Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: at ordinary estate sizes, the thing people fear costs nothing and the thing nobody mentions costs tens of thousands. Not one state levies estate tax on a $250,000, $500,000 or $1,000,000 estate — every state exemption we have registered starts at $1,000,000 or above. What does cost money is the seven states with a statutory percentage schedule, where settling a $1,000,000 estate carries $23,000 to $53,100 in scheduled fees before anyone argues about anything.
The index: 51 jurisdictions, three estate sizes
Every figure below is computed from statutes this site has already read at the state’s own source. Nothing here is scraped, averaged from surveys, or estimated. Where a state has no rule to compute, the cell says so.
| State | Fee model | Statutory schedule $250k / $500k / $1M estate | Court filing fee | Inheritance tax estate passing to a child | Small-estate route |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $37,075 personal property only — not the house |
| Alaska | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $250 | none | $100,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Arizona | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $306 | none | $200,000 reaches real property |
| Arkansas | statutory percentage | $7,425 / $14,050 / $26,550 | — | none | $100,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| California | statutory percentage | $16,000 / $26,000 / $46,000 | $435 | none | $208,850 affidavit $750,000 residence §13151 petition (AB 2016) reaches real property to $750,000 |
| Colorado | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $199 | none | $80,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Connecticut | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $40,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Delaware | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $30,000 personal property only — not the house |
| District of Columbia | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $80,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Florida | statutory percentage | $7,500 / $15,000 / $29,500 | $400 | none | $150,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Georgia | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | $175 | none | $15,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Hawaii | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $100 | none | $100,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Idaho | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $100,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Illinois | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $150,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Indiana | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $177 | none | $100,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Iowa | statutory percentage | $10,240 / $20,240 / $40,240 | — | none | $100,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Kansas | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $173 | none | $75,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Kentucky | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $30,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Louisiana | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $125,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Maine | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $40,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Maryland | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | $100 | none | $50,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Massachusetts | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $390 | none | $25,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Michigan | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $175 | none | $53,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Minnesota | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $310 | none | $75,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Mississippi | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $75,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Missouri | statutory percentage | $14,850 / $28,100 / $53,100 | — | none | $40,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Montana | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $100,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Nebraska | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | $1,500 / $4,000 / $9,000 | $100,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Nevada | statutory percentage | $8,000 / $13,000 / $23,000 | $270 | none | $25,000 personal property only — not the house |
| New Hampshire | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $150 | none | — |
| New Jersey | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | $100 | levies — rate not published here | $50,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| New Mexico | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $30 | none | $50,000 personal property only — not the house |
| New York | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | $45 | none | $50,000 personal property only — not the house |
| North Carolina | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | $120 | none | $20,000 personal property only — not the house |
| North Dakota | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $80 | none | $50,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Ohio | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $35,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Oklahoma | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | $164 | none | $50,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Oregon | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | $278 | none | $75,000 reaches real property |
| Pennsylvania | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | $11,250 / $22,500 / $45,000 | $50,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Rhode Island | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $15,000 personal property only — not the house |
| South Carolina | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $25,000 personal property only — not the house |
| South Dakota | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $100,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Tennessee | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $50,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Texas | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $75,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Utah | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $360 | none | $100,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Vermont | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $45,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Virginia | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $100 | none | $50,000 personal property only — not the house |
| Washington | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | $200 | none | $100,000 personal property only — not the house |
| West Virginia | reasonable fee | — no statutory schedule | — | none | $50,000 reaches real property |
| Wisconsin | hybrid | — no statutory schedule | $500 / $1,000 / $2,000 0.2% above $10,000 (Wis. Stat. 814.66); $20 only at or below $10,000 | none | $50,000 scope not stated in the statute we read |
| Wyoming | statutory percentage | $10,700 / $20,700 / $40,700 | $70 | none | $400,000 reaches real property |
Schedule figures are the full statutory amount for the estate size shown. In California, Missouri, Iowa and Wyoming the attorney and the personal representative are each entitled to the schedule, so the figures shown are doubled accordingly; in Nevada, Arkansas and Florida the quoted schedule is the attorney’s. Inheritance tax assumes the estate passes to an adult child.
Four things the index shows
1. State estate tax is a top-1% tax, and almost nobody it frightens will ever pay it. Thirteen jurisdictions levy one. The lowest exemption among them is Oregon at $1,000,000; the next lowest are Rhode Island at $1,838,056 and Massachusetts at $2,000,000. At all three scenarios in this index, the number of states charging estate tax is zero. A $1,000,001 estate in Oregon is the first dollar in the country where it starts to matter.
2. The death tax that actually bites is inheritance tax, and it depends on who inherits, not how much. Five states levy one: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Kentucky and Nebraska. For an estate passing to a child, Maryland and Kentucky charge nothing — a child is on Maryland’s statutory exemption list and is Class A in Kentucky, exempt since 1998. Pennsylvania charges 4.5%: $11,250 on a $250,000 estate, $45,000 on a $1,000,000 estate. Nebraska charges 1% of what each person receives above $100,000. New Jersey levies one and this page publishes no New Jersey figure, because we have not read its rate schedule at an official source — see the sourcing note below.
3. Seven states put a percentage on probate. Forty-four do not. On a $500,000 estate the scheduled fees run Missouri $28,100, California $26,000, Wyoming $20,700, Iowa $20,240, Florida $15,000, Arkansas $14,050, Nevada $13,000. Everywhere else there is no percentage at all — the fee is whatever is “reasonable”, tested by a court only if somebody objects. Almost every “probate costs 5%” figure you will read is one of these seven schedules, quoted as though it were national. It is not: what a probate attorney actually costs and the full fee model for every state.
4. Court filing fees are rounding error, and they are the number everyone looks up first. Across the 27 jurisdictions whose filing fee our stored data states outright, the range runs from a few tens of dollars to $2,000 in Wisconsin on a $1,000,000 estate — because Wisconsin is the one state whose filing fee is value-based: Wis. Stat. 814.66 charges “a fee of $20” only where the property subject to administration is “$10,000 or less”, and “a fee of 0.2 percent” above that. At this index’s scenarios that is $500 / $1,000 / $2,000, which makes Wisconsin the highest filing fee among the states we compare, not the lowest. Elsewhere the fee is flat and small — California’s $435 is 1.7% of its own statutory schedule on a $500,000 estate. Outside Wisconsin, the court is not what makes probate expensive.
The finding that changes plans: the small-estate shortcut almost never reaches a house
Every state has a simplified route for small estates, and it is the standard advice for anyone whose estate looks modest. Our statute data says the route is far narrower than that advice assumes. Of the 51 jurisdictions, the small-estate procedure reaches real property in five — Arizona, California, Oregon, West Virginia and Wyoming. It is personal property only in 31, and in the remaining 15 the statute we read does not state its scope.
Put the threshold and the scope together against a real estate — a house as the main asset — and the shortcut nearly vanishes. Two jurisdictions have a small-estate route that both clears a $250,000 estate and carries real property: California, at $750,000, and Wyoming, at $400,000. California is the larger and the newer — Cal. Prob. Code §13151, as amended by AB 2016 for deaths on or after 1 April 2025, allows a simplified petition for a primary residence up to $750,000, and §13100 excludes that property from the ordinary affidavit cap. In most other states a house still means full administration, whatever the threshold says.
That is the single most useful line in this index, because it is the one that changes what people do. If the house is the estate, the small-estate affidavit is not your plan — the thresholds by state, whether a transfer-on-death deed takes the house out of probate, and when probate is required at all.
What is avoidable, and what is not
The costs in this index split cleanly in two, and conflating them is how estate planning gets oversold.
Avoidable by keeping assets out of probate: the statutory schedule and the court filing fee. In California, a $1,000,000 estate carries $46,000 in scheduled fees plus $435 to file — and a funded trust, a transfer-on-death deed or a beneficiary designation bypasses that machinery entirely.
Not avoidable by avoiding probate: inheritance tax. Pennsylvania’s $45,000 on that same estate is a tax on the transfer, not a fee for using the court. Avoiding probate does not avoid it. Anyone selling a trust on the promise of dodging a state death tax is describing a different state’s problem.
What the avoidance itself costs, honestly: a will versus a trust, what funding a trust actually involves (an unfunded trust avoids nothing), and what a will costs.
Method, and what this index refuses to do
Every input is a figure we read at a primary source and stored before this index existed. Fee models, court filing fees and small-estate thresholds come from our 51-state probate dataset; the seven statutory schedules from the statutes cited on each state’s page; the inheritance-tax rules from five state revenue departments and statutes read on 2026-08-04; the estate-tax exemptions from the registered figures behind the estate-tax table. No new research was done for this index. It is arithmetic over evidence we already published.
The tier arithmetic is computed twice. Two independent implementations — a cumulative walk down the brackets and an absolute bracket-edge formulation — run over all 153 state-by-scenario rows at build time, and the build aborts if any row disagrees. It did not.
What this index will not do:
• Publish a New Jersey inheritance-tax figure. Our stored artifact says in terms that its beneficiary classes and rate schedule were not read at an official source. So the row says the state levies one and stops there.
• Invent a percentage for the 44 states without a schedule. There is no number to compute. A “reasonable fee” state has no rate, and printing an average would manufacture exactly the false national figure this page exists to correct.
• Overlay median home values. The scenarios are deliberately standard sizes rather than local estimates. We tried the Census API on 2026-08-06 and it returned nothing; rather than substitute a secondary source, the index ships as designed.
• Model attorney hourly time, executor negotiation, or contested litigation. Those are the biggest real-world variables and none of them is in a statute.
Use this data
The full dataset is free under CC BY 4.0: download the CSV (153 rows, 51 jurisdictions × three scenarios, every field including the ones that say “not published”).
Cite as: Clear Money Guide, The Cost of Dying Index 2026, 2026. https://clearmoneyguide.com/cost-of-dying-index/
More of our computed data is at statistics and the data library. See methodology and corrections — statutes change every session, and when one of these figures moves, the page moves with it and says when.
General information about published statutory figures, not legal or tax advice about any particular estate. There are no affiliate links on this page and nothing on it is sold.
Reuse this. The table above is free to republish with attribution — take the CSV, or put one of our calculators on your own site from the embed library. No permission needed, no fee, and the credit link is the only condition.
The same small-estate data, ranked on the dimension that decides whether a home can pass outside probate — the skip-probate ranking.
All the numbers, kept current. This page uses 17 figures from our claims register — every figure we track is on one page, each with the year it applies to and a plain statement of what makes it move.
The other half of this question is what actually gets passed on, and there the honest answer is a shape rather than a number: about half of all inheritances are under $50,000, while transfers over $1m carry roughly 40% of the dollars — which is why the Federal Reserve does not publish an average inheritance.