Probate Partners is committed to navigating you through the process as inexpensively as possible, but you should know that, according to our experience and to information available on the web, attorney fees for uncontested probate and estate administration in North Carolina generally run between $2,000 and $5,000. Factors increasing fees for even small estates include
- lost documents
- missing records
- debts unknown at time of filing
- complicated financial portfolios
- unresponsive financial institutions
- hard to reach heirs and beneficiaries
On complex and/or contested estates (we refer to other attorneys for such cases), attorney fees may exceed $10,000.
Court costs will include a base fee of $150, and an assessment of 0.4% of the value of personal property (up to a maximum $6,000 assessment).
In most cases you need not pay attorney fees until the estate is nearly closed.
Our client portal reports all attorney fees in real time so that you are never surprised by them and have an opportunity to discuss any questions earlier rather than later.
We offer several significant strategies for holding costs down:
- You decide what tasks you will undertake and what tasks you will delegate to the firm – we can handle as much as everything, or as little as reviewing your documentary filings before they are submitted to the Court
- Purchasing (or already owning) a $300+ all-in-one printer will save you more than the purchase price in reducing attorney and paralegal time preparing the documents to be filed with the court
- Most tasks that you delegate to the firm can and will be performed by experienced paralegal professionals at a fraction of the cost of an attorney
- Your ability to edit spreadsheets in Excel will also provide cost savings