Florida Probate Costs Calculator

How this calculator works

Florida probate runs under Chapter 733 (Probate Code — Administration) of the Florida Statutes. Every decedent who dies owning Florida-situs assets in their individual name (other than the Florida-homestead residence, which passes outside probate by operation of law) leaves an estate that must be administered through the circuit court. The procedural framework is well-defined, the cost structure is largely statutory, and the timeline is predictable. This calculator gives the family and the personal representative a planning-stage estimate of total probate cost before counsel is engaged, plus the recommended administration path under F.S. § 735.201 (summary) or F.S. Chapter 733 (formal).

The four headline outputs:

1. Recommended administration path. Florida probate has two procedural tracks. Summary administration under F.S. § 735.201 is available when the non-homestead estate is $75,000 or less, or when the decedent has been dead more than 2 years. Formal administration under F.S. Chapter 733 is the default for everything else.
2. Attorney's presumptively reasonable fee. Under F.S. § 733.6171(3), Florida sets a statutory fee schedule that compensation paid under is "presumed to be reasonable." This is the conventional benchmark used by Florida probate counsel and clients on uncontested estates.
3. Personal representative's fee. F.S. § 733.617 provides for "reasonable compensation" to the personal representative (the executor) on an identically-structured schedule. As a planning estimate the calculator uses 50% of the attorney's fee — the conservative end of the typical 50%-to-100% range used by Florida probate counsel.
4. Total probate cost and timeline. Attorney plus PR plus filing fee plus miscellaneous costs (bond premium, publication of notice to creditors under F.S. § 733.2121, appraisals, recording fees), plus the typical timeline window for the recommended path.

Summary administration: the $75,000 (or 2-year) fast track

F.S. § 735.201 carves out a streamlined administration path for two distinct categories of estates. The first category — modest estates — is value-based: if the value of the entire estate subject to administration (excluding property exempt from creditor claims, most importantly the Florida-homestead residence) is $75,000 or less, summary administration is available. The second category is time-based: if the decedent has been dead more than 2 years, summary administration is available regardless of estate value. The reasoning is procedural: F.S. § 733.710 bars all creditor claims 2 years after death, so the formal-administration creditor process (publication of notice, 3-month claim window, claim adjudication) becomes unnecessary.

Summary administration is fast, cheap, and procedurally light:

• A verified petition for summary administration is filed by any interested person, identifying the decedent, the assets, the beneficiaries, and the basis for summary eligibility.
• The court issues an order of summary administration directing distribution of the assets to the beneficiaries — sometimes after a hearing, often on the papers if the petition is unopposed.
• There is no personal representative appointment, no letters of administration, no formal creditor process, no inventory, and no accounting.
• The typical timeline from filing to order is 3 to 6 months; total cost (attorney plus filing plus publication) typically runs $1,500 to $5,000.

The procedural lightness has tradeoffs. Some asset custodians — particularly out-of-state brokerage firms, retirement-plan administrators, and life insurance carriers — will not accept an order of summary administration as authority to release assets and will demand letters of administration, which only formal administration can produce. When the estate holds custodied financial assets, formal administration is sometimes the practical choice even when summary administration is technically available; the calculator's "force formal administration" toggle handles that case.

Formal administration: F.S. Chapter 733

For estates above $75,000 where the decedent died within the past 2 years, formal administration under F.S. Chapter 733 is the default and only procedural path. The arc is longer and more involved:

• Petition for administration filed by an interested person, identifying the decedent, the will (if any), the proposed personal representative, and the heirs and beneficiaries.
• Letters of administration issued by the court appointing the personal representative and giving the PR formal authority to act on behalf of the estate.
• Notice to creditors published in a local newspaper under F.S. § 733.2121 — the publication triggers the 3-month creditor claim window under F.S. § 733.702. Known creditors must also be served directly.
• Inventory of estate assets filed with the court (F.S. § 733.604), describing every asset and its date-of-death fair market value.
• Creditor claim adjudication. The PR reviews each claim, pays valid claims from estate assets in the statutory priority order under F.S. § 733.707 (administration expenses first; then funeral expenses; then taxes; then statutory exempt property and family allowance; then class-by-class), and objects to disputed claims.
• Final accounting (sometimes preceded by interim accountings on long-running estates) listing every receipt, every disbursement, and the proposed distribution.
• Petition for discharge and order of discharge closing out the administration and releasing the personal representative.

The typical formal-administration timeline is 6 to 18 months on uncontested estates. Contested matters — will contests under F.S. § 732.5165, elective-share litigation under F.S. § 732.201, creditor-claim litigation, beneficiary disputes — can extend the timeline materially and trigger "extraordinary services" attorney fees under F.S. § 733.6171(4) on top of the statutory schedule.

The F.S. § 733.6171(3) attorney fee schedule

Florida is one of a handful of states that publishes a statutory probate attorney fee schedule. F.S. § 733.6171(3) provides that the following compensation "is presumed to be reasonable" for ordinary services in formal administration:

• $1,500 on estates of $40,000 or less
• $2,250 on estates of $40,001 to $70,000
• $3,000 on estates of $70,001 to $100,000
• 3% of the next $900,000 ($100,001 to $1,000,000)
• 2.5% of the next $2,000,000 ($1,000,001 to $3,000,000)
• 2% of the next $2,000,000 ($3,000,001 to $5,000,000)
• 1.5% of the next $5,000,000 ($5,000,001 to $10,000,000)
• 1% of value above $10,000,000

The schedule is the default Florida probate counsel benchmark for uncontested administration. The presumption can be rebutted — F.S. § 733.6171(4) authorizes the court to award additional compensation for "extraordinary services" (will contests, elective-share litigation, federal estate tax return preparation, sale of real estate, post-mortem tax planning), and F.S. § 733.6171(7) allows alternative fee arrangements with appropriate disclosure and beneficiary consent. The schedule itself is not a ceiling, and it is not a floor; it is the presumptive-reasonable middle of the range.

For the PR's compensation, F.S. § 733.617 provides for "reasonable compensation" on a parallel schedule that mirrors the attorney's. Florida probate counsel typically benchmark the PR fee at 50% to 100% of the attorney's fee depending on the PR's level of involvement; the calculator uses 50% as the conservative default planning estimate.

The Florida homestead exception

Under Fla. Const. Art. X § 4 and F.S. § 732.401, the decedent's Florida-homestead residence passes outside probate to the surviving spouse and lineal descendants by operation of law. The homestead is not part of the probate estate for fee-base purposes — the F.S. § 733.6171(3) attorney fee schedule runs against the non-homestead estate value only. The homestead is also protected from most creditor claims under Art. X § 4(a), so even insolvent estates typically pass the homestead to the family free of debt.

Homestead descent has nuance. If the decedent was survived by a spouse but no minor children, the surviving spouse takes fee simple title (or, by election under post-2010 statutory amendments, a 50% tenant-in-common share). If the decedent was survived by a spouse and minor children, descent is restricted: the spouse takes a life estate with a vested remainder in the lineal descendants, or (by election) a 50% tenant-in-common share. Homestead status must be established at the date of death, and the fact-specific issues — was the property the decedent's primary residence, was a homestead exemption claimed, did the decedent abandon the homestead before death — are common litigation flashpoints. Consult a Florida-licensed probate attorney for the specific case; the calculator surfaces homestead value as informational context but does not handle homestead-descent disputes.

Florida has no state estate tax

Florida imposes no state estate tax and no state inheritance tax. Florida's pick-up estate tax — which mirrored the federal state-death-tax credit — was eliminated in 2005 when the federal credit was phased out under the 2001 EGTRRA legislation, and Florida has not enacted a replacement in the intervening two decades. Florida Constitution Art. VII § 5 also prohibits state income taxation of natural persons, so income earned by the estate during administration is not subject to Florida state income tax.

The only estate-tax exposure a Florida decedent has is the federal estate tax under IRC § 2001, which applies only to estates above the IRC § 2010 unified-credit exemption (approximately $13.61M per decedent in 2024, indexed annually for inflation). A married couple can effectively shelter twice that amount by using portability of the deceased spouse's unused exemption (DSUE) under IRC § 2010(c)(4), filing a timely Form 706. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act sunset provision is scheduled to lower the exemption to approximately $7M per decedent (inflation-indexed) starting January 1, 2026 unless Congress extends the higher exemption; estates near or above the projected sunset amount should consult an estate-planning attorney about pre-sunset planning options.

A worked example: $500,000 estate, no homestead

A Florida decedent dies leaving a $500,000 non-homestead estate: a $200,000 brokerage account, $150,000 of bank deposits, a $100,000 Florida non-homestead rental condo, and $50,000 of personal property. There is no Florida-homestead residence (the decedent rented the condo where they lived). The decedent died last month, so the years-since-death clock has just started.

The calculator returns:

• Recommended path: Formal administration under F.S. Chapter 733. The non-homestead estate value of $500,000 exceeds the $75,000 summary-administration threshold, and the decedent has not been dead more than 2 years.
• Attorney's statutory fee under F.S. § 733.6171(3): $3,000 plus 3% of the next $400,000 (the amount above the $100,000 third-tier boundary), which equals $3,000 plus $12,000 equals $15,000.
• Personal representative's fee under F.S. § 733.617 at the 50% planning benchmark: $7,500.
• Filing fee ($400) plus publication and miscellaneous costs ($1,500): $1,900.
• Total estimated probate cost: approximately $24,400.
• Timeline: 6 to 18 months from issuance of letters of administration to order of discharge.
• Florida state estate tax: zero. The estate is well below the federal $13.61M exemption, so no federal estate tax either.

The strategic planning read: $24,400 of probate cost is roughly 4.9% of the estate value — a real number, but a familiar one for Florida formal administration in this size range. Compare to a fully-funded revocable living trust holding the same assets: trust administration under F.S. Chapter 736 would typically cost $5,000 to $10,000 in attorney fees and complete in 2 to 4 months. The probate-avoidance value of trust funding during life is substantial at this estate size; the calculator surfaces this implicitly by showing the cost of the probate alternative.

Probate avoidance: trust, JTWROS, TOD/POD, lady-bird deeds

The most common Florida probate-avoidance techniques work by removing assets from the decedent's individual name before death (or pre-positioning them with a non-probate transfer mechanism):

• Revocable living trust holding the decedent's non-homestead assets. Trust administration runs under F.S. Chapter 736 and avoids probate entirely; the trustee distributes per the trust instrument without court involvement. Trust fees mirror the F.S. § 736.1007 schedule, which is similar to but slightly lower than the § 733.6171(3) probate schedule.
• Joint tenancy with right of survivorship (or tenancy by the entireties for married couples) on real estate and bank accounts. The surviving joint owner takes by operation of law at death, outside probate.
• Transfer-on-death (TOD) or pay-on-death (POD) designations on brokerage accounts, bank accounts, and motor vehicles under F.S. § 319.22(2). The beneficiary takes by contract at death.
• Lady-bird (enhanced life estate) deeds on Florida real estate. The grantor retains full lifetime control (including the power to sell, mortgage, or revoke) but the property passes automatically at death to the named remainder beneficiaries without probate.
• Named beneficiaries on retirement accounts, IRAs, and life insurance. These pass outside probate by contract.

Florida-homestead already passes outside probate by operation of law under Art. X § 4 and F.S. § 732.401, so no special structuring is required for the homestead residence itself. The probate-avoidance work focuses on everything else.

What the calculator does not do

This is a planning-stage estimator. It does not:

• Replace probate counsel. Florida probate involves substantive legal judgment — homestead-descent analysis, elective-share planning, federal estate tax planning, creditor-claim evaluation, beneficiary disputes. Consult a Florida-licensed probate attorney for the specific case.
• Compute extraordinary-services fees. F.S. § 733.6171(4) authorizes additional compensation for extraordinary services (will contests, elective-share litigation, Form 706 preparation, real-estate sales, post-mortem tax planning). These can double or triple total attorney fees and are not modeled.
• Handle ancillary administration. Out-of-state decedents who owned Florida-situs property require ancillary administration under F.S. § 734.102 — a parallel proceeding to the domiciliary probate. The calculator assumes Florida domicile.
• Compute trust administration costs. Trust administration runs under F.S. Chapter 736 and uses a parallel fee schedule under F.S. § 736.1007. For trust administration estimates, consult separate trust-administration counsel.
• Project elective-share or homestead-descent outcomes. Florida's elective share under F.S. § 732.201 entitles the surviving spouse to 30% of the elective estate; homestead descent under F.S. § 732.401 has its own restrictions when the decedent was survived by a spouse and minor children. These fact-specific outcomes are outside the calculator's scope.

How this page is maintained

The substantive statutory framework — F.S. Chapter 733, § 733.6171, § 733.617, § 735.201, § 732.401 — has been stable for decades. The F.S. § 733.6171(3) attorney fee schedule has not been amended materially since the structure was last reorganized. The Florida-homestead-descent rules under Fla. Const. Art. X § 4 and F.S. § 732.401 have been settled Florida law since the 2010 amendments. The federal estate tax exemption is reset annually for inflation under IRC § 2010 and is subject to the scheduled 2026 TCJA sunset; we monitor each Florida legislative session and the federal exemption-amount adjustment, and refresh this page within the quarter after any material change.

Last reviewed: 2026-05-15 against F.S. Chapter 733, § 733.6171, § 733.617, § 733.2121, § 733.710; F.S. § 735.201; F.S. § 732.401 and Florida Constitution Art. X § 4; IRC § 2001 and § 2010.