New Jersey route screening
For an intestate estate, a surviving spouse/civil-union partner/domestic partner may use the affidavit when total real and personal assets do not exceed $50,000. If none survives, one heir may proceed for all heirs at $20,000 or less with the other heirs’ written consent. The enacted text states no waiting period.
Sources reviewed August 9, 2026. Latest primary-source re-fetch September 15, 2026.
Threshold evidence and currency
Currency: No later session-law supersession is recorded in the reviewed source set for this threshold. The edition/currentness label below is the basis for the published figure.
Controlling citation: P.L.2015, c.232; N.J.S.A. 3B:10-3 and 3B:10-4 — Approved January 19, 2016..
Verbatim threshold text from that source:
Where the total value of the real and personal assets of the estate of an intestate will not exceed $50,000, the surviving spouse, partner in a civil union, or domestic partner upon the execution of an affidavit before the Surrogate of the county where the intestate resided at his death, or, if then nonresident in this State, where any of the assets are located, or before the Superior Court, shall be entitled absolutely to all the real and personal assets without administration, and the assets of the estate up to $10,000 shall be free from all debts of the intestate.
The headline limit is not a count of everything the person owned. It is a test of the property and deductions named by this procedure. Classify title and beneficiary status first; property that transfers by a valid survivorship right, beneficiary designation, or funded trust follows its own transfer path.
This screen counts the probate estate within the statute’s stated scope, not merely cash accounts. Solely owned real property can therefore affect the amount test. That does not necessarily mean the same simplified procedure transfers the house; counting scope and transfer authority are separate questions.
The reviewed value basis is gross for this route. The tool does not subtract a mortgage or other lien from the amount test unless the cited rule says to do so.
No waiting-period number is published because it has not been verified to the same primary-source standard as the threshold.
A separate surviving-spouse ceiling of $50,000 appears in the reviewed rule. The relationship and inheritance condition must be true; checking a spouse box does not decide a disputed family or will question.
Assemble the death date, will status, asset titles, beneficiary confirmations, values, enforceable liens, family facts, and any prior court filing before signing anything. Then use the court publisher’s current artifact for the selected route.
No machine-fetchable statewide Surrogate directory or statewide small-estate form was found. NJ Courts returned HTTP 403 on every tested path, so the dossier supplies an HTTP-200 official county Surrogate entry point and instructs the user to select the county of venue.
Probate is filed with the Surrogate of the county where the decedent lived, and each Surrogate sets its own filing charges, so the statewide directory is the starting point rather than a single county page.
New Jersey Courts serves its deeper probate and Surrogate pages only to interactive browsers, so this site links the self-help centre and leaves the reader to navigate from there rather than publishing a link it cannot prove reachable.
The New Jersey Legislature's Chapter Laws page (https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/chapter-laws) is the official enacted-law entry point, not a court self-help or forms directory, so it is described here rather than listed as a court resource; the court-owned material is the NJ Courts self-help centre linked above.
If the state publishes no statewide form, that is a finding—not a missing link. Contact the Surrogate's Court / Superior Court Chancery Division, Probate Part or clerk in the proper county for its packet and current filing instructions rather than borrowing an unofficial form from another county.
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.
New Jersey eligibility map
The New Jersey threshold is one screen, not a complete legal conclusion. This map pairs the recorded ceiling with the property scope, deductions, date, and court artifact that have to be checked before relying on a likely-qualifies result.
| Question | Recorded New Jersey answer | Carry into the case |
|---|---|---|
| What route is being screened? | Affidavit for assets without administration (intestate estate) | Confirm that the will, prior appointment, family facts, and asset titles fit this route. |
| What property and basis count? | probate property within the rule's stated scope; gross value for this route. | Keep real property, liens, beneficiary transfers, and survivorship transfers classified separately. |
| What is the amount screen? | $20,000 | Use the counted property, not a bank-balance shortcut. |
| What is the time or deadline record? | No waiting-period number verified; Verified: written sworn claims are to be presented within nine months from death. This is a death-trigger presentation/protection rule, not a publication or appointment deadline, and the act protects distributions made before late presentation rather than stating a simple extinction rule. No separate publication-trigger, actual-notice-trigger, or appointment-trigger deadline was verified. | Keep the event that starts each clock with the date; do not combine separate periods into one number. |
| What does the cost record establish? | No single statewide amount is published here; confirm the receiving court's current schedule. | Ask the Surrogate's Court / Superior Court Chancery Division, Probate Part about local surcharges, copies, publication, bond, and later filings. |
| What does compensation use? | N.J.S.A. 3B:18-14 permits 5% of the first $200,000 of corpus received, 3.5% of the excess through $1 million, and 2% above $1 million. Each additional fiduciary receives 1% subject to the statutory cap, and a court may reduce materially excessive commissions. The separate income commission under 3B:18-13 remains UNKNOWN because no current official machine-fetchable text was obtained. The relevant base is gross probate property. | Keep the will, task log, receipts, and accounting base together; extraordinary work is separate. |
Eligibility inputs
A threshold is useful only when the amount is measured the way the source describes. Keep this table with the asset worksheet so an empty or misclassified field cannot look like a confirmed qualification.
| Input | Registry record |
|---|---|
| Threshold | $20,000 |
| Property scope | probate property within the rule's stated scope |
| Value basis | gross value for this route |
| Waiting period | No waiting-period number verified |
| Required extra facts | None listed in the registry |
| Surviving-spouse ceiling | $50,000 |
Case-file context
A route answer is easier to use when the facts that can change it stay in the same record. These are the reviewed New Jersey descriptions adjacent to this page\'s main question; they are not a substitute for the source quotations or the receiving court\'s instructions.
County-specific and filing-detail-dependent. Obtain the current probate/administration fee directly from the Surrogate in the county of venue; no statewide total is asserted.
No single statewide amount is published here; confirm the receiving court's current schedule.
N.J.S.A. 3B:18-14 permits 5% of the first $200,000 of corpus received, 3.5% of the excess through $1 million, and 2% above $1 million. Each additional fiduciary receives 1% subject to the statutory cap, and a court may reduce materially excessive commissions. The separate income commission under 3B:18-13 remains UNKNOWN because no current official machine-fetchable text was obtained.
N.J.S.A. 3B:18-14 permits 5% of the first $200,000 of corpus received, 3.5% of the excess through $1 million, and 2% above $1 million. Each additional fiduciary receives 1% subject to the statutory cap, and a court may reduce materially excessive commissions. The separate income commission under 3B:18-13 remains UNKNOWN because no current official machine-fetchable text was obtained. The relevant base is gross probate property.
Verified: written sworn claims are to be presented within nine months from death. This is a death-trigger presentation/protection rule, not a publication or appointment deadline, and the act protects distributions made before late presentation rather than stating a simple extinction rule. No separate publication-trigger, actual-notice-trigger, or appointment-trigger deadline was verified.
Court-material note: No machine-fetchable statewide Surrogate directory or statewide small-estate form was found. NJ Courts returned HTTP 403 on every tested path, so the dossier supplies an HTTP-200 official county Surrogate entry point and instructs the user to select the county of venue. Probate is filed with the Surrogate of the county where the decedent lived, and each Surrogate sets its own filing charges, so the statewide directory is the starting point rather than a single county page. New Jersey Courts serves its deeper probate and Surrogate pages only to interactive browsers, so this site links the self-help centre and leaves the reader to navigate from there rather than publishing a link it cannot prove reachable. The New Jersey Legislature's Chapter Laws page (https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/chapter-laws) is the official enacted-law entry point, not a court self-help or forms directory, so it is described here rather than listed as a court resource; the court-owned material is the NJ Courts self-help centre linked above.
Arithmetic illustration
The recorded New Jersey ceiling is $20,000, and it is tested against probate property within the rule's stated scope, on a basis this site records as gross value for this route. Counted that way, $15,000 sits below the New Jersey figure and $25,000 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 New Jersey counts and how it values it are decided before the comparison is made.
| Illustrative counted amount | Comparison to the New Jersey ceiling | What it does not decide |
|---|---|---|
| $15,000 | Below $20,000 | Title, liens, waiting period, appointment, or creditor duties |
| $25,000 | Above $20,000 | Whether another statutory route or court process applies |
Next evidence to collect
Official material
No machine-fetchable statewide Surrogate directory or statewide small-estate form was found. NJ Courts returned HTTP 403 on every tested path, so the dossier supplies an HTTP-200 official county Surrogate entry point and instructs the user to select the county of venue.
Probate is filed with the Surrogate of the county where the decedent lived, and each Surrogate sets its own filing charges, so the statewide directory is the starting point rather than a single county page.
Source trail
Each legal input links to the government source reviewed for this page. Source text can change; confirm the current rule before acting.
Reviewed source note: Where the total value of the real and personal assets of the estate of an intestate will not exceed $50,000, the surviving spouse, partner in a civil union, or domestic partner upon the execution of an affidavit before the Surrogate of the county where the intestate resided at his death, or, if then nonresident in this State, where any of the assets are located, or before the Superior Court, shall be entitled absolutely to all the real and personal assets without administration, and the assets of the estate up to $10,000 shall be free from all debts of the intestate.