Arizona executor fees

Arizona lets the people a representative hired ask the court to cut their own fees

Arizona’s compensation section, A.R.S. § 14-3719, is the uniform text: reasonable compensation for services, a right to renounce a will’s compensation provision before qualifying where no contract with the decedent governs, a right to renounce all or part of the fee, and a written renunciation that may be filed with the court. There is no Arizona percentage schedule.

The review provision is where Arizona is worth reading closely. Section 14-3721 lets the court review, after notice to all interested persons, the propriety of employing any person, the reasonableness of that person’s compensation, and the reasonableness of the compensation the representative set for their own services. The petition may come from an interested person “including any person employed by the personal representative” — so the professionals the estate is paying are themselves among those who can put the fee arrangement in front of a judge.

The section ends with a clawback rather than a warning: “Any person who has received excessive compensation from an estate for services rendered may be ordered to make appropriate refund.” Payment already taken is not settled by having been taken.

Where administration is supervised, no petition is needed at all — the court may act on appropriate motion. In practice that means an Arizona representative who sets their own fee has done something provisional until the accounting is approved.

Source: A.R.S. §§ 14-3719, 14-3721, read from the enacting state’s own published code on 2026-09-17. Quoted wording is the statute’s; the surrounding explanation is this site’s reading of it and is not legal advice.