Massachusetts executor fees

Massachusetts publishes no fee schedule, and its cheapest route has no fee at all

M.G.L. c. 190B, § 3-719 is the uniform provision, printed in the General Laws under the bracketed uniform heading “Compensation of Personal Representative.” A personal representative is entitled to reasonable compensation for services. Where a will provides for compensation and there is no contract with the decedent about it, the representative may renounce that provision before qualifying and take reasonable compensation instead. The representative may also renounce the right to all or any part of the compensation, and a written renunciation of fee may be filed with the court.

Comparing that against Montana’s § 72-3-631, Arizona’s § 14-3719 and Nebraska’s § 30-2480 produces no difference in substance — all four are the same uniform sentence. Massachusetts went no further: the General Laws fix no percentage, and unlike Minnesota and Nebraska they enumerate no factors for the court to weigh. There is no statutory Massachusetts number to quote.

The Massachusetts-specific lever is on the other side of the process. Where § 3-1201 applies — an estate entirely of personal property, a motor vehicle plus no more than $25,000 of other personal property — the estate is handled by a voluntary personal representative, which is not a court appointment. No appointment means no personal representative in the § 3-719 sense and so no compensation entitlement to measure. Establishing which of the two tracks an estate is on answers the fee question more reliably than reading § 3-719 does.

Source: M.G.L. c. 190B, §§ 3-719, 3-1201, 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.