The cost of settling an estate can vary dramatically depending on where someone lives, and those differences are increasingly shaping how Americans approach estate planning.
A new report from LegalZoom finds probate costs on a $500,000 estate range from about $5,000 in Texas to roughly $26,000 in California, with some states requiring families to spend more than a year navigating the court-supervised process. Those higher costs and longer timelines are prompting more consumers to consider trusts, which generally allow assets to bypass probate altogether.
The findings come as the U.S. prepares for what many analysts have called the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history, with anywhere from $84 trillion to $124 trillion expected to pass between generations over the next two decades.
Probate is the legal process of administering a deceased person’s estate. According to the report, the process typically eats away between 3% and 8% of an estate’s value and can take six to nine months on average. LegalZoom estimates that roughly 2.6 million estates enter probate each year.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the report found that states with higher probate costs tend to see greater trust adoption. In California, where probate is among the most expensive and time-consuming – an estate worth $500,000 can lose an estimated $26,000 to the probate process over the course of 12 to 18 months – about 72% of customers chose trusts. Nevada followed closely at 71%.
By contrast, wills remain the dominant estate planning tool in states with more streamlined probate systems, including Pennsylvania and Texas, where probate tends to be less expensive and quicker to complete.
One of the report’s more surprising findings was that trust adoption is rising fastest in several lower-cost probate states. Between the first half of 2025 and the first half of 2026, trust adoption jumped more than 23 percentage points in both Kentucky and Iowa, while Arkansas saw an increase of more than 21 percentage points.
LegalZoom suggests that probate avoidance alone may not explain the shift. Instead, customers may be placing greater value on privacy, flexibility and preparing for expected inheritances tied to the coming wave of wealth transfers.
The report also underscores how many Americans remain unprepared. Citing Caring.com survey data, LegalZoom notes that only 24% of Americans reported having a will in 2025, while more than half have no estate plan at all. Among those without one, 43% said they simply had not gotten around to creating one.
With trillions of dollars expected to change hands in the coming decades, estate planning decisions are increasingly being shaped not only by family circumstances, but also the financial realities of each state’s probate system.
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