How Much Does Probate Cost in New York? The Five Real Costs for Long Island Estates in Nassau and Suffolk County (2026)

How much does probate cost in New York?

A New York probate costs the estate a statutory filing fee of $45 to $1,250, an executor commission set by formula in SCPA 2307, and attorney fees that depend on the size and complexity of the estate. For a straightforward uncontested Long Island estate with a house and ordinary bank accounts, families should plan on legal fees in the range of $3,500 to $8,000, with the statutory commission and filing fee on top of that. Contested estates cost multiples of that number.

I want to separate the two halves of this bill, because families almost always focus on the wrong one. The statutory half is knowable today. You can look up the filing fee, you can run the commission formula, and neither number moves. The discretionary half, meaning the attorney's time, is the part that swings, and what swings it is not the size of the estate. It is the number of people who disagree.

Here is the hard truth I give every family in my Nassau County office. A $2,000,000 estate where everyone gets along and the paperwork is clean is cheaper to administer than a $400,000 estate where two siblings are not speaking. Probate does not charge you for wealth. It charges you for conflict, for missing documents, and for heirs who cannot be located. Everything in the rest of this article is either a number you can control before death or a number you cannot control after it.

What is the Surrogate's Court filing fee in New York?

The Surrogate's Court filing fee for a probate or administration proceeding in New York is set by SCPA 2402 and is calculated on the gross value of the estate. It starts at $45 for estates under $10,000 and tops out at $1,250 for estates of $500,000 or more. The fee is paid to the county Surrogate's Court where the decedent lived, which for Long Island means Mineola for Nassau County and Riverhead for Suffolk County.

Note what the fee is calculated on. It is the gross estate, not the net. A house worth $700,000 with a $500,000 mortgage still puts you in the top bracket. The fee is computed initially on the value stated in the petition and adjusted later if the actual estate turns out to be larger, so understating assets on the petition does not save money, it just creates a correction and a delay.

How much does a probate attorney charge in New York?

New York does not set a statutory percentage for probate attorney fees the way it does for executor commissions. Attorneys typically charge hourly, a flat fee for an uncontested probate, or a percentage of the estate, and the fee must be reasonable. Under SCPA 2110 the Surrogate's Court has the power to fix and determine the attorney's compensation payable from the estate, which means an unreasonable fee can be reduced by the court.

In my practice on Long Island, most uncontested probates fall into a flat fee arrangement, because a family that just lost someone should not be watching a clock. A straightforward estate, meaning a valid will, a cooperative family, one or two accounts and a house, commonly runs $3,500 to $8,000 in legal fees. Add a real estate sale, an estate tax return, an accounting proceeding, or a beneficiary who hires their own lawyer, and the number moves up from there. I quote the fee before the work starts and I put it in writing.

Be careful with percentage fee arrangements. Some firms quote probate legal fees as a percentage of the estate, and on a large Long Island estate that percentage can produce a number wildly out of proportion to the work performed. A percentage is not automatically improper, but it is not automatically reasonable either, and the beneficiaries have the right to ask the Surrogate to review it. Ask any attorney you interview to explain in writing what the fee covers, what it does not, and what happens to the fee if the estate becomes contested.

How much does the executor get paid in New York?

The executor's commission in New York is fixed by SCPA 2307 and calculated on the value of assets received and paid out by the executor. The rates are 5 percent on the first $100,000, 4 percent on the next $200,000, 3 percent on the next $700,000, 2.5 percent on the next $4,000,000, and 2 percent on everything above $5,000,000. This is not negotiable and it is not a fee your attorney sets.

Take a $600,000 estate that passes through the executor's hands. The commission is 5 percent of the first $100,000, which is $5,000, plus 4 percent of the next $200,000, which is $8,000, plus 3 percent of the remaining $300,000, which is $9,000. The total commission is $22,000. That is money that comes out of the estate before the beneficiaries see anything.

Now the point most families never hear. Commissions are generally not payable on property that is specifically left to a named person in the will. If the will says "I leave my house at 14 Maple Street to my daughter Anne," that house typically drops out of the commission calculation. If the will instead says "I leave my entire estate in equal shares to my three children," the house is part of the residuary estate and it counts. The same house, the same family, the same value, and a difference of many thousands of dollars in commissions, decided entirely by how the will was drafted years earlier. That is one of the best arguments I know for having a will drafted by a lawyer who is thinking about administration and not just about who gets what.

When a family member serves as executor and is also a beneficiary, they frequently waive the commission, because the commission is taxable income to them while an inheritance generally is not. That is a conversation worth having with counsel before the accounting is filed.

What other probate costs should a Long Island family expect?

Beyond the filing fee, the attorney, and the executor, expect the following costs in a typical Long Island estate:

1. Certified copies and letters testamentary ($6 to $20 each, and you will need more than you think). Every bank, brokerage, transfer agent, and title company wants its own recent certified copy.

2. Service of the citation on distributees who do not sign a waiver. Personal service by a process server on a reluctant or distant heir adds cost and weeks, and a distributee who cannot be located can require service by publication.

3. A fiduciary bond, where the will does not waive it or where the court requires one. Bond premiums scale with the size of the estate and are paid annually until the estate closes, which is another reason a well drafted will waives the bond.

4. Appraisals of real property, business interests, and unusual personal property. A Long Island house almost always needs a date of death value, both for the estate accounting and for the beneficiaries' capital gains basis.

5. Accountants and tax returns. The estate may owe a final individual income tax return, a fiduciary income tax return, and, for larger estates, a New York estate tax return. New York's estate tax cliff makes competent tax advice on a mid-sized Long Island estate genuinely valuable.

6. The cost of delay itself. Carrying costs on a house, meaning taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance, keep running the entire time the estate is open, and on Long Island those carrying costs are not small.

7. Litigation, if it comes. A will contest, a discovery proceeding against someone who took assets, or a contested accounting is billed as litigation and is the single largest cost variable in the entire process.

How much does an estate have to be worth to go to probate in New York?

There is no minimum dollar value that triggers probate in New York. What matters is what the assets are and how they are titled. If the decedent left $50,000 or less in personal property, the estate can usually be handled through the simplified voluntary administration process under Article 13 of the SCPA, often called a small estate proceeding, which costs a $1 filing fee and can frequently be done without full probate.

The $50,000 test looks at personal property only, meaning bank accounts, vehicles, and personal belongings. Real property owned solely by the decedent generally pushes the estate out of the small estate track. Note also what never counts toward probate at all: a house owned jointly with right of survivorship, a bank account with a payable on death designation, a retirement account or life insurance policy with a living named beneficiary, and assets held in a trust. Those pass outside the will entirely, without a Surrogate's Court proceeding.

I meet families every year who are shocked to learn that a $900,000 Long Island house is going through full probate because the deed was never updated after a spouse died, while a $40,000 IRA passed to the children in three weeks because someone filled out a beneficiary form correctly in 1998. Probate cost is decided by paperwork, not by wealth.

How long does it take for a will to go through probate in New York?

An uncontested New York probate typically takes seven to twelve months from filing to distribution, and Nassau and Suffolk County estates involving real property often run longer. The floor is set by statute, because SCPA 1802 gives creditors seven months from the date letters are issued to present claims, and a prudent executor does not make final distributions before that window closes.

The sequence is fairly predictable. The petition and the original will are filed with the Surrogate's Court, the distributees either sign waivers and consents or are served with a citation, the court admits the will and issues letters testamentary, the executor collects assets and pays debts and taxes, and only then are the beneficiaries paid. Getting waivers signed quickly is the single biggest accelerator available to a family, and chasing an unresponsive relative is the single most common delay.

Contested matters live on a different clock entirely. A will contest under SCPA 1404 with document discovery and depositions of the attorney draftsperson and the will's witnesses is measured in years, not months. If you are worried about a contest, the time to address it is while the person making the will is alive and can be examined by a capable attorney, not after they have died.

How do you avoid probate in New York, and does it actually save money?

You avoid probate in New York the same way everywhere else, by making sure assets do not pass under the will. A funded revocable living trust holds title so there is nothing for the Surrogate's Court to administer. Payable on death and transfer on death designations move bank and brokerage accounts directly. Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by beneficiary designation. Joint ownership with right of survivorship transfers automatically at death.

Now the honest accounting, because this is where the trust industry oversells. A revocable living trust costs real money to draft and it only works if it is actually funded, meaning the deed and the account titles are changed. An unfunded trust is an expensive piece of paper, and I have read plenty of them. What a trust reliably buys in New York is privacy, continuity if you become incapacitated, and a much easier path when you own property in more than one state, since out of state real property otherwise triggers a second ancillary proceeding in that state. What it does not do is eliminate the executor's work, the tax returns, or the family conflict. If the fight is coming, a trust changes the courthouse, not the fight.