Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Idaho has no statutory percentage fee for the probate attorney or the personal representative. Idaho Code §15-3-721 lets the court review the reasonableness of any attorney’s compensation, tested against the multi-factor list in Idaho Rule of Civil Procedure 54(e)(3), and case law holds that an attorney who cannot produce time records to support that test can be denied reimbursement entirely.
Idaho Code section 15-3-721 is the operative attorney-fee review statute
Idaho’s Uniform Probate Code, Title 15 Chapter 3 Part 7, sets no percentage-based fee provision for attorneys. Idaho Code §15-3-719 provides only that a personal representative is entitled to reasonable compensation for his services, and §15-3-720 lets the personal representative recover necessary expenses and disbursements including reasonable attorney’s fees when defending or prosecuting a proceeding in good faith, framing the payment as the PR’s reimbursable expense. Section 15-3-721 supplies the actual review mechanism: after notice, or on petition of an interested person, or automatically if administration is supervised, the court may review the propriety of employing any attorney and the reasonableness of that attorney’s compensation, ordering a refund of anything excessive.
How reasonableness is tested, and who bears the burden
Idaho courts apply the multi-factor reasonableness test in Idaho Rule of Civil Procedure 54(e)(3): time and labor required, novelty and difficulty of the questions, skill required and the attorney’s experience, prevailing local charges for similar work, whether the fee is fixed or contingent, the amount involved and results obtained, and other relevant factors. Idaho case law applying this framework to a personal representative’s attorney-fee claim has held that a personal representative who cannot produce time records to support the fee, because counsel billed on a subjective reasonable-worth basis rather than hourly, can be denied fee reimbursement entirely, since the time-and-labor factor cannot otherwise be assessed.
A practical Idaho-specific nuance: most estates are never reviewed at all
Because most small and medium Idaho estates go through unsupervised informal administration, there is often no court review of the attorney’s fee in practice unless a beneficiary specifically objects or supervised administration is elected. The reasonable-compensation standard is largely self-enforcing between the personal representative and counsel unless someone challenges it, which means reasonable is not the same thing as court-approved in the majority of routine Idaho probates.
The rest of the arithmetic: Idaho 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 Idaho probate filing fee.