New York route screening
A 'small estate' is one leaving personal property with a gross value of $50,000 or less, exclusive of property required to be set off to a surviving spouse/children under EPTL 5-3.1(a). Real property is not covered. The summary voluntary-administration procedure has no waiting period after death, and the clerk charges $1 to file the affidavit.
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: N.Y. Surr. Ct. Proc. Act § 1301 — Viewing most recent revision (from 2019-11-29).
Verbatim threshold text from that source:
A small estate is the estate of a domiciliary or a non-domiciliary who dies leaving personal property having a gross value of $50,000 or less exclusive of property required to be set off under EPTL 5-3.1 (a).
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 reviewed route is limited to personal probate property. A house or other real property is not transferred through this screen, even when the personal-property total is below $50,000. Open the deed and the receiving court’s real-property instructions before assuming the simplified procedure resolves the whole estate.
The statute excludes categories of exempt property that this worksheet cannot classify from a dollar entry alone. A result near the limit remains provisional until those exemptions are identified from the actual property and family facts.
The cited section states no universal waiting period for the value-based route. This site records that as “none stated,” not as permission to file immediately: will status, prior appointments, notices, family rights, and local filing instructions can still control.
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.
New York probate is handled by the Surrogate's Court in each county.
The New York Courts self-help pages (nycourts.gov) return HTTP 403 to automated fetches (Cloudflare interstitial), so no court-resource URL could be verified to return HTTP 200 in this session. Primary statutory text is taken from the New York State Senate's official Open Legislation service (www.nysenate.gov) over HTTPS.
New York's Surrogate's Court forms, including the small-estate (voluntary administration) affidavit, are published by the Unified Court System, whose servers refuse automated requests. No New York court link is published here rather than one this site cannot prove reachable: obtain the affidavit from the Surrogate's Court of the county where the decedent lived.
If the state publishes no statewide form, that is a finding—not a missing link. Contact the Surrogate's Court 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 York eligibility map
The New York 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 York answer | Carry into the case |
|---|---|---|
| What route is being screened? | Voluntary administration / small estate (SCPA art. 13) | 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 with statutory exemptions not classified by this worksheet. | Keep real property, liens, beneficiary transfers, and survivorship transfers classified separately. |
| What is the amount screen? | $50,000 | Use the counted property, not a bank-balance shortcut. |
| What is the time or deadline record? | No universal waiting period stated; SCPA § 1802 bars claims not presented within 7 months from the date letters are first issued, but this is a calendar-month period running from appointment (not a fixed day count), and it interacts with the fiduciary's separate publication/notice practice; a single day number 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? | 1 published schedule; the proceeding and value basis control the total. | Ask the Surrogate's Court about local surcharges, copies, publication, bond, and later filings. |
| What does compensation use? | SCPA § 2307 sets commissions on the sums of money the fiduciary receives and pays out: 5% on the first $100,000, 4% on the next $200,000, 3% on the next $700,000, 2.5% on the next $4,000,000, and 2% on all sums above $5,000,000. Commissions are computed on receipts and expenditures, not on gross estate value. A will may fix different rates for a corporate executor (subd. f). The relevant base is money received and paid out during administration. | 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 | $50,000 |
| Property scope | personal probate property only |
| Value basis | gross value with statutory exemptions not classified by this worksheet |
| Waiting period | No universal waiting period stated |
| Required extra facts | None listed in the registry |
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 York descriptions adjacent to this page\'s main question; they are not a substitute for the source quotations or the receiving court\'s instructions.
SCPA § 2402(7) sets a statewide banded probate/administration filing fee based on the gross estate: under $10,000 = $45; $10,000–under $20,000 = $75; $20,000–under $50,000 = $215; $50,000–under $100,000 = $280; $100,000–under $250,000 = $420; $250,000–under $500,000 = $625; $500,000 and over = $1,250. (The small-estate voluntary-administration affidavit costs $1 under SCPA § 1304.)
1 published schedule; the proceeding and value basis control the total.
SCPA § 2307 sets commissions on the sums of money the fiduciary receives and pays out: 5% on the first $100,000, 4% on the next $200,000, 3% on the next $700,000, 2.5% on the next $4,000,000, and 2% on all sums above $5,000,000. Commissions are computed on receipts and expenditures, not on gross estate value. A will may fix different rates for a corporate executor (subd. f).
SCPA § 2307 sets commissions on the sums of money the fiduciary receives and pays out: 5% on the first $100,000, 4% on the next $200,000, 3% on the next $700,000, 2.5% on the next $4,000,000, and 2% on all sums above $5,000,000. Commissions are computed on receipts and expenditures, not on gross estate value. A will may fix different rates for a corporate executor (subd. f). The relevant base is money received and paid out during administration.
SCPA § 1802 bars claims not presented within 7 months from the date letters are first issued, but this is a calendar-month period running from appointment (not a fixed day count), and it interacts with the fiduciary's separate publication/notice practice; a single day number would mislead.
Court-material note: New York probate is handled by the Surrogate's Court in each county. The New York Courts self-help pages (nycourts.gov) return HTTP 403 to automated fetches (Cloudflare interstitial), so no court-resource URL could be verified to return HTTP 200 in this session. Primary statutory text is taken from the New York State Senate's official Open Legislation service (www.nysenate.gov) over HTTPS. New York's Surrogate's Court forms, including the small-estate (voluntary administration) affidavit, are published by the Unified Court System, whose servers refuse automated requests. No New York court link is published here rather than one this site cannot prove reachable: obtain the affidavit from the Surrogate's Court of the county where the decedent lived.
Arithmetic illustration
The recorded New York ceiling is $50,000, and it is tested against personal probate property only, on a basis this site records as gross value with statutory exemptions not classified by this worksheet. Counted that way, $37,500 sits below the New York figure and $62,500 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 York counts and how it values it are decided before the comparison is made.
| Illustrative counted amount | Comparison to the New York ceiling | What it does not decide |
|---|---|---|
| $37,500 | Below $50,000 | Title, liens, waiting period, appointment, or creditor duties |
| $62,500 | Above $50,000 | Whether another statutory route or court process applies |
Next evidence to collect
Official material
New York publishes no court artifact in this registry. New York probate is handled by the Surrogate's Court in each county.
New York probate is handled by the Surrogate's Court in each county.
The New York Courts self-help pages (nycourts.gov) return HTTP 403 to automated fetches (Cloudflare interstitial), so no court-resource URL could be verified to return HTTP 200 in this session. Primary statutory text is taken from the New York State Senate's official Open Legislation service (www.nysenate.gov) over HTTPS.
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: A small estate is the estate of a domiciliary or a non-domiciliary who dies leaving personal property having a gross value of $50,000 or less exclusive of property required to be set off under EPTL 5-3.1 (a).
What this means: Primary text is taken from the New York State Senate's official Open Legislation service over HTTPS. The page carries the publisher's own currentness marker ('Viewing most recent revision (from 2019-11-29)'), which is pinned and re-checked each release. Confirm anything decision-critical with the Surrogate's Court.
Reviewed source note: No waiting period after the death of the decedent is required.
What this means: Primary text is taken from the New York State Senate's official Open Legislation service over HTTPS. The page carries the publisher's own currentness marker ('Viewing most recent revision (from 2014-09-22)'), which is pinned and re-checked each release. Confirm anything decision-critical with the Surrogate's Court.