A working-through of what happens to property after a death: the filings a court insists on, the assets that never reach it, and the points where paid legal help changes the result. Written by one person who had to settle an estate and kept the reasoning.
The first quote you get for probate work will arrive as a single number, and that number will hide almost everything worth knowing. Two attorneys in the same county can quote figures that differ by a factor of three and both be honest, because they are pricing different scopes, different levels of court involvement, and different assumptions about how much of the legwork you will do. What a careful reader checks is not the headline figure but the structure underneath it: how the fee accrues, what stops it accruing, what falls outside it, and which pocket it comes out of.
The three billing structures, and what each one is really pricing
Hourly billing prices the attorney's time, usually in six-minute increments, at a rate that often varies by who does the work: the attorney at one figure, a paralegal at a materially lower one. It suits estates where nobody can predict the shape of the thing yet, a possible will contest, a business interest to unwind, an heir nobody can locate. Its weakness is that you are buying an unbounded quantity. A careful reader asks for the paralegal rate, asks what tasks get delegated down to it, and asks for a written estimate of total hours with the assumptions spelled out.
Flat fees price a defined package of work: the petition, the notices, the inventory, the accounting, the final distribution, one or two hearings. They are common for uncontested administrations where the assets are ordinary and the heirs agree. The whole value is in the definition, so the question is what triggers a second fee. Ask whether a contested creditor claim, a real estate sale, an amended inventory, or a beneficiary who stops responding pushes you out of the flat fee and into hourly work at the back of the engagement letter.
Percentage arrangements set the fee as a share of the estate's value, and in a handful of states the statute sets that percentage on a sliding scale for ordinary services. The critical detail is what the percentage is calculated on. Some formulas use the gross value of the probate estate before mortgages and liens are subtracted, which means a house with substantial debt against it can generate a fee far out of proportion to the work of transferring it. Ask whether the base is gross or net, and whether non-probate assets are excluded.
What sits inside the quoted number, and what sits outside it
Almost every fee arrangement, including statutory percentages, divides work into ordinary and extraordinary. Ordinary means the spine of an administration: opening the estate, qualifying the personal representative, notifying heirs and creditors, marshaling assets, filing the inventory and the final account, closing. Extraordinary means litigation, contested claims, tax controversy, selling real property, running a business the decedent owned. Extraordinary services are billed separately and often require court approval, which is a protection for you rather than a formality. Read the engagement letter for the sentence that defines the boundary, because that sentence is the actual price.
Tax work is the most common exclusion people miss. Preparing the decedent's final Form 1040, a fiduciary income tax return for the estate, or a federal estate tax return where one is required is usually outside the probate fee and sometimes outside the firm entirely. The IRS is the authority on which returns an estate owes and when they are due, and the answer turns on income the estate earns during administration as much as on the size of the estate. Confirm in writing who is preparing what, and whether an accountant is being retained separately.
Court costs, publication, and the other bills that land on top
Costs are not fees, and they are almost never included. Expect the court's filing fee for the petition, a per-page or per-certificate charge for certified copies of the letters that banks will demand, and the cost of publishing notice to creditors in a legal newspaper, which is set by the publication and not the attorney. Add certified mail to heirs and known creditors, a recording fee for any deed, an appraiser or probate referee where the court requires a valuation, and the annual premium on a fiduciary bond if the will does not waive one.
Whose money pays
These are administration expenses, payable from estate assets, not from the personal representative's own funds. In practice the timing is awkward, because filing fees and publication come due before the estate has a bank account, so the representative often advances a few hundred dollars and takes reimbursement later. Keep receipts and record each advance the day it happens. Note also that if you sign the engagement letter individually rather than in your fiduciary capacity, you may be personally on the hook, so ask the attorney to state plainly that the estate is the client's source of payment.
Get the structure, the exclusions, the cost estimate, and the reimbursement mechanics in one document before any work starts. An attorney who writes that document clearly is telling you something useful about how the rest of the engagement will go.