How we check

Every limit here was read in the code — and versioned by the date of death

A small-estate limit decides whether a family spends a season in court. We treat every cell of this dataset the way that fact deserves.

Two sources or it doesn't ship

Every limit, wait, and form was read in the law itself — the probate code — and cross-checked against the courts' own published guidance: judicial council charts like California's DE-300, court self-help pages, official form families. Where a secondary chart disagreed with the code, the code won, and the disagreement is the kind of thing our state pages print as a trap.

Versioned by the date of death

Most charts print one number per state. The law doesn't work that way: California's limit has taken three values in recent years under its triennial adjustment, Illinois rose from $100,000 to $150,000 on August 15, 2025, and Arizona rose from $75,000 to $200,000 on September 26, 2025. The limit that governs an estate is the one in force when the person died — so the dataset versions every moving threshold by date, and the checker asks for the date of death before it compares anything.

The staleness exhibit

This discipline exists because the field's rot is documented, not theoretical. As this site was built, a major form mill's state chart still showed California $150,000, Illinois $100,000, New York $30,000 and Arizona $75,000 — every recent mover wrong, simultaneously. The one company selling a gated version of this verdict for $59 showed Illinois at the old number and Delaware at $50,000 against the code's $30,000 — and its Louisiana page, which long printed $200,000 against a $125,000 code, became accidentally right only when Louisiana's own 2026 law moved the number up to meet it. Each of our cells carries its citation and its checking date — October 2026 — and the dataset is re-verified quarterly on a written watchlist of the indexed and moving states.

What the checker refuses to do

• It never says “you qualify.” It says an estate fits the affidavit path on these facts — and prints the facts.
• Estates within about ten percent of a limit get a printed warning to count twice; insolvent estates, disputed estates, and houses no shortcut can move route to FULL PROBATE LIKELY with the reason named — never to a hopeful affidavit.
• The affiant's personal liability is printed inside every affidavit verdict. It is the law's central warning about this path, and it does not belong in fine print.

Run the free check