Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Connecticut has no statutory percentage fee for the probate attorney, and it does not have one for the executor either. Conn. Gen. Stat. §45a-234 lists fiduciary compensation and attorneys’ fees only as an allowable expense an estate may pay, without setting any rate; the actual reasonableness standard comes from Connecticut case law and Probate Court Rules of Procedure, a different thing entirely from §45a-107, the state’s own graduated probate court cost schedule paid to the court, not the lawyer.
No percentage fee schedule, and no fee-setting statute at all
Connecticut’s probate code, Title 45a, contains no section that fixes a percentage fee for the attorney handling an estate, and none for the executor either. Conn. Gen. Stat. §45a-234, the statute most likely to be cited as governing fiduciary pay, only lists the fiduciary’s power to pay for expenses including fiduciary compensation and attorneys’ fees: compensation is named as a payable category of expense, but the statute sets no rate, percentage, or standard. The working standard instead comes from Connecticut common law, traced to the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in Hayward v. Plant, requiring fiduciary and attorney compensation to be just and reasonable rather than tied to a fixed rate.
How the probate court tests an attorney’s bill
In practice, reasonableness is tested through the Connecticut Probate Court Rules of Procedure, which require a task-based statement of the work performed, evaluated against factors including the size of the estate, the responsibilities involved, the character of the work, the special problems and difficulties encountered, the results achieved, and the time and labor involved. If a fee is challenged, the attorney is expected to justify it with records of the time spent and actions taken. There is no percentage shortcut that avoids this scrutiny.
The real Connecticut trap: the court’s own cost schedule
The genuine Connecticut-specific pitfall is Conn. Gen. Stat. §45a-107, a statewide graduated probate fee schedule based on estate value, scaling up to a $40,000 cap for decedents dying on or after July 1, 2016, with 0.5% monthly interest accruing on unpaid balances. That statute repeatedly describes these amounts as payable to the Probate Court. Because that schedule is the easiest dollar figure to find when someone searches for Connecticut probate fees, it gets mislabeled online as the attorney’s fee or the executor’s cut. It is neither; it is the filing and administration cost the court charges the estate, entirely separate from whatever reasonable amount the attorney is separately paid.
The rest of the arithmetic: Connecticut 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 Connecticut probate filing fee.