Kentucky probate filing cost: not published

Why Kentucky has no statewide figure

The harvested statewide statutory schedule (KRS 64.012) is the county CLERK’s fee schedule — e.g., $33.00 to record a will or other probate document of five pages or fewer — which is a recording fee, NOT the District Court cost of opening the estate. The District Court filing/opening cost is not stated in KRS 64.012; no verified primary figure for the court opening fee was obtained. Where the amount is set: KRS 64.012 (county clerk recording fees) for the recording charge; the District Court clerk / Court of Justice for the estate-opening cost..

Kentucky prices a will by the page, and exempts it from the surcharge

Kentucky’s recording costs sit in KRS 64.012(1)(a), a long list of instruments that share one price. Recording and indexing any of them — including, at subdivision w., a "Will or other probate document pursuant to KRS Chapter 392 or 394" — costs $33.00 "if the entire thereof does not exceed five (5) pages."

Above five pages the statute charges $3.00 for each additional page, but it writes an exception straight into the surcharge: the per-page charge applies to everything in the subsection "except any will or other probate document pursuant to KRS Chapter 392 or 394 under subdivision w. of this subparagraph, or any court-ordered name change pursuant to KRS Chapter 401 under subdivision x." A long Kentucky will therefore records for the same $33.00 as a short one. A separate $4.00 applies "for each additional reference relating to same instrument."

The $33 is split by statute rather than kept whole: $27 is retained by the county clerk, and $6 "shall be paid to the affordable housing trust fund established in KRS 198A.710," remitted within ten days after the end of the quarter in which it was received and accompanied by a summary report on a form prescribed by the Kentucky Housing Corporation.

This is a county clerk charge, not the District Court’s. It is the line that attaches to putting the will and probate documents on the public record, and it is separate from whatever the District Court collects to open the estate.

Source: KRS 64.012, 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.