A probate attorney's fee agreement is usually two or three pages, and the number that matters is rarely the one printed largest. What governs the eventual cost is the definition of the work, the treatment of anything outside that definition, and whether the fee is measured against time spent or against the size of the estate. Those are separable questions, and an executor who separates them before signing tends to be less surprised nine months later. The three common structures are hourly, flat fee, and a percentage set by state statute.
Hourly billing, and where the meter actually runs
Hourly work is priced in increments, commonly a tenth of an hour, and the increment matters more than it sounds: a three-minute phone call and a six-minute one may cost the same. Ask which timekeepers will touch the file, because a paralegal preparing an inventory at a lower rate is often the difference between a modest bill and a large one. Ask also whether travel, court waiting time, and email are billed, and at what rate. A retainer is a deposit against those hours, not a cap, and most agreements require you to replenish it once it falls below a stated floor.
Hourly suits estates where the shape of the work is genuinely unknown: a missing heir, a house in another state, a business interest nobody has valued. It is the structure that punishes an executor who calls constantly and rewards one who batches questions, gathers documents before asking for help, and does the clerical work personally. That asymmetry is worth naming out loud in the first meeting, since some attorneys will happily let you handle the notices and the account statements and bill only for what needs a license.
Flat fees and the boundary line
A flat fee buys a defined set of tasks, and the entire value of the arrangement lives in the definition. A typical scope covers the petition, the notices, the letters of administration, the inventory and appraisal, and the final accounting and discharge for an ordinary uncontested administration. What sits outside is where the money reappears: selling real property, preparing the decedent's final Form 1040 or a fiduciary return, responding to a creditor claim you intend to dispute, and anything a beneficiary decides to litigate. Ask for the exclusions in writing, and ask what hourly rate applies when the flat fee stops covering the file.
The cost gap between an uncontested filing and a contested one is not a matter of percentages. An uncontested administration in a cooperative family is a sequence of forms filed on a schedule, and the fee reflects a predictable number of hours. A will contest, a removal petition, or a fight over whether a transfer during the decedent's lifetime was a gift converts the matter into litigation with depositions, motions, and hearing dates, and the bill scales accordingly. Flat fees rarely survive that transition, which is precisely why the switching clause deserves a slow read.
Percentage fees, where the state still sets them
A minority of states retain statutory fee schedules that compute attorney compensation as a graduated percentage of the estate's value, stepping down as the estate grows. California is the best known; Florida uses presumptively reasonable percentages; several other states, including Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Wyoming, and Arkansas, keep schedules of their own. Two details decide whether the arrangement is fair to a particular estate. First, whether the percentage runs on the gross value or the net, because a house with a large mortgage counts at full value under a gross calculation. Second, whether extraordinary services, such as a sale or a contest, are billed on top.
Which account pays, and what to ask first
Attorney fees are an administration expense of the estate, paid from the estate account rather than from the executor personally, and in supervised administrations the court usually approves them before or at the final accounting. If you advance money before the account exists, keep the receipt and treat it as a reimbursable expense rather than a gift. Administration expenses can also matter for tax purposes, and the IRS is the authority on how they are handled between the estate's income tax return and any federal estate tax return.
The useful first-consultation questions are narrow. Who does the work and at what rates, what falls outside the quoted fee, what happens if a beneficiary objects, and which third-party costs, filing fees, publication, appraisers, a surety bond, are yours to pay separately. Ask for a written estimate of the total through discharge, then ask what would make it wrong.