How Much Does a Personal Representative Get Paid in Florida?

Florida Statute 733.617: The Commission Schedule

Florida does something most states do not. It puts a number on the personal representative’s pay. In a formal administration, the representative is entitled to a commission, payable from the estate assets without a court order, and the statute presumes a tiered rate to be reasonable.

The rate applies to the compensable value of the estate, meaning the inventory value of the probate assets plus the income the estate earns during the administration. Assets that never pass through probate (beneficiary-designated accounts, a funded trust, a home that passed by a lady bird deed) are not in the calculation at all.

Two clarifications keep this honest. First, the commission covers ordinary services; work beyond the ordinary (selling property, litigation, tax proceedings, running the decedent’s business, dealing with the protected homestead) earns additional reasonable compensation on top. Second, presumed reasonable is not mandatory. It is the default the court will accept without question, not a floor anyone must charge. It is also separate from the attorney’s fee, which follows its own schedule. Our probate cost calculator runs both together so you see the whole picture.

Executor Fees in Florida: Same Job, Different Name

If you searched "executor fee Florida" and found statutes talking about someone else, you did not miss anything. Florida retired the words executor and administrator and calls the role the personal representative, whether or not there is a will. The commission schedule above is the executor fee, under Florida’s own vocabulary. So a New York will that names you executor of a Florida estate makes you the personal representative here, with the same tiered pay. Our personal representative guide covers the rest of the job, including who can serve, how appointment works, and the duties that come with it.

A Worked Example: The Commission on a $600,000 Estate

Say the probate estate is a $450,000 house that must go through probate, $140,000 in accounts titled in the decedent’s sole name, and $10,000 of income earned during the administration, for a compensable value of $600,000. The whole amount sits in the first tier, so the presumed-reasonable commission is 3%, or $18,000.

On a larger estate the tiers stack. A $2,000,000 compensable value earns 3% on the first $1 million ($30,000) plus 2.5% on the second $1 million ($25,000), for $55,000 before any extraordinary services. Both figures are our computation from the statutory schedule, not numbers printed in the statute, and they come off the top of the estate before the beneficiaries share. That is worth sitting with for a moment. On many Florida estates the representative’s commission is as large as the attorney’s fee, and the family controls whether it is taken at all.

The Will Can Say Otherwise (and You Can Say No)

The schedule is only the default. If the will sets the representative’s pay by specific terms (a stated amount, a different rate, a fee schedule it points to), the representative is entitled to what the will says. A vague nod to "commissions allowed by law" does not count as specific; that leaves the statutory schedule in charge.

Here is the twist most people miss. The representative can usually renounce the will’s fee provision and take the statutory commission instead, unless there was a written contract with the decedent about compensation (or the will points to the representative’s own regularly published fee schedule). So a will that tries to cap a non-family representative at a token amount may not actually hold. And the door swings the other way too. The representative may renounce all or any part of the compensation, which is the formal name for waiving the fee, the move family members make constantly and the one we document cleanly in the file.

One more guardrail was added for wills signed or republished on or after October 1, 2020. An attorney who drafted the will (or a person related to that attorney) and is named in it as personal representative gets no compensation for serving unless the attorney is related to the will-maker or made specific written disclosures that the will-maker signed. If your parent’s lawyer named himself, the fee question deserves a close look.

Family Members Serving: Take the Fee or Waive It?

Most Florida personal representatives are a spouse or an adult child, and for them the schedule creates a genuine decision, because of tax. The commission is taxable income to the person who takes it. What that same person receives as a beneficiary is generally not income at all. A daughter who is the sole beneficiary gains nothing by paying herself an $18,000 commission. It is her own inheritance coming back to her with an income-tax bill attached. She waives, in writing, and the accounting shows zero.

The answer flips when the work and the shares diverge. A son who spends a year administering the estate while two siblings watch from out of state is entitled to be paid for it, and the commission comes off the top before the three of them split what remains. Taxed or not, that can be the fairer outcome, and the will-maker can head off the argument entirely by addressing the fee in the will. The final tax answer belongs with your tax preparer; we flag the choice and put the numbers side by side at the consult.

This is the same decision trustees face, with one structural difference. Trustees get the word "reasonable," personal representatives get a schedule. A trustee’s pay is whatever is reasonable under the circumstances, argued factor by factor if anyone objects; a personal representative starts from a rate the statute already blessed. Our Florida trustee fees guide is the twin of this page for the trust side.

When Personal Representative Fees Get Fought

The commission is payable without a court order, but it is not beyond review. On the petition of any interested person, the court can increase or decrease the compensation, weighing factors the statute lists, including the promptness, efficiency, and skill of the administration, the responsibilities assumed and the potential liabilities, the value and complexity of the estate, the results for the beneficiaries, and the representative’s role in tax work, among others. A representative who let the estate drift for years, or who billed "extraordinary" fees for ordinary tasks, can be cut back; one who genuinely carried a hard administration can defend the fee with records.

Two structural rules feed these fights. Extraordinary services are open-ended by design, and inflated extraordinary fees are a recurring complaint in probate disputes. And when a will names co-representatives, each of two is entitled to a full commission on estates of $100,000 or more, doubling the cost of the role; with more than two, the equivalent of two full commissions is split among them. Parents name all the children to be fair, and the estate pays for the gesture.

If you are a beneficiary staring at a fee that looks wrong, or a representative whose fee is under attack, this is litigation we handle in court. Our probate litigation page covers how those disputes actually run.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The sole-beneficiary daughter. An only child serves as personal representative of her mother’s $500,000 estate. The schedule would pay her $15,000 (our computation), but every dollar of it would come out of her own inheritance and come back to her as taxable income. She signs a written renunciation, and the estate closes with no commission taken.

The brother who did the work. Three siblings inherit equally; the one in Florida spends a year as representative, selling the house and clearing a creditor claim. He takes the commission on the $600,000 estate, $18,000 off the top, plus reasonable compensation for the extraordinary work of the sale. His siblings grumble at the consult and stop grumbling when they see the statute.

The co-representative surprise. A father names both children co-representatives "so no one is left out." On his $400,000 estate, each is entitled to a full $12,000 commission (our computation), $24,000 in total. The children waive down to a single shared fee once they understand the rule, which is the conversation the will could have had for them.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §733.617 (compensation of personal representative): the commission payable without court order on the compensable value (inventory value plus income during administration); the presumed-reasonable schedule of 3% on the first $1 million, 2.5% above $1 million to $5 million, 2% above $5 million to $10 million, and 1.5% above $10 million; extraordinary services (§733.617(3)); the will’s specific compensation terms and the representative’s right to renounce them or renounce all or part of the compensation (§733.617(4)); multiple representatives (§733.617(5)); court adjustment on petition of any interested person and the factors (§733.617(7)); the attorney-drafter compensation bar for wills executed or republished on or after October 1, 2020 (§733.617(8)). flsenate.gov (retrieved 2026-08-11)
• Fla. Stat. §733.6171 (the separate presumed-reasonable fee schedule for the attorney for the personal representative). Contrast Fla. Stat. §736.0708 (trustees receive reasonable compensation; no schedule).
• Worked-example dollar amounts on this page are computed from the §733.617(2) schedule and are not figures printed in the statute.

Updated on August 11, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. The statutory commission is presumed reasonable, not mandatory, and what a particular representative should take depends on the estate; tax treatment belongs with your tax preparer. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.