There is always a Connecticut probate court fee when you pass away. It does not matter how much your estate is worth (unless you end up with little-to-no assets, which is rare) nor does it matter how many of your assets go through a probate administration process.
Unfortunately, you need to lay common sense aside for a second in order to understand this. Common sense would dictate that if none of your assets go through probate (everything was in a living trust, or jointly owned, or beneficiary-driven, etc.) then there shouldn’t be a probate court fee since the probate court didn’t have to do anything. Well…
The problem is that Connecticut has its own estate tax (of course) that is assessed when you pass away. However, the exemption is extraordinarily high at $9.1 million this year, meaning that you need to have an estate beyond this figure before the Connecticut estate tax kicks in. It’s very rare that I run across clients with estates anywhere close to this level. Nonetheless, an estate tax return needs to be filed with the probate court so that the judge can review it and confirm that no estate tax is due. The problem is that all of the decedent’s assets (both probate and non-probate assets) need to be reported on the return, then the probate court’s fee is based on the overall size of the estate, regardless of how many of the assets ended up going through a probate administration process.
I think the most helpful way to understand this is to look at the probate court fee as more of a tax and not a genuine “fee” since the probate court’s bill is based on the size of your estate and nothing else. A “fee” implies that you’re charged based on all of the work that the clerks and judge had to do, but that’s not actually what the probate court fee is based on.
The good news is that, in the grand scheme of things, the probate court fee is not awful. They use a sliding-scale calculation to determine the fee (click here for an online calculator). For example, a $500,000 estate ends up triggering a $1,865 probate court fee. So, it’s not an earth-shattering cost relative to the size of the estate, but most of my probate clients are surprised there is any fee at all when their loved one went to great lengths in order to keep his/her assets out of probate upon death.
DISCLAIMER: This blog does not offer legal advice, nor does it create an attorney-client relationship. If you need legal advice, consult with a lawyer instead of a blog.
