Pennsylvania Estate Accounting: An Executor's Guide

The Pennsylvania model account: what the document is

Pennsylvania practice expects the shape known as the model estate account. It is a charge-and-discharge account: one side lists everything you are answerable for, the other everything that left or remains, and the two totals have to equal each other to the penny. The summary carries property on hand at the start of the period, additional property received, receipts, and gains on sale down the charges side; disbursements, losses on sale, distributions, and property on hand at the close down the credits side.

Behind that summary sit the itemized schedules: receipts, additional property received, gains, disbursements, losses, and distributions, plus a per-beneficiary rollup. That rollup is what a beneficiary looks for before signing anything. Every sale prints both numbers, what the item sold for and what it was carried at, so a reviewer can check the arithmetic from the document alone.

ExecutorLedger exports this as an Estate Account in the model account style: court-style, not a court form, with your real figures, ready to transcribe or to hand to the estate's attorney. Formats drift, and none of this is a court form — the estate's attorney reading it is the step that makes anything filing-ready.

The Pennsylvania dates that bind

Advertising comes first. 20 Pa.C.S. §3162 requires advertising the grant of letters immediately after issuance, once a week for three weeks, in a general-circulation newspaper and the county legal journal. There is no fixed day count, so start promptly and confirm the details with your attorney.

Then notice. Pa. Orphans' Court Rule 10.5 puts written notice of estate administration to beneficiaries and intestate heirs within 3 months after letters, with a certification of notice filed with the Register within 10 days after you give it. Confirm the recipient list with your attorney; it is a judgment call, not a lookup.

The inventory and the tax return travel together. Under 20 Pa.C.S. §3301(c) the inventory is due to the Register of Wills no later than the inheritance tax return due date, typically 9 months after death, or when the account is filed, whichever is earlier, and it can be demanded sooner. The Pennsylvania inheritance tax return is itself typically due 9 months after death under 72 P.S. §9136, and paying the tax within 3 months of death earns a 5% discount under §9142. The discount is worth real money, and its date lands long before the estate feels finished. Confirm timing and any extension with your attorney.

A federal estate tax return is due 9 months after death under IRC §6075, with a 6-month extension available, but only if the estate is large enough to owe federal estate tax; ask your attorney whether one is required. And if administration is not complete within 2 years of death, Pa. Orphans' Court Rule 10.6 calls for a status report to the Register of Wills then, and annually until the estate closes — confirm the form and timing with your attorney.

Family settlement agreement, or a formal PA Orphans' Court accounting

How Pennsylvania estates usually close: prepare the account and a proposed schedule of distribution; have every interested party sign a Family Settlement Agreement, which is the common, informal route; make final distributions and collect receipts; then file the status report that closes the estate's register entry.

If anyone won't sign, the account is filed formally with the Orphans' Court instead. You don't have to choose that fork in advance; the account is built from the same ledger either way. The informal route only works if every interested party signs, so the document they read is the whole argument for signing.

What a Pennsylvania executor gets paid

Pennsylvania has no fee schedule. 20 Pa.C.S. §3537 promises only compensation that is 'reasonable and just.' In practice many Pennsylvania courts use the Johnson Estate guideline as a benchmark: 5% of the first $100,000, 4% of $100,000 to $200,000, 3% of $200,000 to $1,000,000, 2% of $1,000,000 to $2,000,000, 1.5% of $2,000,000 to $3,000,000, 1% of $3,000,000 to $4,000,000, and 0.5% of $4,000,000 to $5,000,000.

The guideline is a benchmark, not a rule, and it is silent above $5,000,000 — that portion is for the court to judge as reasonable. Section 3537's standard is still 'reasonable and just,' so keep dated records of what you did, not only what you spent, and raise the fee with the estate's attorney before you take one.

What software prepares, and what only you can supply

Software can do the bookkeeping: hold every receipt, disbursement, sale, and distribution, keep the two sides balanced as you go, and print the account and the inventory whenever you need them, including an interim account run through any date you pick.

What it can't do is read the will or the deed. Values print gross, because the ledger tracks no mortgages or liens, so an encumbered property needs that handled when you transcribe. Whether an asset belongs on a Pennsylvania inventory at all, survivorship property and beneficiary-designated accounts included, is a question for the estate's attorney. So is the proposed schedule of distribution: the shares come from the will, not the ledger. The caption is yours, and the account should sign with your full legal name.

One trap catches people early: if the inventory lists the money sitting in the decedent's bank account at death, and the ledger records that same money again as it arrives to fund the estate account, the accounting counts it twice and overstates the estate.

Where ExecutorLedger fits

ExecutorLedger is free to record in, for as long as the estate takes. Every document opens as a preview with your real numbers, nothing blurred or withheld, including the Pennsylvania Estate Account in the model account style and the inventory. A one-time $149 lifts the watermark from all of them, as many exports as you need, forever. It is typically a reimbursable estate expense.

Questions Pennsylvania executors ask