Florida Executor Fee Calculator

Florida Statutes §733.617 sets out what the personal representative — the person most states call the executor — is presumed to earn for ordinary services. The schedule walks the estate’s compensable value through tiers: 3% of the first $1 million, 2.5% of the next $4 million, 2% of the next $5 million, and 1.5% of everything above $10 million. The tiers stack — a larger estate doesn’t re-rate the earlier dollars, it just adds thinner slices on top.

“Presumed” is the load-bearing word. Unlike California, where the schedule is the fee, Florida’s statute says these amounts are presumed reasonable: the estate can pay them without anyone proving they’re fair, which is why most estates simply use the schedule. But the presumption cuts both ways — on petition, a court can lower the fee for an estate that ran itself or raise it for one that turned into a second job. Predictable by default, adjustable when the work and the number don’t match.

The base is the compensable value: the inventory value of the probate assets plus income the estate earns during administration. Property that passes outside probate — joint accounts, payable-on-death designations, living-trust assets, and often Florida’s protected homestead — never enters the base at all, which can make the fee far smaller than the size of everything the person owned.

A worked example

Take $500,000 of compensable value. All of it sits inside the first tier, so the fee is 3% straight through: $15,000, or 3.0% of the estate. Now take $2,000,000. The first $1,000,000 earns 3% = $30,000; the remaining $1,000,000 sits in the 2.5% tier = $25,000. Presumptive fee: $55,000 — 2.75% of the estate, a smaller share of a bigger number, because the second million is rated thinner than the first.

Those figures are for ordinary services. Selling real property, running a business, or handling litigation can support additional compensation the court approves separately — so on a complicated estate the schedule is where the fee conversation starts, and the personal representative’s honest ledger of what was done is what justifies anything beyond it.

Common questions

Is the fee mandatory, or can it change? It can change — the schedule is presumptive, not mandatory. In practice that makes it the starting point courts respect: most estates use it as written, and nobody has to argue the number. But any interested person can petition, and the court can move the fee in either direction based on the actual work. The personal representative can also waive some or all of it, as family executors often do.

Does the estate also pay the attorney? Usually, yes — under a separate presumptive statute, §733.6171: roughly $3,000 on the first $100,000, then 3% of the next $900,000, with thinner tiers above $1 million. The estate typically pays both fees, so this page shows about half the professional-fee picture. The probate cost calculator puts the two together with court costs.

Does my house count in the base? Often not. Florida’s protected homestead — the home the state constitution shields for a surviving spouse or heirs — generally passes outside the probate estate, so it stays out of the compensable value. For many families the house is the biggest thing the person owned, which makes this the rule that most changes the fee. Homestead law is its own world, with descent restrictions and exceptions; a probate attorney sorts out which side of the line your house is on.

This is the statutory arithmetic as of September 2026 — Florida Statutes §733.617, verified against the codes on Sep 2, 2026. It is mechanics, not legal or tax advice: courts approve fees, statutes get amended, and your estate’s facts decide what applies.