Updated August 6, 2026. Quick answer: whether an estate can skip probate turns on one question far more than on the dollar threshold everyone quotes: does your state’s small-estate route reach the house? In most states it does not. Of the 35 states where our own statute data answers that question, 23 cover personal property only and 12 can clear real property. A high threshold in a cash-only state does nothing for an estate whose main asset is a home.
Why the threshold is the wrong headline
Small-estate coverage is usually written up as a single number — the dollar ceiling below which a simplified affidavit replaces probate. That number is real, and on its own it is close to useless for the estates people actually have, because most estates that matter contain a house.
So this page ranks on the dimension that decides the outcome. A state is a full skip if its small-estate route can transfer real property; it is cash only if the route reaches personal property alone. The threshold is reported alongside, as a separate axis — we do not blend the two into a score, because a composite would let a generous ceiling hide the fact that the route cannot touch the asset you care about.
Two consequences worth stating before the table. A $200,000 threshold in a cash-only state and a $50,000 threshold in a full-skip state are not comparable numbers. And in cash-only states the practical workaround is usually not the affidavit at all — it is a transfer-on-death deed, which moves the house outside the estate entirely and is indifferent to the threshold.
The full-skip states
12 states, where the small-estate route can itself clear real property: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Wisconsin.
These are the states where a modest estate containing a home can genuinely avoid probate on the strength of the affidavit alone, provided the value sits under the ceiling in the table below.
The cash-only states
23 states, where the route reaches personal property only: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia.
In these states the affidavit can collect bank accounts, vehicles and personal effects, and it cannot move the house. If the home is the estate, the small-estate procedure is not the answer and no threshold increase will make it one.
The states we cannot answer, named
This is the part most rankings leave out. For 16 states our own statute data does not answer the real-property question, so they appear in the table with the threshold we do hold and no tier: Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Wyoming.
They are listed rather than dropped because a table missing a third of the country reads as complete when it is not. Every headline on this page is stated against the 35 states we can answer, never against 51. If you are in one of the sixteen, the threshold below is sound and the tier is simply unknown to us.
The table
Thresholds are the figure our state pages carry; several are indexed annually and change without legislation. Anchors are per state, so a single row can be linked directly.
| State | Small-estate threshold | Clears real property? | Tier | TOD deed page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $37,075 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| Alaska | $100,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| Arizona | $200,000 | Yes | Full skip | yes |
| Arkansas | $100,000 | Yes | Full skip | — |
| California | $208,850 | Yes | Full skip | yes |
| Colorado | $80,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| Connecticut | $40,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| Delaware | $30,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| District of Columbia | $80,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| Florida | $150,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | yes |
| Georgia | $15,000 | Yes | Full skip | yes |
| Hawaii | $100,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | — |
| Idaho | $100,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| Illinois | $150,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | yes |
| Indiana | $100,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | — |
| Iowa | $100,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| Kansas | $75,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | yes |
| Kentucky | $30,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | — |
| Louisiana | $125,000 | Yes | Full skip | — |
| Maine | $40,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| Maryland | $50,000 | Yes | Full skip | — |
| Massachusetts | $25,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| Michigan | $53,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| Minnesota | $75,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| Mississippi | $75,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | — |
| Missouri | $40,000 | Yes | Full skip | yes |
| Montana | $100,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| Nebraska | $100,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| Nevada | $25,000 | Yes | Full skip | yes |
| New Hampshire | not stated | Yes | Full skip | — |
| New Jersey | $50,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | — |
| New Mexico | $50,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | — |
| New York | $50,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| North Carolina | $20,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| North Dakota | $50,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| Ohio | $35,000, | Yes | Full skip | yes |
| Oklahoma | $50,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | yes |
| Oregon | $75,000 | Yes | Full skip | yes |
| Pennsylvania | $50,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| Rhode Island | $15,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| South Carolina | $25,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | — |
| South Dakota | $100,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | yes |
| Tennessee | $50,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | — |
| Texas | $75,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | yes |
| Utah | $100,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | — |
| Vermont | $45,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | — |
| Virginia | $50,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| Washington | $100,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| West Virginia | $50,000 | No — personal property only | Cash only | yes |
| Wisconsin | $50,000 | Yes | Full skip | yes |
| Wyoming | $400,000 | Not answered by our data | Not answered | yes |
The how-to for each state — forms, waiting periods, who may sign — is on the small-estate hub, which owns that ground. This page owns only the ranking framing. What probate actually costs where it cannot be avoided is on the probate cost cross, and the combined picture is in the cost-of-dying index.
Methods
What this is computed from. Every value comes from data this site already owns and has published: the small-estate threshold set behind the hub, our per-state small-estate procedure extractions, and our live transfer-on-death deed pages. No new research was done for this page and no figure here is inferred.
Coverage, stated exactly. Thresholds: 50 of 51. Real-property answer: 35 of 51, of which 30 rest on high-confidence statutory extractions and the remainder on explicit statements in our own hub text. TOD deed pages live: 33.
What the tiers are not. There is no score, no weighting and no editorial judgement in tier membership. A state is in a tier because a statute does or does not reach real property. We rank facts, not judgments — and where the fact is not owned, the state is marked unanswered rather than guessed.
The TOD column is a site fact, not a legal one. It records whether we publish a transfer-on-death deed page for that state. Its absence is not evidence that a state lacks the instrument.
Sources
Per-state statutory citations sit on the state pages linked from the small-estate hub; the underlying extractions and their confidence grades are recorded in this site’s own research artefacts, read 2026-08-06. Reuse this table freely with attribution and a link.
Honest gaps. Sixteen states have no real-property answer here and are named above. Summary-administration ceilings are a fourth dimension we hold only partially and therefore do not tier on. Thresholds indexed to inflation move annually; the figure for your state should be checked against its own page before you rely on it.
See methodology and corrections. General information about published statutes, not legal advice. No affiliate links, nothing sold.
Correction: three states have a separate real-property route, and the table above understates all three
Published 7 August 2026. The table gives one threshold per state and a yes/no on whether the small-estate route reaches real property. For three states that is too compressed to be safe, because the route that reaches a house is a different procedure with a different cap from the affidavit whose number we printed.
California. The $208,850 figure is the §13100 affidavit and it is personal property. Real property goes by a separate route: AB 2016 (2024) allows a simplified §13151 petition for a primary residence worth up to $750,000. Verified against the statute 2026-08-07: §13152(f)(3) ties that figure to deaths on or after 1 April 2025 and through 31 March 2028, after which it is adjusted under §890. A Californian reading “$208,850” and owning a $400,000 home would conclude they must go through full probate. They may well not have to.
Arizona. A.R.S. §14-3971, as amended in 2025, sets two separate caps — $200,000 for personal property and $300,000 for real property, both net of liens — with different waiting periods (30 days for personal property, six months for real property). The table printed only the first.
Nevada, and this is the one that runs the other way. The $25,000 affidavit of entitlement under NRS 146.080 does not reach real property at all ($100,000 where the claimant is a surviving spouse). Nevada does have routes that clear a house — set-aside without administration for estates up to $100,000 (NRS 146.070) and summary administration up to $300,000 (NRS ch. 145) — but they are not the affidavit, and the table implied they were.
Why this happened, since it is the more useful part. The underlying dataset already carried the correct rule for all three states, with its citations. The table was built from the threshold field alone and the qualifying text was never surfaced — so the data was right and the page was wrong. That is a compression failure, not a research failure, and it is the kind a single headline number invites.
The general lesson, which applies beyond these three: in any state, ask whether the route that clears a house is the same procedure as the one whose dollar figure you were quoted. Often it is not. Our cost-of-dying index carries the California distinction correctly and shows the per-scenario cost of getting it wrong.
Sources: Cal. Prob. Code §§13100–13101 and §13151 (AB 2016) · A.R.S. §14-3971 as amended by HB 2116 (2025) · NRS 146.070, 146.080 and ch. 145. Published as a correction rather than a silent edit, per our corrections policy.