Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Kentucky has no statutory attorney fee schedule. The 5%, plus 5% of income, figure in KRS 395.150 is the executor’s own commission cap, not the lawyer’s fee. The attorney’s fee is paid as a cost of administration under KRS 396.010 and reviewed for reasonableness under the state’s Rule of Professional Conduct, SCR 3.130-1.5(a).
KRS 395.150 caps what the executor gets, not what the lawyer gets
KRS 395.150 says the compensation of an executor, administrator, or curator for services as such shall not exceed five percent of the value of the personal estate plus five percent of the income collected for the estate, and additional compensation beyond that cap requires the court’s consent under the same section. The text names only the executor, administrator, or curator; it never mentions attorneys, and it is not a fee schedule for legal services rendered to the estate.
How Kentucky actually prices the attorney’s fee
Kentucky routes an attorney’s probate fee through the general priority scheme for estate debts in KRS 396.010, which treats costs of administration, including a reasonable attorney’s fee, as a payable expense of settling the estate rather than as a percentage entitlement. The fee itself is then tested against the reasonableness factors in SCR 3.130-1.5(a), Kentucky’s Rule of Professional Conduct on fees, the same standard that governs a Kentucky lawyer’s fee in any other matter.
No combined ceiling on the two fees
Unlike states that limit the personal representative’s commission and the attorney’s fee to one combined total, Kentucky reviews the KRS 395.150 executor commission and the attorney’s fee as two entirely separate, uncapped calculations. That means a Kentucky family cannot point to any single statutory number to predict the combined professional cost of settling an estate; the executor’s up-to-5%-plus-5% and the lawyer’s separately negotiated fee simply add together.
The rest of the arithmetic: Kentucky 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 Kentucky probate filing fee.