Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Indiana’s statute, Ind. Code §29-1-10-13, sets no percentage fee for either the personal representative or the attorney, only a just-and-reasonable standard. In practice, many Indiana counties apply a statewide model maximum-fee guideline in supervised estates, capping attorney fees at a percentage of the gross estate and capping the combined PR-plus-attorney total at 10%, but only in supervised administration; unsupervised estates receive no court fee review at all.
The statute: just and reasonable, no percentage
Ind. Code §29-1-10-13, Compensation, attorney’s services, addresses both roles in one paragraph, entitling the personal representative to compensation the court deems just and reasonable and allowing additional compensation for attorney services, and separately entitling an attorney performing services for the estate to compensation the court deems just and reasonable. No rate, percentage, or dollar formula appears anywhere in the section for either role.
The local-rule layer: a statewide model maximum-fee schedule
In practice, Indiana county probate courts apply a model Maximum Fee Guidelines schedule drafted by the Probate Committee of the Indiana Judicial Conference and adopted locally, which caps the attorney’s fee for supervised estates at 6% on the first $100,000 of gross estate value, 4% on the next $200,000, 3% on the next $700,000, and 1% above $1,000,000, expressly stating it is a maximum, not a minimum, and that every request should still be fair and reasonable for the work performed. The same guideline caps the combined total paid to the personal representative and the attorney at 10% of the gross estate.
The Indiana-specific fork: supervised versus unsupervised administration
The guideline explicitly states that the court will not determine and allow fees in an unsupervised estate, and Indiana’s dual administration system under Ind. Code §29-1-7.5 means most modern Indiana estates proceed unsupervised, so in the majority of cases neither the statutory just-and-reasonable standard nor the local maximum-fee guideline is actually applied by a court unless and until someone challenges the fee later. Whether a fee schedule review happens at all in a given Indiana estate turns entirely on which administration track was chosen, not on the fee amount.
The rest of the arithmetic: Indiana 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 Indiana probate filing fee.