Extraordinary services
Work by an executor or estate lawyer beyond routine administration, paid for on top of the ordinary fee.
What it means
Most states pay an executor and the estate's lawyer an ordinary fee — often a percentage, sometimes just what the court finds reasonable. Extraordinary services are the work that sits outside that: selling real property, running the decedent's business, defending a will contest, handling a tax audit, litigating a claim.
The extra payment is usually not on any schedule. It is what a court decides is just and reasonable, on the facts, which means it can be contested on the facts.
The phrase also appears in what a lawyer may bill. California requires a petition for extraordinary compensation to set out the hours and services of any paralegal, so the work is itemized rather than presented as a single number.
Why it matters
The ordinary fee is arithmetic and the extraordinary fee is judgment, so they are worth reading as two separate lines rather than one total.
It is a frequent route by which an estate's costs exceed what a schedule would have predicted.
Tax counsel, auditors and accountants retained for the estate are often paid besides both — reducing what beneficiaries receive without appearing on any fee ladder.
When you are likely to meet it
- When an accounting or a petition for discharge shows compensation above the statutory figure.
- When the estate involved a house sale, a business, a lawsuit or an estate tax return.
- When a fee is described as presumed reasonable and then something is added to it.
How this varies by state
What counts as extraordinary, and who decides what it is worth, is set by state law.