Find out which route your estate can use

Whether there is a will is one of the questions the statutes actually turn on, alongside the value and, in some states, the year of death and who inherits. The checker asks them in the order your state’s statute asks them.

What a will actually changes

Which shortcut is open

This is the part that costs money. Where a state’s simplified route is written for intestate estates, a will closes it and pushes the estate to the ordinary process, with the court fee, the notice and the representative’s fee that come with it. Where a state publishes companion sections for both cases, as North Carolina and Rhode Island do, the will makes no difference to the ceiling.

What the representative is paid

Several statutes put the will ahead of the schedule. Louisiana reaches its 2.5 per cent only where the testament and the heirs’ agreement are both silent. Oklahoma treats a compensation provision as full compensation unless it is renounced in writing. Wisconsin lets a rate agreed in writing displace its two per cent. South Dakota’s percentage applies only where the will does not provide compensation, or there is no will.

Whether that provision can be refused

Alabama and Minnesota both allow a will provision to be renounced where there is no contract with the decedent, which puts the representative back on the statutory position. Oklahoma requires the renunciation in writing. If the will names a figure you did not expect, the renunciation mechanism is the thing to ask about.

Whether the process is lightened rather than skipped

Idaho allows summary administration with no value cap at all where the surviving spouse is the sole devisee or beneficiary. New Hampshire removes the inventory, the bond and the accounting where a sole beneficiary under the will, or a sole heir, is appointed — but not the appointment itself. Neither is an escape from probate; both are a smaller version of it.

Where the statute turns on whether there is a will

These states say so expressly. Where a state is not listed, its statutes may still deal with the question in ways not recorded on this site, so treat this as what is stated rather than as a complete national map.

Three tools, in the order most people need them

Wills and probate questions

Is probate required if there is a will?

A will does not avoid probate; it directs it. What a will can change is which route is open to you, and in several states that is decisive. New Jersey’s $50,000 surrogate affidavit exists only for intestate estates, Texas’s $75,000 small-estate affidavit requires the decedent to have died intestate, and Georgia’s simplified route is intestate only. North Carolina and Rhode Island publish separate sections for the two cases. Whether your estate needs probate at all is a question for an attorney licensed in your state.

Does having a will make probate cheaper?

Not by itself, and in some states it closes the cheapest door. Where the shortcut is written for intestate estates, a will pushes you to the ordinary route. Where a will names a fee, it can also fix what the representative is paid: in Oklahoma a compensation provision is full compensation unless the executor renounces it in writing, and in Louisiana the testament governs before the statutory 2.5 per cent is reached at all.

Can an executor refuse the fee the will names?

In several states, yes, and the mechanism is renunciation. Alabama and Minnesota both allow a will provision to be renounced where there is no contract with the decedent. Oklahoma requires the renunciation in writing before the statutory commission becomes available. If a will names a figure, read it before you rely on a schedule.

What happens if there is no will?

The estate is intestate and the statute decides who takes. For cost purposes the important part is that several simplified routes are written specifically for this case, so an intestate estate sometimes has a cheaper path available than a testate one of the same size. South Dakota’s executor percentage applies only where the will does not provide compensation or there is no will at all.

Does a will avoid probate if everything is left to my spouse?

It can change the route rather than remove it. Idaho allows summary administration with no value cap where the surviving spouse is the sole devisee or beneficiary. New Hampshire drops the inventory, the bond and the accounting where a sole beneficiary under the will, or a sole heir, is appointed. Ohio’s small-estate ceiling rises from $35,000 to $100,000 where the spouse takes all, Nevada’s from $25,000 to $150,000, and Maryland’s from $50,000 to $100,000.

Does the will need to be filed even for a small estate?

The filing requirements sit in each state’s own procedure and are not a cost figure, so we do not publish a national answer to it. What we can show is which routes are open to a testate estate in your state and what each one costs. Your state page carries the route, the statute and the verification date.

How these figures are verified

Every figure on this page is carried from a state page, and every figure on a state page was checked against the official source — the statute, the court rule, or the court’s own published fee schedule — on the date stamped beside it. No figure appears anywhere on this site that has not been opened and read at its source first. Where a source publishes no figure, we print that absence rather than filling the gap with an estimate.

The sources for each figure are listed on that state’s own page, with a direct link and a date. Our re-check cadence, and what we do when a statute changes, are set out at /methodology/.