States With the Highest Executor Fees (2026 Study)

Updated August 13, 2026. Quick answer: of the 34 US jurisdictions whose executor-compensation statute we retrieved from its own official source for this study, 15 set a number you can compute and 18 set none at all — the statute there says only that compensation must be reasonable, and a judge decides. The 34th is North Carolina, which caps commissions at five percent of receipts and expenditures rather than of estate value, so it is named below rather than ranked. Among the 15 that publish a formula, Kentucky and South Carolina produce the largest figure on a $500,000 estate ($25,000 — a cap, not an entitlement) and Wisconsin the smallest ($10,000), a spread of 2.5x, not the order of magnitude the headline rates suggest. The states with the steepest opening percentages are the cheapest states.

The one-paragraph summary, free to quote

A Clear Money Guide study of state executor-compensation statutes, compiled 13 August 2026, finds that only 15 of the 34 US jurisdictions whose statute the authors retrieved from its own official source put any computable number on what an executor may be paid; 18 print no figure at all — in sixteen of them the statute says only that compensation must be reasonable, Delaware sends the question to a court rule, and Colorado repealed its section outright. On an identical $500,000 estate made up of personal property, the 15 formulas produce between $10,000 (Wisconsin) and $25,000 (Kentucky and South Carolina), a median of $14,050 (Missouri). The study’s central finding is that the opening percentage in a schedule predicts the opposite of what readers assume: Wyoming’s 10 percent is the highest headline rate in the country and applies to the first $1,000 of the estate, a maximum of $100, while Wyoming finishes near the bottom of the table. Maryland, whose 9 percent first band runs to $20,000, pays an executor more than any five-percent state on every estate below $77,143.

The ranking: what the statute pays the executor on a $500,000 estate

Ranked by the fee the state’s own schedule produces for a single executor performing ordinary services. Every figure is computed from the statutory bands, not from a survey, an average or a practitioner quote. Read the standard estate before comparing rows: each statute names its own base, and the scenario was chosen so that all 15 evaluate that base on the same money.

Median $14,050. The table is the executor’s line only. In most of these states the estate also pays a lawyer, and in all but a few the lawyer’s fee is set by no schedule at all — that comparison is the subject of a separate study, states where probate costs the most. Court filing fees, bonds, appraisals and publication are excluded everywhere; probate cost by state carries the filing fee for each jurisdiction.

The finding most coverage gets wrong

A schedule’s first percentage is the number that gets quoted, and it is the number that matters least. Wyoming opens at ten percent — the highest executor rate written into any US statute we read — and applies it to the first $1,000 of the estate. The most that band can ever be worth is $100. Wyoming’s top band is two percent, and Wyoming finishes 13 of 15 on a $500,000 estate at $10,350.

• Wyoming opens at 10% and finishes 13 of 15 ($10,350 on $500,000).
• Oregon opens at 7% and finishes 12 of 15 ($10,630 on $500,000).
• Iowa opens at 6% and finishes 14 of 15 ($10,120 on $500,000).
• Missouri opens at 5% and finishes 8 of 15 ($14,050 on $500,000).
• Oklahoma opens at 5% and finishes 10 of 15 ($12,600 on $500,000).

The states that actually pay the most do it with a flat or shallow structure that never steps down: Kentucky and South Carolina cap compensation at five percent of the whole personal estate, so their five percent is worth $25,000 at $500,000 and $50,000 at a million, while Wyoming’s ten percent is worth Wyoming’s ten percent band can never be worth more than $100, whatever the estate.

The crossover a single-column table hides

Maryland’s schedule is nine percent of the first $20,000 and $1,800 plus 3.6 percent of everything above it. That opening band is the most aggressive in the country on a small estate, and it means the ranking inverts below $77,143: under that figure Maryland pays an executor more than any of the four states whose rate is five percent at these sizes — Kentucky, South Carolina, West Virginia and New York — and above it Maryland falls behind. On a $50,000 estate Maryland allows $2,880 against $2,500 in Kentucky; on $500,000 it is $19,080 against $25,000. Any table that publishes one estate size gets Maryland wrong for every reader on the other side of that line.

A ceiling, a floor and an entitlement are not the same number

Every figure in the ranking is a dollar amount produced by a statute, and no two of them mean the same thing. Ranking them without saying so is the error that makes these tables misleading.

• Entitlement — the executor shall receive it for ordinary services: California.
• Court must allow — the court must allow the commissions on settlement of the account: New York.
• Court shall allow — the court shall allow the computed fee unless the executor waives it: Wyoming.
• Must be allowed — where the will provides nothing, the executor must be allowed the commissions: Oklahoma.
• Presumed reasonable — the statute calls the commission reasonable rather than owed: Florida.
• Commission allowed — the statute allows the commission on the stated base: West Virginia.
• Commission — a commission on the stated base, subject to the court: Oregon, Wisconsin.
• Allowed fees — fees the statute allows on the stated base: Ohio.
• Default schedule — a starting point the court may exceed if it does not reasonably compensate the executor: Nevada.
• Ceiling — the statute caps what the court may allow, and the executor may well get less: Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, South Carolina.
• Statutory minimum — the statute calls the schedule a MINIMUM and the court must add to it where reasonable compensation is higher — no extraordinary service required: Missouri.

Missouri is the one that reverses a reader’s instinct completely. Its percentages are the statutory minimum compensation, and RSMo §473.153.1 tells the court to allow more wherever reasonable compensation exceeds them. Iowa’s identical-looking table is the opposite — reasonable fees “but not in excess of” the schedule.

Three statutes pay a commission on property that never enters probate

Ohio, Oregon and West Virginia each add one percent of property outside the administration to the executor’s fee. Ohio and West Virginia measure it as property that would count for estate tax, expressly excluding joint and survivorship property; Oregon measures it as property outside the court’s jurisdiction but reportable for Oregon or federal estate tax, expressly excluding life insurance proceeds. Ohio and West Virginia also add one percent of real estate the estate does not sell. The practical consequence is that in those three states the executor’s fee can exceed what the probate estate’s own schedule produces — the ranking above deliberately excludes those additions, because they depend on facts no table can assume.

The jurisdictions whose statute sets no number at all

Sixteen of these 18 read the same way: the executor is entitled to reasonable compensation, and nothing in the statute says what reasonable is. Delaware and Colorado are the exceptions, and both are worth knowing about. The practical answer there comes from the judge, the county custom and the quality of the executor’s time records — we cover how that decision is actually made in executor fees in reasonable-compensation states.

Colorado is the one worth pausing on: it is not a state that never had a schedule. C.R.S. §15-12-719 existed and was repealed outright in 2011, and the printed code still carries the section number followed by the word “(Repealed)”. A search that finds the citation and stops will report a Colorado executor-fee statute that has not been law for fifteen years.

What this study does not rank, and why

North Carolina sets a number on a different base. N.C.G.S. §28A-23-3(a) caps commissions at five percent, but the base is receipts plus expenditures — money in and money out — fixed in the clerk of superior court’s discretion, and the clerk may take the estate’s professional fees into account when setting it. Five percent of receipts and expenditures is not five percent of an estate, so North Carolina cannot be placed in a table keyed to estate value without misstating it. It is named here rather than ranked.

17 jurisdictions carry no figure anywhere on this page. Their compensation statute was requested from that jurisdiction’s own official source on 13 August 2026 and no statutory text came back. We publish the citation and the reason rather than a number from a secondary source:

Several of those states do have a schedule — Texas, New Jersey, Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas among them — and our executor fee calculator computes them from text read on an earlier date. They are absent from this table because this study publishes only what it re-read at an official source on the day it was compiled.

The standard estate, and why these rows are comparable

Every figure assumes one estate: $500,000 of personal property, one executor, ordinary services only, no real property sold, no property outside the administration, no income earned during administration, and no extraordinary-services allowance. That scenario was chosen because it is the one on which all 15 statutes evaluate their own base on the same money. Each statute’s base is printed in the table below, and where a statute reaches further — New York’s commissions run on sums received and paid out, Wisconsin’s on inventory value less mortgages and liens, Nevada’s on the estate accounted for less liens and encumbrances — the number changes with the facts, and the calculator, not this table, is the right instrument.

No dollar figure on this page is typed by hand. The statutory bands are held in one dataset and every number here is computed from them by a generator, then recomputed by a second implementation written from the statutory text using different arithmetic. The two agree to the cent across 30,360 comparisons.

Your state, in one sentence

Kentucky — KRS 395.150(1). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $25,000 (5.00%), ranking 1 of 15. The base is the value of the decedent’s personal estate, plus 5% of income collected. The statute is a cap, not a promise: compensation “shall not exceed” five percent. A separate 5% runs on income the representative collects, and the court may add more for proven extraordinary services.

South Carolina — S.C. Code §62-3-719(a). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $25,000 (5.00%), ranking 1 of 15. The base is the appraised value of the probate estate’s personal property, plus sales proceeds of real property sold under the will or a court order. A cap of five percent, and the base deliberately excludes real property the estate keeps. The court may approve more for extraordinary services.

West Virginia — W. Va. Code §44-4-12a(a). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $20,000 (4.00%), ranking 3 of 15. The base is all personal estate subject to administration, including its income, plus the proceeds of real estate that is sold. Subsection (b) adds 1% of real estate that is NOT sold and 1% of property outside administration that counts for federal estate tax — but never on joint and survivorship property.

Maryland — Md. Est. & Trusts §7-601(b)(2). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $19,080 (3.82%), ranking 4 of 15. The base is the property subject to administration. The table is a maximum the court may allow, not an entitlement. Its 9% first band makes Maryland the most expensive schedule in the country on a small estate.

New York — SCPA 2307(1). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $19,000 (3.80%), ranking 5 of 15. The base is sums of money received and paid out by the fiduciary. The court “must allow” these commissions. Where the gross principal value is $300,000 or more and more than one fiduciary serves, each may take a full commission — to a maximum of three (SCPA 2307(5)).

Florida — Fla. Stat. §733.617(2). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $15,000 (3.00%), ranking 6 of 15. The base is the inventory value of the probate estate’s assets plus the income earned during administration. The statute calls this commission “reasonable” rather than owed, and subsection (3) allows further compensation for extraordinary services such as selling real property or running the decedent’s business.

Ohio — ORC §2113.35(A). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $15,000 (3.00%), ranking 6 of 15. The base is all personal property received and accounted for, including its income, plus the proceeds of real property sold. Subsection (B) adds 1% of real property not sold and 1% of property outside administration that would have counted for the repealed Ohio estate tax — excluding joint and survivorship property.

Missouri — RSMo §473.153.1. On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $14,050 (2.81%), ranking 8 of 15. The base is the personal property administered plus the proceeds of real property sold under court order. The only floor in the table. The statute calls these percentages the MINIMUM compensation, and the court “shall allow” more where reasonable compensation exceeds them — without any extraordinary service being shown.

California — Cal. Prob. Code §10800(a). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $13,000 (2.60%), ranking 9 of 15. The base is the value of the estate accounted for by the personal representative. The representative “shall receive” this compensation for ordinary services. Above $25,000,000 the court sets a reasonable amount for the excess, so the schedule stops being a formula there.

Oklahoma — 58 O.S. §527(A). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $12,600 (2.52%), ranking 10 of 15. The base is the whole estate accounted for, excluding property not ranked as assets. Where the will provides no compensation the representative “must be allowed” these commissions. Co-executors take one fee as a unit, divided by the court.

Nevada — NRS 150.020(1). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $11,150 (2.23%), ranking 11 of 15. The base is the total amount of the estate accounted for, less liens and encumbrances. Subsection (4) lets the court allow more if the schedule does not reasonably compensate the representative, so this is a starting point rather than a ceiling.

Oregon — ORS 116.173(3)(a). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $10,630 (2.13%), ranking 12 of 15. The base is property subject to the court’s jurisdiction, plus administration income and realised gains. Subsection (3)(b) adds 1% of property NOT subject to the court’s jurisdiction but reportable for Oregon or federal estate tax — life insurance proceeds excluded.

Wyoming — Wyo. Stat. §2-7-803(a). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $10,350 (2.07%), ranking 13 of 15. The base is the decedent’s probate estate accounted for. The court “shall allow” these fees unless the representative waives them in writing, and may allow more where unusual circumstances make the computed fee inequitable.

Iowa — Iowa Code §633.197(1). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $10,120 (2.02%), ranking 14 of 15. The base is the gross assets of the estate listed in the probate inventory. Reasonable fees as the court determines, “but not in excess of” these commissions. Subsection (2) keeps life insurance proceeds out of the base unless they are payable to the estate.

Wisconsin — Wis. Stat. §857.05(2). On a $500,000 estate the statute produces $10,000 (2.00%), ranking 15 of 15. The base is the inventory value of the property the representative is accountable for, less mortgages and liens, plus net principal gains. A single flat rate — the simplest schedule in the country — subject to court approval, and displaceable by a written agreement between the representative and either the decedent or the majority-interest beneficiaries.

Every statute this study reads

Each row was retrieved from the source below on 13 August 2026 and re-read at build time: the page will not compile unless a verbatim string from the statute is present in the retrieved document, with dash, quote and whitespace codepoints normalised first. All 34 pass.

Cite this study

Suggested citation: “States With the Highest Executor Fees: what the statute actually pays,” Clear Money Guide, 13 August 2026, clearmoneyguide.com/states-with-the-highest-executor-fees/.

Librarians, educators, and journalists: this table is CC BY 4.0 — reuse with attribution is welcome, and we answer methodology questions at [email protected]. For an estate size not shown here, the executor fee calculator computes every schedule to the dollar, and the fee is ordinary income to whoever takes it.