Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Iowa is a genuine exception, achieved through two adjacent statutes rather than one shared schedule: Iowa Code §633.197 sets the personal representative’s percentage fee, and §633.198, a separate section, caps the attorney’s own reasonable fee at that identical schedule. Both are described as a ceiling on a reasonable fee, not an automatic entitlement, and the dollar breakpoints are old enough that most estates fall almost entirely into the top 2% tier.
Two sections, one schedule, applied as a ceiling
Iowa Code §633.197 allows personal representatives such reasonable fees as may be determined by the court, but not in excess of a schedule of 6% on the first $1,000 of the gross assets of the estate listed in the probate inventory, 4% on the next $1,000 to $5,000, and 2% on everything over $5,000, excluding life insurance proceeds unless payable to the estate. The very next section, §633.198, Attorney fee, is a separate, free-standing statute that allows and taxes as part of the costs of administration an attorney fee for the personal representative’s attorney, such reasonable fee as the court determines, but not in excess of that same §633.197 schedule. So the effect, the identical percentages functioning as the ceiling for both roles, is real, but achieved by cross-reference between two statutes, not one shared clause.
A cap on a reasonable fee, not an automatic entitlement
Both sections anchor on the word reasonable, with the percentage schedule serving only as the outer bound a court cannot exceed for ordinary services; Iowa courts do not simply award the percentage as a matter of course. Section 633.199 separately allows further just and reasonable fees to both the personal representative and the attorney for actual, necessary, extraordinary expenses and services, such as real estate matters, tax issues, disputed claims, or locating unknown heirs, evaluated on standard reasonableness factors and uncapped by the ordinary-services schedule.
The Iowa-specific practical consequence
Iowa practice commonly treats the percentage schedule as the default expectation for routine estates, with many practitioners and courts approving the scheduled percentage for both the personal representative and the attorney without much scrutiny when unopposed, even though the statutory text frames it strictly as a ceiling on a reasonableness inquiry. Because the $1,000 and $5,000 breakpoints have not been updated since at least a 1981 codification, almost the entire value of any modern estate falls into the 2% top tier in practice.
The rest of the arithmetic: Iowa 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 Iowa probate filing fee.