Skip to Content

We are a Veteran Owned Business, providing 20% discounts for Veterans, First Responders, Elementary and High School teachers. Please contact us to set up a phone or Zoom meeting. Taking care of you and your family, It's What We Do!

Attorney Fees for Serving as Co-Executor in Delaware County, PA

Posted on Mon Mar 30, 2015, on Fees

From our “Ask a Question” Mailbag: Reasonable Delaware County Attorney Fees as Executor

Most Recently Updated July 14, 2018.

“I am the co-executor of my Mother’s Delaware County, Pennsylvania estate, along with her attorney. What fee can he charge?”

Estate Planning Lawyer King of Prussia, PA

Reasonable Delaware County Attorney Fees as Executor

Reasonable Delaware County Attorney Fees as Executor

First, if your Mother’s attorney is serving as the executor and will also be providing your mother’s estate legal services in Delaware County, the attorney should not be charging both an executor’s fee and a fee for legal services based solely on a percentage of the estate.

Pennsylvania has not adopted a statutory fee for legal or executor services based on a percentage of the estate’s assets, but there is a case, which we refer to as “The Johnson Estate” that spells out a guideline for how attorneys and executors should charge for their services. This is a guideline, not the law.

What We Do!

If a case is much easier or much harder than usual, then the reasonable fee could be much lower or higher than what The Johnson Estate describes. Our firm’s general policy is to bill hourly for services, which I believe is more reasonable. Further, if a client asks me to serve as executor, I will ask the client how I should be compensated. Often, they want me to bill hourly. If so, I will document that in the Will itself.

In the end, the attorney’s fee for serving as executor and for legal services to the estate as a probate attorney should be “reasonable”, but how those fees will be calculated … flat fee or hourly…should be agreed to at the beginning.

More Probate Questions?

Paying attorney fees as executors is only part of the overall probate process. By all means, if you wish to learn more, please read my more detailed article, The Probate Process All You Need to Know.

In Conclusion: Reasonable Delaware County Attorney Fees as Executor

I hope that this article was helpful in explaining reasonable attorney fees for probate. Further, I included links to even more detailed information on my website. Therefore, please contact me and let me know how I did. Certainly, your comments and questions are welcome!

Let our Probate Lawyers help walk you through what can be a confusing process. To begin with, call to speak to one of our experienced Probate Attorneys.  By all means, our lawyers are ready to answer your questions. In fact, feel free to contact our office for a free consultation. Ultimately our goal is to make the process as painless as possible!

Wills, Trusts, Probate, and Estate Litigation, It’s All We Do

Tags:

Delaware County, Executor, Pennsylvania, Probate, Probate Attorney, Probate Fees, Probate Lawyer

Peter KlenkPeter Klenk

What Our clients are saying

Klenk Law Logo
Stars

Tina Krovetz

Fantastically easy and efficient team to work with getting our wills done. We will use Klenk again in the years to come. I highly recommend Peter Klenk.

Klenk Law Logo
Stars

Cathy Goodwin

Very friendly and easy to work with - definitely a better experience than I've had with other lawyers! Peter is very detailed and thorough. I've worked on previous versions of my will with other lawyers, and he pointed out things they'd never mentioned. Fast turnaround and very responsive to emails and phone calls.

Klenk Law Logo
Stars

Jacqueline Gowen-Tolcott

We had an excellent experience. Everyone was very personable, professional and efficient.

Klenk Law Logo
Stars

Sydney Magerman

Daniella was fantastically wonderful. A joy to be around and filled our conversations with so much educational knowledge. I’ve learned so much from her about being a great person and I can’t wait to work with her again

Klenk Law Logo
Stars

CEGM

Peters' firm has prepared and updated our Wills and Trusts for the last 15 to 20 years. They know the law and help with your decision making to use the law to your best advantage. Response time to your requests is very reasonable, and final reviews and signing is executed in a timely manor with a thorough coverage of the documents. Our most recent updates to our Wills & Trusts were somewhat complicated, in our opinion, but Peter and his staff handled them effortlessly. As you can tell from this review Peter Klenk's firm is top notch.

Let us put our expertise to work for you.

Free consultation within 24 hours.