Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Alaska has no statutory percentage fee for probate attorneys. AS 13.16.430 sets a reasonable compensation standard for the personal representative’s own fee, and a separate provision, AS 13.16.440, lets the court review the reasonableness of compensation paid to any attorney or other agent the personal representative hires, ordering refunds if it is excessive.
AS 13.16.440 is the real attorney-fee statute, not AS 13.16.430
The provision that actually governs a probate attorney’s fee in Alaska is AS 13.16.440, Review of employment of agents and other persons and compensation of personal representatives and other persons. It states that on notice, or on petition, the court may review the propriety of employment of any person by a personal representative including any attorney, auditor, investment advisor, or other specialized agent, and the reasonableness of the compensation of any person so employed, ordering a refund if it was excessive. AS 13.16.430, by contrast, only addresses the personal representative’s own fee, so citing it as the source of the attorney fee rule is the same category of error the hypothesis flags. Separately, AS 13.16.435 lets a personal representative recover attorney fees incurred defending or prosecuting a proceeding in good faith, a litigation cost-shifting rule, not a general fee-setting standard.
How reasonableness gets tested in an actual Alaska probate
There is no percentage table for either the personal representative or the attorney. Alaska Rule of Probate Procedure 7.1 lists ten factors courts use to test whether a personal representative’s fee is reasonable, including time and labor required, estate complexity, skill required, and whether the personal representative retained agents and what those agents charged. Rule 12(c)(1)(D) requires that the petition to formally close an estate state the amount of compensation paid or to be paid to the personal representative, attorneys, accountants, appraisers, or other agents employed, putting every fee on the record where any interested person can object before the court signs off.
The genuine Alaska-specific wrinkle: dual-capacity billing
Rule 7.1’s factor (8) is written for a fact pattern common in Alaska’s smaller probate bar: it directs the court to consider, when the personal representative served in more than one capacity as attorney, accountant, appraiser, or another capacity, whether the personal representative charged separately for those other services or did not charge for them. Alaska’s own fee rule anticipates that the same individual is often both the personal representative and the lawyer, and it builds in a specific check against double-billing for that overlap rather than treating the two roles as always occupied by different people.
The rest of the arithmetic: Alaska probate cost.
How the fee models compare across all 51 jurisdictions: probate cost by state, and the national picture on what a probate attorney costs.
Statutory text read at each state’s own legislature or official code publisher. General information, not legal advice; fee statutes change and a court retains the final say on what is reasonable.
The attorney fee above is separate from what the court itself charges just to open the case, see the Alaska probate filing fee.