If you are settling the estate of a loved one who lived on Long Island, the total cost of probate in the Suffolk County Surrogate’s Court generally breaks down into two parts: a graduated court filing fee set by statute and attorney fees for guiding the estate through the process. Under SCPA § 2402, the court’s filing fee for a
If you are settling a loved one’s estate on Long Island, the threshold question is whether you qualify for a small estate affidavit under SCPA Article 13 (voluntary administration) or whether you must open full probate in the County Surrogate’s Court. The short answer: if the decedent left $50,000 or less in personal property — the qualifying ceiling for voluntary
If you have been named executor in a Long Island will but the full probate process is dragging on, Preliminary Letters Testamentary under SCPA §1412 give you the legal authority you need right now — before the will is fully admitted. In the Suffolk County Surrogate’s Court, these interim letters allow the person named as executor to begin managing and
In Suffolk County, an uncontested probate case typically takes three to six months to complete from the date the petition is filed with the Surrogate’s Court, though larger or more complicated estates can run a year or longer. The single biggest variable is whether everyone entitled to inherit signs a waiver and consent. When all distributees consent, the Suffolk County
When someone dies without a will in Long Island, New York law — not the family — decides who inherits the estate. This is called dying “intestate,” and instead of honoring a written document, the local Surrogate’s Court applies a fixed statutory formula under the Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL) to determine which relatives receive the property. The court
The short answer: New York does not legally require you to hire a lawyer to probate a will in Long Island, but in practice, almost everyone who acts as an executor benefits from one — and in many situations a lawyer is effectively unavoidable. While a named executor can technically file a probate petition on their own behalf in the