Hawaii personal representative compensation

Hawaii executor fee calculator

HRS § 560:3-719 entitles a personal representative to "reasonable compensation for the personal representative's services." There is no statutory percentage schedule. A will may fix compensation, but the personal representative may renounce that provision before qualifying and take reasonable compensation instead.

Sources reviewed August 9, 2026. Latest primary-source re-fetch September 15, 2026.

How Hawaii executor compensation works

In Hawaii, the personal representative (executor) is the person the court appoints, or the will nominates, to administer the estate. Hawaii compensation is governed by state statute and, where the statute permits, by the terms of the will or a court order, so the lawful Hawaii fee is whatever those authorities set — not a national rule of thumb.

Hawaii does not set a statewide percentage schedule.

The amount is not computable from estate value alone. This page therefore publishes no percentage result; it reports the reasonable-compensation standard the reviewed record supports instead.

What this state does not set

Hawaii does not set one statutory percentage to multiply by the estate. Do not substitute a neighboring state's rate or an informal fee table. The amount depends on the services and accounting in the particular administration, and the will may affect the compensation analysis where the governing rule allows it.

The governing compensation standard

§560:3-719 Compensation of personal representative. A personal representative is entitled to reasonable compensation for the personal representative's services.

How the amount is fixed

HRS § 560:3-719 entitles a personal representative to "reasonable compensation for the personal representative's services." There is no statutory percentage schedule. A will may fix compensation, but the personal representative may renounce that provision before qualifying and take reasonable compensation instead.

Keep the estate accounting, time and task log, receipts, and any will or compensation agreement together. Before taking a fee, ask the Circuit Court how compensation is presented for review in this estate and whether an order or account approval is required. This page cannot decide what a court will consider reasonable.

Hawaii’s commission schedule could not be read from the state’s own site

Hawaii publishes the Hawaii Revised Statutes on capitol.hawaii.gov, but that host refused every request made for this page. Repeated attempts on the date recorded below — including with a current desktop browser user-agent and the usual accept headers — returned HTTP 403 rather than the statute.

The Hawaii State Judiciary self-help area was checked as a second route. Its own navigation lists self-help material for divorce, foreclosure, landlord-tenant, protective orders, regular claims and small claims, and contains no probate section, so it does not carry the provision either.

Hawaii is understood to set personal representative commissions by a printed schedule rather than by a bare reasonableness test, which makes the absence consequential: a schedule is precisely the kind of provision readers expect a site to quote exactly. This site will not quote one it has not read.

Until the statute can be read from the state’s own publication, the authoritative sources are the probate division of the Circuit Court where the estate is administered and the current printed statutes.

The access record, stated precisely so it can be re-tested: the Hawaii Revised Statutes chapter path on capitol.hawaii.gov returned HTTP 403 on a plain request and again with a full desktop browser header set, including a current Chrome user-agent, accept, accept-language and referer. The Judiciary site at courts.state.hi.us returned HTTP 404 for the probate self-help path. Its court-forms index did respond, at roughly 150 KB, but a link scan of that page found no probate form entries at all. The rules-of-court index responded at roughly 165 KB and likewise carried no probate rules link.

That pattern — a live host that answers for everything except the law — is worth naming, because it is easily mistaken for a missing provision. Nothing here suggests Hawaii lacks a compensation rule. It suggests the rule exists and is not being served to the public over the open web at the addresses the state itself advertises.

Hawaii is also the reason this site now distinguishes two different kinds of blank. A figure can be absent because a state never enacted one, or absent because the enacted text could not be retrieved. Those look identical on a page that simply omits the number, so each unreadable provision is recorded here as its own entry rather than being silently skipped.

Authority that would settle this: Haw. Rev. Stat. (commissions of personal representatives). The access attempt described above was made on 2026-09-17. Nothing is quoted from it, because nothing could be read from it; a figure restated from a secondary summary would look like a sourced answer without being one.

Hawaii compensation map

Which figure the Hawaii fee rule actually measures

A percentage is not a fee answer until its base is known. This Hawaii map identifies the compensation standard and the accounting figure it uses, while keeping court approval and extraordinary work outside an invented total.

Hawaii estate administration decision map
QuestionRecorded Hawaii answerCarry into the case
What route is being screened?Collection of personal property by affidavit (HRS § 560:3-1201)Confirm that the will, prior appointment, family facts, and asset titles fit this route.
What property and basis count?personal probate property only; gross value for this route.Keep real property, liens, beneficiary transfers, and survivorship transfers classified separately.
What is the amount screen?$100,000Use the counted property, not a bank-balance shortcut.
What is the time or deadline record?No universal waiting period stated; Hawaii runs multiple independently-triggered claim deadlines that cannot honestly collapse into one number: a four-month bar running from first publication of the notice to creditors (§ 560:3-801(a), published once a week for two successive weeks); a sixty-day actual-notice period for creditors served written notice (§ 560:3-801(b)); and an outer nonclaim bar of eighteen months after death where no notice to creditors has been published or served (§ 560:3-803(a)(2)). Publishing a single figure would mislead.Keep the event that starts each clock with the date; do not combine separate periods into one number.
What does the cost record establish?$150 is the recorded statewide amount.Ask the Circuit Court about local surcharges, copies, publication, bond, and later filings.
What does compensation use?HRS § 560:3-719 entitles a personal representative to "reasonable compensation for the personal representative's services." There is no statutory percentage schedule. A will may fix compensation, but the personal representative may renounce that provision before qualifying and take reasonable compensation instead. The relevant base is the estate accounting.Keep the will, task log, receipts, and accounting base together; extraordinary work is separate.

Compensation record

The Hawaii fee record, band by band

This is the registry view of the compensation rule, separate from the calculator result. It shows whether a rate schedule exists and what accounting base the schedule names. A blank band is not permission to borrow a percentage from another state.

Hawaii has no tier table this site can price from the accepted record. The controlling record is Haw. Rev. Stat. § 560:3-719; read its quoted standard and ask the court how the fee is presented for approval.

Prepare a reasonable-compensation request

Because Hawaii does not publish a percentage table here, the useful output is a record of the work and the accounting figure the court can review. Keep the will or appointment order, the the estate accounting the rule names, a dated task log, receipts, and a separate list of extraordinary work. This worksheet does not predict what the Circuit Court will approve.

§560:3-719 Compensation of personal representative. A personal representative is entitled to reasonable compensation for the personal representative's services.

Record to assembleWhy it matters to the Hawaii review
Will, appointment, or compensation agreementShows whether a document states a fee or leaves the amount to the reviewed standard.
Accounting baseSeparates the estate accounting from the gross asset list.
Dated task and time recordConnects the requested amount to the administration work actually performed.
Receipts and extraordinary-work listKeeps expenses and separately reviewable services out of an unexplained round number.

Case-file context

Keep the Hawaii answer with its neighboring conditions

A route answer is easier to use when the facts that can change it stay in the same record. These are the reviewed Hawaii descriptions adjacent to this page\'s main question; they are not a substitute for the source quotations or the receiving court\'s instructions.

Route context

Hawaii is a Uniform Probate Code state. Personal property of a decedent whose gross Hawaii estate does not exceed $100,000 can be collected by affidavit under HRS § 560:3-1201, presented with a death certificate and with no statutory waiting period. Probate proceedings are filed in the Circuit Court, where the statewide opening fee is $150 under HRS § 607-5 (the (c)(14) probate fee of $100 plus the (c)(32) civil-filing administrative cost of $50). Personal representatives receive reasonable compensation under § 560:3-719.

Hawaii allows collection of a decedent's personal property by affidavit under HRS § 560:3-1201 when "the gross value of the decedent's estate in this State does not exceed $100,000" and no application or petition for appointment of a personal representative is pending or has been granted in Hawaii. The affidavit is presented with a death certificate; the statute states no waiting period, and motor vehicles registered to the decedent may transfer regardless of value.

Cost context

HRS § 607-5, the circuit-court cost schedule, imposes two mandatory charges on a probate filing. Item (c)(14) fixes the fee for "Probate, administration, domiciliary foreign personal representative, or ancillary administration"; item (c)(32) adds a separate administrative cost levied on "all civil filings except those brought by the State or any of the various counties or political subdivisions of the State". A circuit-court probate filing is a civil filing, so both apply. The two statutory components combine to an opening total of $150, itemized in the fee schedule below, and each component is pinned to its own primary-source assertion. The § 607-5 preamble excludes small estates whose amount is fixed by another statute; items (14) and (32) themselves fix these charges.

$150 is the recorded statewide amount.

Deadline context

Hawaii runs multiple independently-triggered claim deadlines that cannot honestly collapse into one number: a four-month bar running from first publication of the notice to creditors (§ 560:3-801(a), published once a week for two successive weeks); a sixty-day actual-notice period for creditors served written notice (§ 560:3-801(b)); and an outer nonclaim bar of eighteen months after death where no notice to creditors has been published or served (§ 560:3-803(a)(2)). Publishing a single figure would mislead.

Court-material note: Probate in Hawaii is handled by the Circuit Court of each judicial circuit. The Judiciary publishes statewide court forms and self-help resources. The $150 probate opening fee is fixed statewide by HRS § 607-5 — item (c)(14) ($100) plus the item (c)(32) administrative cost on all civil filings ($50); the § 560:3-1201 affidavit is a private demand instrument presented with a death certificate, not a court filing.

Arithmetic illustration

See the Hawaii amount screen without mistaking it for a result

The recorded Hawaii ceiling is $100,000, and it is tested against personal probate property only, on a basis this site records as gross value for this route. Counted that way, $75,000 sits below the Hawaii figure and $125,000 sits above it. Both are comparisons to a published number rather than legal outcomes: two estates holding the same total can land on opposite sides of this line, because what Hawaii counts and how it values it are decided before the comparison is made.

Illustrative counted amountComparison to the Hawaii ceilingWhat it does not decide
$75,000Below $100,000Title, liens, waiting period, appointment, or creditor duties
$125,000Above $100,000Whether another statutory route or court process applies

Next evidence to collect

Bring the stated accounting base and the will or court instructions to the compensation discussion.

  1. Record the date of death, the county, and the exact proceeding or affidavit being considered.
  2. Classify each asset by title, beneficiary, trust, real-property status, and the value basis shown above.
  3. Open the official court material below and keep its form or schedule with the estate record.
  4. Do not distribute property until the route, creditor position, and required approvals are resolved.

Official material

Probate in Hawaii is handled by the Circuit Court of each judicial circuit. The Judiciary publishes statewide court forms and self-help resources. The $150 probate opening fee is fixed statewide by HRS § 607-5 — item (c)(14) ($100) plus the item (c)(32) administrative cost on all civil filings ($50); the § 560:3-1201 affidavit is a private demand instrument presented with a death certificate, not a court filing.

Source trail

Records used by this Hawaii map

Compensation source

Each legal input links to the government source reviewed for this page. Source text can change; confirm the current rule before acting.