Pennsylvania probate filing cost: not published

What the statute charges

Pennsylvania does not fix this amount in a single statewide schedule, so this site reports it as unknown rather than publishing an estimate that no source supports.

How to verify the amount for this case

Name the proceeding before asking for a total. A small-estate affidavit, an application for letters, formal administration, a later inventory or account, and a certified copy can each carry a different charge. Asking only “what does probate cost?” invites an answer for the wrong filing.

1. Identify the county where the proceeding will be filed.
2. Identify the exact route or petition you expect to use.
3. State the value basis the schedule uses; it is not always the gross estate value.
4. Ask the clerk to separate the opening fee, mandatory surcharges, copies, publication, bond, and later filings.
5. Record the schedule date or rule cited.
6. Record whether payment is due at filing.

Pennsylvania does not provide one operative statewide total for this page. The exact answer must come from the receiving Orphans' Court Division (Register of Wills) and its current local schedule; this site will not turn a base charge into a made-up statewide estimate.

Keep that clerk quote with the estate record and compare it with the itemised statutory lines above. For the broader budget, use the probate cost-line guide; court filing is only one category.

When a Pennsylvania estate is short, the statute fixes who goes unpaid

Cost planning for an insolvent Pennsylvania estate is really an ordering question, and 20 Pa.C.S. § 3392 answers it. Where "the applicable assets of the estate are insufficient to pay all proper charges and claims in full," the personal representative — subject to any preference given by law to claims due the United States — pays in a fixed order, "without priority as between claims of the same class."

The order is: (1) the costs of administration; (2) the family exemption; (3) funeral and burial costs, plus medicines furnished within six months of death, medical or nursing services performed within that time, hospital services including maintenance within that time, services provided under the medical assistance program within that time, and services performed by the decedent’s employees within that time; (4) the cost of a gravemarker; (5) rents for occupancy of the decedent’s residence for the six months immediately before death; (5.1) claims by the Commonwealth and its political subdivisions; and (6) all other claims.

Two features are worth reading carefully. Administration costs rank first, which is why a Pennsylvania representative’s own properly incurred expenses are not the thing that gets squeezed. And class (3) is bounded by a six-month look-back, so a long final illness can leave part of the medical bill down in class (6) with ordinary creditors.

The Commonwealth’s own claims sit at 5.1 — below funeral, gravemarker and rent, above general creditors. The subsection number itself records that it was inserted later: the section was amended by the Act of February 21, 2006, P.L.45, No.17, effective immediately.

Source: 20 Pa.C.S. § 3392, read from the enacting state’s own published code on 2026-09-17. Quoted wording is the statute’s; the surrounding explanation is this site’s reading of it and is not legal advice.