says so rather than printing an estimate. What drives the rest of the bill, lawyers, an investigation, a capacity evaluation, is on what guardianship costs.
What Georgia fixes by statute
| Item | What the text says | Where it says it |
|---|---|---|
| Petition filing fee | $150.00 for the initial petition regarding the person, property, or person and property of an adult alleged to be incapacitated. Subsequent proceedings carry their own flat fees (inventory/returns $30.00 each; petition for leave to sell $70.00; petition/motion for attorneys’ fees $70.00). Set by the general probate-court cost statute, not the guardianship/conservatorship chapters themselves. | O.C.G.A. § 15-9-60(b) |
| Bond | Required of every court-appointed conservator (guardian of the property): “A conservator appointed by the court… shall give bond with good and sufficient security.” Penal sum is double the estimated value of the ward’s estate, reduced to the estate’s estimated value if secured by a licensed commercial surety. No general individual waiver provision was found: the only statutory exception is for qualifying financial institutions with combined capital/surplus/undivided profits of at least $3 million. The statute does not address who bears the bond premium. | O.C.G.A. §§ 29-5-40, 29-5-41 |
| Guardian ad litem and attorney fees | Not a fixed dollar figure. O.C.G.A. § 29-9-15 requires the court to “award reasonable fees and expenses, commensurate with the tasks performed and time devoted to the proceeding” to any court-appointed legal counsel or guardian ad litem: no statutory hourly rate or ceiling is set. | |
| Periodic accounting or report | Annual: No graduated fee schedule tied to estate value was found. O.C.G.A. § 29-5-60 requires a verified annual return within 60 days of the anniversary of the conservator’s qualification; failure to file forfeits the conservator’s commission for that year. The cost statute sets a flat $30.00 filing fee per inventory/return, not graduated by estate size. | O.C.G.A. § 29-5-60 |
What the proceeding is called here. Guardianship and Conservatorship (adults), O.C.G.A. Title 29: Chapter 4 (“Guardians of Adults”) and Chapter 5 (“Conservators of Adults”).
The filing fee
$150.00 for the initial petition regarding the person, property, or person and property of an adult alleged to be incapacitated. Subsequent proceedings carry their own flat fees (inventory/returns $30.00 each; petition for leave to sell $70.00; petition/motion for attorneys’ fees $70.00). Set by the general probate-court cost statute, not the guardianship/conservatorship chapters themselves.
The bond
Required of every court-appointed conservator (guardian of the property): “A conservator appointed by the court… shall give bond with good and sufficient security.” Penal sum is double the estimated value of the ward’s estate, reduced to the estate’s estimated value if secured by a licensed commercial surety. No general individual waiver provision was found: the only statutory exception is for qualifying financial institutions with combined capital/surplus/undivided profits of at least $3 million. The statute does not address who bears the bond premium.
Guardian ad litem and attorney fees
Not published here. Not a fixed dollar figure. O.C.G.A. § 29-9-15 requires the court to “award reasonable fees and expenses, commensurate with the tasks performed and time devoted to the proceeding” to any court-appointed legal counsel or guardian ad litem: no statutory hourly rate or ceiling is set.
How often you have to account
Annual. Do not carry that assumption across a state line: the interval is set by each state separately, several are biennial or triennial, and your own appointing court can order more often than the statutory minimum. The document that governs you is your order.
No graduated fee schedule tied to estate value was found. O.C.G.A. § 29-5-60 requires a verified annual return within 60 days of the anniversary of the conservator’s qualification; failure to file forfeits the conservator’s commission for that year. The cost statute sets a flat $30.00 filing fee per inventory/return, not graduated by estate size.
What an accounting has to contain, and the duties that come with it, are on the guardian accounting duties page.
What this page does not tell you
Georgia’s official free code portal (LexisNexis-hosted, linked from legis.ga.gov) could not be fetched directly this session: no stable per-section URL resolved. All statutory quotes above were verified against codes.findlaw.com, a SECONDARY mirror, flagged accordingly. The $150 base filing fee was cross-confirmed by a Georgia county probate court’s own published fee page.
Where this fits
The filing fee is the smallest part of what a guardianship costs, and the national page sets out the costs that are larger and are not published anywhere. If nobody has been appointed yet, the comparison that actually matters is against the document that avoids this proceeding entirely : guardianship against a power of attorney.
Sources
| Item | Citation | Tier | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Petition filing fee | https://codes.findlaw.com/ga/title-29-guardian-and-ward/ga-code-sect-29-5-40/ | statute | 2026-09 |
| Bond | https://codes.findlaw.com/ga/title-15-courts/ga-code-sect-15-9-60/ | statute | 2026-09 |
| Accounting | https://codes.findlaw.com/ga/title-29-guardian-and-ward/ga-code-sect-29-5-60/ | statute | 2026-09 |
Also for Georgia: Georgia Power of Attorney Requirements · How Much Does a Will Cost in Georgia?.
General consumer information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Guardianship and conservatorship are governed by STATE law and differ materially between states; every figure here is quoted from the cited source as read on the date shown and changes without notice. Read as of September 3, 2026.