Pennsylvania probate filing cost: not published

Why Pennsylvania has no statewide figure

Probate filing fees in Pennsylvania are set by each county's Register of Wills, not by statewide statute; there is no single statewide figure. Where the amount is set: Each county Register of Wills fee schedule.

When a Pennsylvania estate is short, the statute fixes who goes unpaid

Cost planning for an insolvent Pennsylvania estate is really an ordering question, and 20 Pa.C.S. § 3392 answers it. Where "the applicable assets of the estate are insufficient to pay all proper charges and claims in full," the personal representative — subject to any preference given by law to claims due the United States — pays in a fixed order, "without priority as between claims of the same class."

The order is: (1) the costs of administration; (2) the family exemption; (3) funeral and burial costs, plus medicines furnished within six months of death, medical or nursing services performed within that time, hospital services including maintenance within that time, services provided under the medical assistance program within that time, and services performed by the decedent’s employees within that time; (4) the cost of a gravemarker; (5) rents for occupancy of the decedent’s residence for the six months immediately before death; (5.1) claims by the Commonwealth and its political subdivisions; and (6) all other claims.

Two features are worth reading carefully. Administration costs rank first, which is why a Pennsylvania representative’s own properly incurred expenses are not the thing that gets squeezed. And class (3) is bounded by a six-month look-back, so a long final illness can leave part of the medical bill down in class (6) with ordinary creditors.

The Commonwealth’s own claims sit at 5.1 — below funeral, gravemarker and rent, above general creditors. The subsection number itself records that it was inserted later: the section was amended by the Act of February 21, 2006, P.L.45, No.17, effective immediately.

Source: 20 Pa.C.S. § 3392, 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.