Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Tennessee sets no percentage anywhere in its probate code. Both the personal representative and the attorney are paid reasonable compensation under T.C.A. §30-2-606, reviewed by the chancery court and governed by the same professional-conduct reasonableness rule as any other legal fee.
T.C.A. sections 30-2-606 and 30-2-317: reasonable compensation, no schedule
Tennessee’s estate-accounting statute directs the clerk to credit the personal representative with a reasonable compensation for services, with no percentage attached. Section 30-2-317, which sets the priority order for paying estate obligations, lists reasonable compensation to the personal representative and the personal representative’s counsel together as the first-priority cost of administration, treating both roles under the same reasonableness language rather than any fee table.
How it works in practice: chancery court approval under Rule 1.5
A personal representative or attorney must petition the court for payment, and the reviewing chancery court tests the request against Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 8, RPC 1.5, the general reasonableness standard that governs all legal fees in the state. Some counties apply informal internal guideline ranges when evaluating these petitions, but those are administrative practices, not statutes.
Administration costs jump ahead of even funeral expenses
Because T.C.A. §30-2-317 places costs of administration, which explicitly includes reasonable compensation to the personal representative and counsel, as the first class of claims, ahead of the second class covering funeral expenses, an insolvent Tennessee estate pays its personal representative and its lawyer before it pays for the funeral, a genuine, counterintuitive Tennessee-specific consequence of treating attorney and executor compensation as a single top-priority category.
The rest of the arithmetic: Tennessee 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 Tennessee probate filing fee.