Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Maryland does not give the attorney a percentage schedule. Estates and Trusts section 7-602 requires the attorney’s fee to be fair and reasonable, but section 7-602(c) then caps the personal representative’s commission and the attorney’s fee combined at what would be a fair total cost of administering the estate, so the two fees are legally separate but financially capped together.
Section 7-602: the attorney’s fee is reasonable, not a percentage
Section 7-602(a) entitles an attorney to reasonable compensation for legal services rendered to the estate or the personal representative or both, and section 7-602(b)(2) requires that compensation be fair and reasonable in light of all the circumstances considered in fixing an attorney’s fee. No percentage or formula appears in the section.
Section 7-602(c)’s combined ceiling is the real mechanism
Section 7-602(c) requires the court, when allowing a counsel fee, to consider what would be a fair and reasonable total charge for the cost of administering the estate, and directs that aggregate compensation may not exceed that figure. In practice Maryland courts weigh the section 7-601 personal representative commission and the section 7-602 attorney fee together against one ceiling rather than approving each fee in isolation.
Maryland lets some commissions and contingency-fee attorneys skip prior court approval
Section 7-604 lets a personal representative pay commissions without prior court approval when every creditor with an open claim and all interested persons consent in writing, and separately lets an estate pay an attorney under a contingency fee agreement without prior court approval, so long as the payment is later designated as an expense when accounts are rendered to the register of wills.
The rest of the arithmetic: Maryland 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 Maryland probate filing fee.