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Tennessee personal representative compensation

Tennessee executor fee calculator

Tennessee has no statutory percentage schedule; the personal representative receives reasonable compensation fixed by the court. The section named in the task, Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-323, was verified (Justia discovery) to govern 'advances for property maintenance expenses' (Acts 1997, ch. 426), NOT compensation — so it must not be cited for the compensation standard. No enacted Public Chapter restating a Tennessee PR-compensation standard was located (GA 100–114), and the codified provisions are LexisNexis-only, so the operative standard is not quoted from a verified primary source and is recorded as UNKNOWN.

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

1. Where and when
Private by design: entries stay in this browser.
2. Compensation base

Ownership determines whether an asset usually enters probate. Choose “Not sure” when title or beneficiary status has not been confirmed.

Asset 1

Asset 2

Your working estimate

Tennessee estate snapshot

Gross probate propertyNot yet counted
Court chargeSet locallyTennessee probate/small-estate filing fees are county-clerk fees under Tenn. Code Ann. § 8-21-401 and vary by county; the Small Estates Act itself only cross-references that fee authority rather than stating a dollar amount.
Scheduled executor compensationMore information needed2 asset entries have no value entered.Tennessee has no statutory percentage schedule; the personal representative receives reasonable compensation fixed by the court. The section named in the task, Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-323, was verified (Justia discovery) to govern 'advances for property maintenance expenses' (Acts 1997, ch. 426), NOT compensation — so it must not be cited for the compensation standard. No enacted Public Chapter restating a Tennessee PR-compensation standard was located (GA 100–114), and the codified provisions are LexisNexis-only, so the operative standard is not quoted from a verified primary source and is recorded as UNKNOWN.

This route check is general information, not legal advice. It does not test every eligibility condition, creditor issue, will provision, local fee, or asset-title fact.

How Tennessee executor compensation works

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

This site publishes no compensation figure for Tennessee.

Tennessee has no statutory percentage schedule; the personal representative receives reasonable compensation fixed by the court. The section named in the task, Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-323, was verified (Justia discovery) to govern 'advances for property maintenance expenses' (Acts 1997, ch. 426), NOT compensation — so it must not be cited for the compensation standard. No enacted Public Chapter restating a Tennessee PR-compensation standard was located (GA 100–114), and the codified provisions are LexisNexis-only, so the operative standard is not quoted from a verified primary source and is recorded as UNKNOWN.

The calculator above will not return a Tennessee compensation number, because there is no verified rule to apply. A percentage borrowed from a neighbouring state would look authoritative and be wrong: compensation rules differ sharply between states, and the base they apply to differs even where the rate matches. Some states pay on the whole estate, some only on personal property, and some on money actually received and paid out, so the same estate can produce very different lawful fees.

What to do instead. Ask the Chancery Court (Probate Court in Davidson and Shelby Counties) whether it publishes a compensation schedule, a local rule, or a standing order on fiduciary fees, and ask whether a fee request must be approved before or after the work. Read the will first: where a will fixes compensation, that term usually governs unless someone petitions to change it.

Whatever standard applies, the record is what determines the outcome. Keep a contemporaneous log of dates, hours, tasks and the reason each was necessary, and keep it separate from estate expenses you paid out of pocket. A representative who can show the work is in a far stronger position than one asking a court to accept a round number after the fact, and beneficiaries are entitled to see how a fee was arrived at.

Why no Tennessee compensation figure appears on this page

Tennessee does not publish its code on a state-run website that serves the statutory text. The Tennessee Code Annotated is distributed under an exclusive arrangement through LexisNexis, and the entry point advertised as the free public version redirects into a JavaScript application that returns no text to a plain request.

On the date recorded below, the redirect target returned a script-only shell of roughly 3.7 KB with no statutory content, so the compensation provision could not be read. Every neighbouring state on this site — Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey — has its text published on a government host, which is why those pages quote a rule and this one does not.

The consequence is deliberate. This site does not restate a Tennessee percentage or a "reasonable compensation" formulation taken from a law-firm summary, because a figure copied from a secondary source and presented in the same typography as a quoted statute is indistinguishable, to a reader, from one that was actually verified.

The reliable route for a Tennessee estate is the clerk of the court with probate jurisdiction in the county of venue, who applies the current code to the accounting the estate actually files.

Compensation is the harder of the two Tennessee blanks to work around, because unlike a filing fee it is not something a clerk quotes in advance. A percentage schedule, if one applies, is read against the value the accounting reports; a reasonableness standard, if that is the form it takes, is decided by the court on the record the representative builds. Neither can be estimated from the outside, and the difference between the two changes what a representative should be documenting from the first month.

What can be said without the text is structural. Tennessee’s neighbours split cleanly on this question: New Jersey publishes a hard schedule — 5% on the first $200,000 of corpus, 3.5% on the excess to $1,000,000, 2% above that — while Pennsylvania publishes only that the court "shall allow such compensation … as shall in the circumstances be reasonable and just," and Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida and Oregon each land somewhere between. A reader who assumes Tennessee resembles whichever neighbour they know best has a better-than-even chance of being wrong.

Authority that would settle this: Tenn. Code Ann. tit. 30 (compensation 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.

Tennessee compensation map

Which figure the Tennessee fee rule actually measures

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

QuestionRecorded Tennessee answerCarry into the case
What route is being screened?Small estate probate — petition for limited letters of administration/testamentary (Tenn. Code Ann. tit. 30, ch. 4, "The Small Estate Probate Act," enacted by 2023 Pub. Ch. 297)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?$50,000Use the counted property, not a bank-balance shortcut.
What is the time or deadline record?45 days after death; Tennessee runs multiple separately-triggered claim deadlines that cannot be collapsed: a four-month period from first publication of the notice to creditors and an actual-notice period (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 30-2-306, 30-2-307), the ultimate bar (§ 30-2-310(a)-(b)), and the TennCare-specific limits (§ 30-2-310(c)). Only the TennCare framework (Pub. Ch. 102 (2021), which merely ADDS § 30-2-310(c)) was machine-harvestable; the general publication/actual-notice bar in §§ 30-2-306/307/310(a)-(b) lives in the Lexis-locked code and no enacted Public Chapter restating it was located across GA 100–114.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 Chancery Court (Probate Court in Davidson and Shelby Counties) about local surcharges, copies, publication, bond, and later filings.
What does compensation use?No compensation amount is recorded here: Tennessee has no statutory percentage schedule; the personal representative receives reasonable compensation fixed by the court. The section named in the task, Tenn. Code Ann. § 30-2-323, was verified (Justia discovery) to govern 'advances for property maintenance expenses' (Acts 1997, ch. 426), NOT compensation — so it must not be cited for the compensation standard. No enacted Public Chapter restating a Tennessee PR-compensation standard was located (GA 100–114), and the codified provisions are LexisNexis-only, so the operative standard is not quoted from a verified primary source and is recorded as UNKNOWN.Keep the will, task log, receipts, and accounting base together; extraordinary work is separate.

Compensation record

The Tennessee 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.

Tennessee has no tier table this site can price from the accepted record. The accepted primary-source lane is still unresolved, so this site withholds a percentage.

Case-file context

Keep the Tennessee 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 Tennessee 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

Tennessee's small-estate procedure is governed by "The Small Estate Probate Act" (Tenn. Code Ann. tit. 30, ch. 4), which 2023 Pub. Ch. 297 substituted in place of the former affidavit route. For personal-property-only estates of fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) or less, a competent adult heir (or named executor) petitions the Chancery/Probate Court 45 days after death for limited letters of administration/testamentary of a small estate. Filing fees are county-clerk fees and vary; executor compensation is reasonable compensation set by the court.

Tennessee's small-estate procedure was REPLACED by 2023 Public Chapter 297, which deleted Title 30, Chapter 4 in full and substituted "The Small Estate Probate Act." The former clerk-certified affidavit route (2022 Pub. Ch. 665) is superseded. Under the current Act a "small estate" is a probate estate in which the value of the probate property (personal property only) does not exceed fifty thousand dollars ($50,000). After the expiration of forty-five (45) days from the decedent's death — provided no petition for appointment of a personal representative has been filed — one or more competent adult heirs (or, if testate, the named executor) file a PETITION with the court for the issuance of "limited letters of administration of a small estate" (or limited letters testamentary). The court, not the clerk by affidavit, issues the limited letters; the recipient is the personal representative, a bond equal to the estate value may be required, and limited letters expire about one year after issuance. Upon good cause shown the court may waive the 45-day wait. If assets discovered during administration exceed $50,000, the matter may be converted to full probate.

Cost context

Tennessee probate/small-estate filing fees are county-clerk fees under Tenn. Code Ann. § 8-21-401 and vary by county; the Small Estates Act itself only cross-references that fee authority rather than stating a dollar amount.

No single statewide amount is published here; confirm the receiving court's current schedule.

Deadline context

Tennessee runs multiple separately-triggered claim deadlines that cannot be collapsed: a four-month period from first publication of the notice to creditors and an actual-notice period (Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 30-2-306, 30-2-307), the ultimate bar (§ 30-2-310(a)-(b)), and the TennCare-specific limits (§ 30-2-310(c)). Only the TennCare framework (Pub. Ch. 102 (2021), which merely ADDS § 30-2-310(c)) was machine-harvestable; the general publication/actual-notice bar in §§ 30-2-306/307/310(a)-(b) lives in the Lexis-locked code and no enacted Public Chapter restating it was located across GA 100–114.

  • Small-estate procedure CORRECTED: 2023 Pub. Ch. 297 replaced the affidavit route with a court petition for limited letters of administration/testamentary of a small estate. Threshold ($50,000) and 45-day wait are unchanged (with a new good-cause waiver of the wait). The full codified chapter text remains Lexis-locked, but the enacted public chapter is the controlling primary source.
  • General creditor-claim bar (§§ 30-2-306/307/310(a)-(b)) is UNKNOWN — Lexis-locked; PC 102/2021 only ADDS the TennCare subsection (c) and does not restate the general (a)/(b) bar.
  • Personal-representative compensation is UNKNOWN — Tennessee uses court-set reasonable compensation and § 30-2-323 (the section the task named) is actually property-maintenance advances; no enacted act restates a compensation standard.

Court-material note: Probate jurisdiction in Tennessee sits in Chancery Court in most counties, but in Davidson and Shelby Counties a dedicated Probate Court exists. There is no statewide small-estate form or statewide filing-fee schedule; under the 2023 Small Estate Probate Act the petition for limited letters is filed with, and the fee set by, the county court clerk (Tenn. Code Ann. § 8-21-401).

Arithmetic illustration

See the Tennessee amount screen without mistaking it for a result

The recorded Tennessee ceiling is $50,000, and it is tested against personal probate property only, on a basis this site records as gross value for this route. Counted that way, $37,500 sits below the Tennessee 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 Tennessee counts and how it values it are decided before the comparison is made.

Illustrative counted amountComparison to the Tennessee ceilingWhat it does not decide
$37,500Below $50,000Title, liens, waiting period, appointment, or creditor duties
$62,500Above $50,000Whether 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 jurisdiction in Tennessee sits in Chancery Court in most counties, but in Davidson and Shelby Counties a dedicated Probate Court exists. There is no statewide small-estate form or statewide filing-fee schedule; under the 2023 Small Estate Probate Act the petition for limited letters is filed with, and the fee set by, the county court clerk (Tenn. Code Ann. § 8-21-401).

Source trail

Records used by this Tennessee map

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