Probate Fees
“Probate fees in our state are not that high.” Unfortunately, I hear this from some attorneys who focus their practice on handling probate, and probate is exactly what you get when you rely on a Last Will and Testament for your estate plan. Considering the massive attorney’s fees involved in handling full-blown probate cases, there is a huge financial incentive for attorneys to just “go with the flow” of drafting Wills if it means getting more money down the road.
In this outtake from my webinar “Estate Planning… Bigger Than Beyonce” I review the costs of probate, particularly in regard to lawyer fees as opposed to court costs. Here are the startling statistics:
- An AARP study pegged attorney fees for probate at about $25 billion annually back in 1990, which would be over $50 billion in today’s dollars
- Beyonce’s net worth is only $500 Million
- All of Live Nation’s concert revenue for 2019 (before the bug hit) was only $9.43 Billion – Less than what probate attorneys are getting for handling probate work
- Probate costs are generally 4 to 10 percent of an estate, it varies per state.
Many times when I’m initially meeting with clients and they’ve looked into things, they ask how come they don’t see a lot of attorneys talk about avoiding probate. Or they go to another attorney and they are talking about a will, which they think will make everything go smoothly, no big delays, and then the attorney starts trying to explain that it doesn’t go all that smoothly.
Probate is a big issue but some attorneys don’t talk about avoiding probate because that is their business. Learn more by listening to the entire video HERE.