Someone died and I don't know where to start
Protect property, locate the will, order death certificates, and learn what not to do before the court gives you authority.
Estate Settlement Cost & Fee Calculator
Sources and unresolved lines
Reviewed state sources support published amounts. Local charges and unsupported values stay unresolved.
Open the source ledgerWhere are you in the process?
Start from your situation, not ours
I need to know if probate is required and what it costs
Check your state’s simplified-estate limit, find the right forms, and see what the court charges before you file.
I need to estimate costs, fees, and the likely route
Classify assets, estimate court charges and executor compensation, and build a source-linked snapshot you can share with your attorney.
Start with the asset or document blocking you
The settlement work is larger than the fee calculation
A house or other real property
Protect the property, read the deed, separate value from debt, and identify whether the reviewed route counts or transfers it before anyone promises a sale or distribution.
A bank or investment account
Confirm survivorship, beneficiary, trust, or sole ownership and prepare the institution packet without using the old login or mixing estate and personal money.
A probate form or filing
Choose the route first, then use the official statewide form or the receiving county’s packet, fee schedule, and copy instructions.
Just named executor?
A first-week sequence that protects property, identifies authority, and avoids premature distributions while you orient to the role.
Not sure if probate is needed?
Test each asset’s transfer path and identify which institution actually requires court authority before assuming formal administration.
One case, three decisions
A workflow instead of a single misleading number
Classify the assets
See which assets enter the working probate total and which have another transfer path.
Check the likely route
Compare the counted estate with the state's sourced threshold and waiting period.
Understand the cost lines
Separate known court fees, statutory compensation, and local costs that remain unknown.
Compare reviewed executor compensation rulesWhy the numbers elsewhere disagree
A cost figure without a source cannot be checked
Search for the cost of settling an estate in any state and you will get confident numbers that contradict each other. Most of them are not wrong so much as unverifiable: no citation, no date, no statement of what the figure includes. A page that says probate costs a percentage of the estate is averaging estates with real property against estates without, contested against uncontested, attorney-led against self-administered.
This site takes the opposite approach. Every figure is quoted from the source that sets it, carries the date it was last checked against the publisher, and states what it excludes. Where the controlling amount is set by a county rather than by statute, no figure is published at all — because in a cost tool, a confident wrong number is worse than an honest gap.
Court charges are the small part
Filing charges are fixed or capped in most states, and this site computes them exactly where a statute states a schedule. What it cannot compute is usually larger: newspaper publication for creditor notice, a bond premium where no waiver applies, certified copies for every institution that demands an original, recording fees on real property, and professional help. Those are priced commercially or by negotiation, so they are named and left unpriced.
For the general probate rules and filing-fee guide, or thetrustee fee calculator guide, start with the explanation before opening a state-specific answer.
The threshold does not measure what you think
Each state counts something different. Some count personal property only and ignore real estate entirely; some count all probate property. Some measure gross value; some subtract liens first. Two estates with identical net worth can fall on opposite sides of the same limit purely because of how the property is titled — which is why this tool asks about ownership before it asks about value.
Primary-source state coverage
Reviewed rules, not fifty automatic placeholders
A state appears only after its core legal facts have been checked against official legislature or court sources.
California
$208,850 simplified-estate limit
Affidavit for collection of personal property (Prob. Code § 13100) and, for real property, the § 13200 small-value affidavit and § 13150 petition to determine succession
Texas
$75,000 simplified-estate limit
Small estate affidavit (Estates Code ch. 205)
Florida
$150,000 simplified-estate limit
Summary administration
New York
$50,000 simplified-estate limit
Voluntary administration / small estate (SCPA art. 13)
Pennsylvania
$50,000 simplified-estate limit
Settlement of small estates on petition (20 Pa.C.S. § 3102)
Ohio
$35,000 simplified-estate limit
Release from administration
Need the citation behind a state summary? Browse the verified source ledger by state.
Jump straight to a reviewed state answer
If you already know the jurisdiction, open the state guide that carries the reviewed threshold, filing-cost rule, compensation rule, and court-resource path.
Built for a high-stakes moment
What this tool will not do
It will not choose a legal strategy, interpret a will, resolve disputed title, estimate an attorney's bill, or pretend a county fee is statewide. It does not decide who inherits, and it does not calculate tax. When the source does not support a number, the result says what remains unknown and where to verify it.
It also asks for nothing. There is no account, no email capture, and no trial. What you type stays in this browser and is never transmitted, which you can confirm from the privacy policy and, more usefully, from your own browser’s network panel.
Use this as a starting point.
This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Probate law varies by state and county and changes over time. Verify the current rule with the court or a licensed attorney in the relevant state.