Estate planning attorney fees run from about $300 for a simple will to $7,000 or more for a married couple’s full trust-based package. A trust plan for one person generally lands between $2,000 and $5,000. Estates large enough to face federal estate tax often start at $10,000 and climb from there. Online do-it-yourself platforms sit well below all of that, roughly $130 to $600, with real limits on what they can do for you.
How Estate Planning Attorneys Bill
Most lawyers use one of two billing methods, and which one you get shapes the experience more than almost anything else.
Flat fees are the norm for straightforward plans. The attorney quotes a single price for a defined bundle of documents, and you know the total before any work begins. A firm might price a simple will at $400, a power of attorney at $100, and a living will at $50 as individual items, or package everything together at a discount. Flat fees reward efficiency and let you budget precisely.
Hourly billing makes more sense when nobody can predict how much work a plan will need. Estates with business interests, property in multiple states, or blended-family dynamics tend to fall here. Attorneys track time in six-minute increments and bill for every call, email, and research session. Clients often treat early estimates as firm quotes; attorneys treat them as rough guesses. That gap is where friction starts.
For hourly engagements and complex flat-fee matters, many attorneys require an upfront retainer that they draw against as work progresses. When the balance runs low, you replenish it before work continues. Retainer amounts range from a few thousand dollars for moderately involved work to $20,000 or more for sophisticated tax planning.
Fee Ranges by Plan Type
Simple Will Drafted by an Attorney
A lawyer-drafted will for someone with a straightforward estate typically costs $300 to $1,000. That covers an initial consultation, the drafting itself, and a signing session. Costs push toward the upper end when there are multiple beneficiaries with specific bequests, minor children who need guardian nominations, or clients who want the attorney to walk them through every decision rather than arriving with a clear plan.
Trust-Based Plan for One Person
For an individual who wants to avoid probate or needs more control over how assets pass to heirs, a trust-based plan generally runs $2,000 to $5,000. That price reflects the added work of drafting the trust agreement, preparing a pour-over will that catches any assets not transferred into the trust during your lifetime, and helping you begin the funding process. The higher upfront cost often pays for itself by keeping the estate out of probate, which can consume 3% to 7% of an estate’s total value in court fees, attorney costs, and executor compensation.
Married Couples
Married couples who want a complete package (mirrored trusts, wills, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives for both spouses) can expect to pay $3,500 to $7,000. The work roughly doubles, though some firms discount modestly because the documents share a common structure.
Estates Facing Federal Estate Tax
Estates that cross the federal estate tax threshold face steeper planning costs, often $10,000 and up. These plans involve specialized strategies like irrevocable life insurance trusts, spousal lifetime access trusts, or generation-skipping structures designed to minimize the 40% federal estate tax. The current federal exemption is $15 million per individual and $30 million for married couples for 2026.1Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax State estate and inheritance taxes are a separate matter, and more than a dozen states impose them with exemptions far lower than the federal figure, some as low as $1 million. A plan for an estate anywhere near those state thresholds should account for both.
Online and DIY Platforms
If your finances are simple, meaning a home, some retirement accounts, no business interests, an online platform can produce basic documents at a fraction of attorney fees. Individual will packages typically run $130 to $200. Trust-based plans range from $400 to $600 depending on the platform and features. Couples’ packages usually cost $50 to $150 more than individual plans. Some services offer attorney consultations as add-ons for a monthly or annual fee.
The tradeoff is real. Online tools work from templates and can’t advise you on tax strategy, flag conflicts between beneficiary designations and your will, or tailor language for unusual family situations. They are a reasonable starting point for young adults or people with modest assets, less so for anyone with judgment calls to make.
What the Fee Usually Covers
A standard estate plan is built around four documents.
A last will and testament names who receives your property, designates an executor to manage the probate process, and appoints guardians for minor children. Without one, a court distributes your assets under state default rules.
A durable power of attorney lets someone you trust handle your finances (paying bills, managing investments, filing taxes) if you become unable to do so yourself. “Durable” means the authority survives your incapacity. Without this document, your family may need to petition a court for guardianship, a process that costs thousands of dollars and takes months.
A healthcare directive, sometimes called a living will, spells out your medical preferences for situations where you can’t communicate and names a healthcare proxy to make decisions on your behalf. The proxy steps in only after a doctor determines you can no longer make your own medical decisions.2National Institute on Aging. Choosing A Health Care Proxy
Many plans also include a revocable living trust, which holds assets during your lifetime and distributes them after death without probate. Any assets you want the trust to control have to be formally transferred into it, a step called funding that involves retitling accounts, deeds, and beneficiary designations. A trust that was never properly funded is an expensive stack of paper, and the assets pass through probate as if the trust didn’t exist.
Costs Beyond the Attorney’s Bill
Attorney fees are the headline number, but several smaller costs stack up during the process.
- Deed recording fees for transferring real estate into a trust commonly run $15 to $50 per document, sometimes more when state surcharges apply.
- Notary fees run $5 to $15 per signature in most states. Mobile notary services that come to your home charge a premium.
- Property appraisals establish fair market value for tax and distribution purposes. A standard home appraisal runs $300 to $425. Business valuations and specialty appraisals (art, jewelry, antiques) can run $1,000 to $2,500 or more.
- Title searches before transferring property into a trust cost $200 to $400 per property.
Ongoing Trustee Fees for Trust Plans
Setting up a trust is not a one-time expense. If you name a professional or corporate trustee to manage assets, common when there is no trusted family member to serve or when the trust will outlive you by decades, that trustee charges ongoing fees.
Corporate trustees typically charge an annual fee based on a percentage of trust assets, commonly 0.8% to 1.5% per year. On a $1 million trust, that works out to $8,000 to $15,000 annually. Many institutions also set a minimum annual fee regardless of trust size, which can make smaller trusts disproportionately expensive to maintain. Individual professional fiduciaries more often bill by the hour, generally $150 to $300 depending on experience and location. Negotiate the fee structure upfront and write it into the trust document rather than leaving it to a court’s later interpretation.
What Updates and Reviews Cost
An estate plan is not a document you sign once and forget. A full review every three to five years is typical, and sooner if a major life event occurs: marriage, divorce, a new child, the death of a named beneficiary or executor, a move to a different state, or a significant change in asset value.
Minor updates, meaning swapping a beneficiary, changing a trustee, or adding a newly purchased property, typically cost $300 to $500 when handled as a simple trust amendment. More extensive overhauls, like a complete trust restatement that restructures the document to reflect major life changes or new tax law, can run $2,000 or more. A restatement replaces the trust’s terms while keeping the original trust entity intact, so you don’t have to re-fund every asset.
Plans drafted before mid-2025 deserve particular attention. Many contain tax-splitting formulas calibrated to older exemption figures, and those formulas can now direct assets in ways the client never intended.3Internal Revenue Service. Estate and Gift Tax FAQs A short review with your attorney costs far less than the damage an outdated formula clause can do to an inheritance.