Utah Small Estate Affidavit

Utah settles a smaller estate two different ways, and only one of them carries a dollar figure. Utah Code 75-3-1201 lets a successor collect personal property with a sworn affidavit when the whole estate, less liens and encumbrances, is worth $100,000 or less and 30 days have passed since the death. Utah Code 75-3-1203 is a second route with no threshold written into it.

Most pages about this topic describe one route and attach the $100,000 to whichever name they happened to use. That is the mistake worth avoiding first. This guide covers what the $100,000 measures, the four statements the affidavit has to make, a conflict between two official Utah sources about whether a house closes the route, how vehicles ride on top of the cap, why water company shares cannot move this way at all, and how the second route works. Read it beside full Utah probate before you pick, and take a live question to the district court handling the file, listed in the Utah probate court directory, or to a licensed Utah attorney.

Two Routes, One Number

Here is the split, stated the way the statutes state it.

	Utah Code 75-3-1201	Utah Code 75-3-1203
Common name	Small estate affidavit, collection of personal property by affidavit	Summary administrative procedure
Dollar figure	$100,000	None. The test is a list of allowances and expenses
Who uses it	A successor entitled to the property	A personal representative already appointed
Court involvement	None. The affidavit goes to the bank or other holder	The estate is already open. The closing statement goes to the court
What it does	Collects personal property without probate	Ends a probate quickly and without notice to creditors
Cost	$0	Nothing beyond the $375 already paid to open the estate

Calling the $100,000 route "summary administration" is the single most repeated error on this subject. They are separate sections doing separate jobs, and an estate can qualify for one and not the other.

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What the $100,000 Actually Measures

Utah Code 75-3-1201(1)(a) states the test in one sentence: the value of the entire estate subject to administration, wherever located, less liens and encumbrances, does not exceed $100,000.

Read each part of that.

The entire estate. Not just the bank account you want released. Everything subject to administration.
Wherever located. Out-of-state property counts.
Less liens and encumbrances. This is a net figure. Debt secured against an asset comes off before you compare.

Work an estate through it. A house appraised at $400,000 with a $350,000 mortgage contributes $50,000. Add $30,000 in a savings account and a car worth $12,000 with nothing owed on it, and the estate measures $92,000. It sits under the line. Count the house at its gross $400,000 instead and you would report a closed route on an estate that qualifies.

The number does not move with inflation. Utah Code 75-1-110 indexes the dollar amounts in five probate sections to the Consumer Price Index by the decedent's year of death, and the list is 75-2-102, 75-2-202(2), 75-2-402, 75-2-403 and 75-2-405. Section 75-3-1201 is absent from it, so $100,000 means $100,000 whatever year the death fell in.

The Four Statements the Affidavit Has to Make

The affidavit is made by or on behalf of the successor, and Utah Code 75-3-1201(1) lists what it has to say:

The value of the entire estate subject to administration, wherever located, less liens and encumbrances, does not exceed $100,000.
Thirty days have elapsed since the death of the decedent.
No application or petition for the appointment of a personal representative is pending or has been granted in any jurisdiction.
The claiming successor is entitled to payment or delivery of the property.

Statement three is broader than readers expect. A cousin who filed a petition in another state closes this route in Utah. So does an application already granted anywhere. The wording covers both pending and granted, so an estate that once had a personal representative appointed does not reopen the affidavit by closing that file.

Statement four asks a question the affidavit itself does not answer. Entitlement comes from the will, or from Utah's intestacy rules when there is no will. Work out who inherits before anyone signs.

Utah's Courts and Utah's Statute Disagree About the House

This is the part of the page that changes an answer, so both sources get named.

The Utah State Courts self-help page for small estates lists four requirements, and the second reads "there is no real property." Utah Code 75-3-1201(1)(a) lists no such condition. It counts real property in the measure, net of what is secured against it, and disqualifies no estate for owning a home.

Both sources are official. The statute is the law, and the affidavit is presented to a private party rather than filed with a court, so nobody applies the courts' page as a filter at the counter. Utah Code 75-3-1201(1) says the person holding the property "shall pay" or "deliver" it on presentation of a compliant affidavit.

Two things follow, and they matter in opposite directions:

Reading the courts' page as law closes the route for every Utah estate that owns a home, including the mortgaged-house estate above that measures $92,000 and qualifies under the statute.
A bank, credit union or transfer agent may still apply the stricter wording, because that page is what its staff will find. Ask whoever holds the property what they accept before you have the affidavit notarized.

Neither reading changes the other half of the answer. The affidavit collects a debt owed to the decedent, tangible personal property, or an instrument evidencing a debt, obligation, stock or chose in action. It does not convey real property. An estate with a house needs a separate route for the house whatever the value works out to.

Vehicles Ride on Top, Capped at Four

Utah Code 75-3-1201(3) sets up a second measure for vehicles, and it runs in the direction most people guess wrong.

The Motor Vehicle Division of the State Tax Commission transfers title to not more than four boats, motor vehicles, trailers or semitrailers registered under Title 41 or Title 73, Chapter 18. For that transfer, the statute swaps out the language of subsection (1)(a). The affidavit instead states that the value of the entire estate subject to administration, wherever located, other than those motor vehicles, trailers, or semitrailers, less liens and encumbrances, does not exceed $100,000.

The vehicles come out of the count rather than going into it. An estate holding $95,000 of financial assets and a $40,000 truck measures $95,000 for the purpose of retitling that truck.

One wording detail worth knowing. The statute's substituted sentence names motor vehicles, trailers and semitrailers and does not repeat the word boats, though boats appear in the list of what may be transferred. Form TC-569C writes the exclusion the broader way, as "excluding the boats, motor vehicles, trailers, or semi-trailers," and the DMV page describes it as excluding the vehicles mentioned above. Both official forms of the rule are printed here so nobody has to guess which one a counter clerk will read from.

Three more points from the agency side, none of which appear in the statute:

The form is TC-569C, Survivorship Affidavit, published by the Utah State Tax Commission. It covers the vehicle route alone, and it is the one downloadable form the courts' small estates page links.
The DMV requires no active lienholder on the vehicle. That condition is on the Deceased Vehicle Owners page and nowhere in 75-3-1201.
Sign in the format the DMV publishes. The pattern is the deceased person's name, then "by," then your name, then "as survivor."

More on the paperwork sits on the Utah vehicle transfer page.

Water Company Shares Cannot Move This Way

Utah Code 75-3-1201(4) closes the route for one asset class outright: shares of stock in a water company transferred under Section 73-1-10 or Title 70A, Chapter 8 are not eligible for transfer under this part.

This is a Utah asset class that turns up across farming and irrigation counties, and the bar has nothing to do with value. Subsection (4) limits the mechanism, not the measure: water shares still form part of the entire estate you are valuing against the $100,000, and they still cannot be transferred by the affidavit. They need their own transfer under the water law or the securities rules the subsection points at.

What the Person Holding the Property Has to Do

Utah Code 75-3-1202 puts real weight behind the affidavit, on both sides of the counter.

Anyone who pays, delivers, transfers or issues property under a compliant affidavit is discharged and released to the same extent as if they had dealt with a personal representative. They do not have to police how the money gets used or investigate whether the affidavit is truthful.

A holder who refuses can be compelled. The property may be recovered in a proceeding brought by or on behalf of the people entitled to it, and the court may award damages of up to three times the value of the property plus costs of suit and reasonable attorney fees.

Protection runs the other way too. Anyone who receives payment or delivery stays answerable to a later personal representative of the estate, or to any other person with a superior right. Collecting property by affidavit is not the same as proving you were entitled to keep it.

Securities have their own line. Utah Code 75-3-1201(2) requires a transfer agent to change the registered ownership on the corporation's books from the decedent to the successor on presentation of the affidavit and the security itself.

The Second Route: Summary Administration

Utah Code 75-3-1203 reads as one sentence and contains no number. If it appears from the inventory and appraisal that the value of the entire estate, less liens and encumbrances, does not exceed homestead allowance, exempt property, family allowance, costs and expenses of administration, reasonable funeral expenses, and reasonable and necessary medical and hospital expenses of the last illness, the personal representative may distribute the estate straight away without giving notice to creditors and file a closing statement.

Two pieces of that total are fixed for a given year of death, and Utah Code 75-1-110 adjusts them each January. The Administrative Office of the Courts publishes the cumulative table before February 1 every year.

Year of death	Homestead allowance (75-2-402)	Exempt property (75-2-403)	Fixed floor
2026	$33,700	$22,500	$56,200
2025	$32,900	$21,900	$54,800
2024	$32,000	$21,300	$53,300

The figures printed on the face of the statutes, $22,500 and $15,000, are the 2010 amounts. Every published row since 2011 sits above them, so quoting the statute's own numbers for a recent death understates the floor by about $19,000.

The rest of the total resists a number by design:

Family allowance is "a reasonable allowance" under Utah Code 75-2-404, with no entitlement figure. Utah Code 75-2-405(1) caps only what the personal representative may set without asking the court, at $40,500 as a lump sum or $3,375 a month for a death in 2026.
Costs and expenses of administration, funeral expenses and last-illness medical bills are whatever the estate actually incurs.

So Utah's second route cannot be reduced to a threshold. An estate worth $70,000 with a $15,000 funeral bill and unpaid hospital charges may clear it, while a $60,000 estate with no such bills may not. Whether it applies depends on the actual figures in the inventory, which is why the Utah allowances page is worth reading alongside this one.

Closing an Estate by Summary Procedure

Utah Code 75-3-1204 handles the closing, and it moves faster than the ordinary route.

A personal representative files a verified statement with the court at any time after disbursement and distribution, stating the nature and value of the estate's assets at distribution, that the estate did not exceed the 75-3-1203 total, that the estate has been fully administered by distributing it to the people entitled, and that a copy of the closing statement has gone to all distributees and to every creditor or claimant the representative knows of whose claim is neither paid nor barred. Distributees whose interests are affected also get a full written account of the administration.

Compare the timing. Utah Code 75-3-1003 bars an ordinary closing statement until at least four months after the original appointment of a general personal representative. Section 75-3-1204 has no such wait, and 75-3-1204(3) gives the summary closing statement the same effect as one filed under 75-3-1003. If no actions or proceedings involving the personal representative are pending in the court one year after the closing statement is filed, the appointment terminates.

Skipping notice to creditors is what buys that speed, and it is also the risk. The representative decides, on the inventory, that there is nothing left for creditors after the allowances and the last bills. Get that wrong and the distributions have gone out without the claim period that normally protects the estate. The rest of the job is on the Utah executor duties page.

When Full Probate Is the Better Route

Open a probate case instead when any of these hold:

The estate measures more than $100,000 net of liens and no allowance route fits.
Real property has to change hands. Utah Code 75-3-1201 reaches personal property, and the courts' small estates page says in terms that the affidavit cannot be used to transfer title to real property like land or a house.
Someone has already applied or petitioned for appointment as personal representative anywhere.
A will needs to be proved, or the person entitled to the property is disputed.
A bank refuses the affidavit and you would rather have letters than argue.

Utah's outer limit is three years. Utah Code 75-3-107(1) bars an informal probate or a formal testacy proceeding more than three years after death, with listed exceptions, so an estate sitting unresolved has a clock on it. The Utah probate timeline sets out the dates that follow an appointment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the small estate limit in Utah?

$100,000. Utah Code 75-3-1201(1)(a) sets the test as the value of the entire estate subject to administration, wherever located, less liens and encumbrances. That is a net measure of the whole estate rather than a gross count of personal property, so a $400,000 house carrying a $350,000 mortgage adds $50,000 to the total. The figure is fixed. Utah Code 75-1-110 indexes five dollar amounts in the probate code for inflation and 75-3-1201 is not one of them.

Can you use a Utah small estate affidavit if the estate owns a house?

Two official Utah sources answer this differently, so read both before you rely on either. Utah Code 75-3-1201(1)(a) disqualifies nothing for owning real property. It counts the house, minus what is secured against it, toward the $100,000. The Utah State Courts self-help page for small estates instead lists as a requirement that there is no real property. Either way the affidavit cannot transfer a house or land, and the bank or transfer agent holding the property may follow the courts' stricter wording, so ask before you count on it.

How long do you have to wait to use a Utah small estate affidavit?

Thirty days. Utah Code 75-3-1201(1) opens with the words thirty days after the death of a decedent, and 75-3-1201(1)(b) makes the same 30 days one of the four statements the affidavit itself has to carry. The route also closes if anyone applies or petitions to be appointed personal representative, in Utah or in any other jurisdiction.

Where do you file a Utah small estate affidavit, and what does it cost?

You do not file it. The Utah State Courts small estates page states that a small estate affidavit is not filed with the court. The successor fills it out, signs it in front of a notary, and gives it to the third party holding the property, such as the bank. No clerk touches it, so it costs nothing. Utah Code 78A-2-301(2) also says there is no fee for services or the filing of documents not listed in that section, and no small estate row appears there.

Can a Utah small estate affidavit transfer a car?

Yes, through the Motor Vehicle Division rather than a court. Utah Code 75-3-1201(3) directs the division to transfer title to not more than four boats, motor vehicles, trailers or semitrailers, and for that transfer the affidavit states the value of the entire estate other than those vehicles, less liens and encumbrances, does not exceed $100,000. The form is TC-569C, Survivorship Affidavit, from the Utah State Tax Commission. The DMV adds one condition the statute does not state: there must be no active lienholder on the vehicle.

What is summary administration under Utah Code 75-3-1203?

It is Utah's second small estate route, and it has no dollar figure at all. It applies when the inventory and appraisal show that the value of the entire estate, less liens and encumbrances, does not exceed the homestead allowance, exempt property, the family allowance, costs and expenses of administration, reasonable funeral expenses, and reasonable and necessary medical and hospital expenses of the last illness. For a death in 2026 the two fixed pieces are the $33,700 homestead allowance and $22,500 of exempt property, a floor of $56,200, and the rest depends on the bills the estate actually runs up.

Is the $100,000 Utah affidavit the same thing as summary administration?

No, and the two get mixed up constantly. The $100,000 route is the affidavit under Utah Code 75-3-1201, presented to a bank or other holder of property with no court involved. Summary administration is Utah Code 75-3-1203, which a personal representative who has already been appointed uses to distribute the estate without notifying creditors and then close it under 75-3-1204. One skips probate. The other ends a probate that has already started.

Sources:

Title: Utah Code Section 75-3-1201, Collection of personal property by affidavit -- Vehicles -- Water shares excluded. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Effective 5/7/2025, amended by Chapter 123, 2025 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter3/C75-3-S1201_2025050720250507.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-3-1202, Effect of affidavit. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Amended by Chapter 226, 1983 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter3/C75-3-S1202_1800010118000101.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-3-1203, Small estates -- Summary administrative procedure. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Enacted by Chapter 150, 1975 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter3/C75-3-S1203_1800010118000101.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-3-1204, Small estates -- Closing by sworn statement of personal representative. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Amended by Chapter 110, 1988 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter3/C75-3-S1204_1800010118000101.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-3-1003, Closing estates -- By sworn statement of personal representative -- Waiver of accountings. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Amended by Chapter 179, 1992 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter3/C75-3-S1003_1800010118000101.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-3-107, Probate and testacy proceedings -- Ultimate time limit -- Presumption and order of intestacy. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Effective 5/8/2018, amended by Chapter 244, 2018 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter3/C75-3-S107_2018050820180508.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-1-110, Cost of living adjustment of certain dollar amounts. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Enacted by Chapter 93, 2010 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter1/C75-1-S110_1800010118000101.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-2-402, Homestead allowance. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Amended by Chapter 93, 2010 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter2/C75-2-S402_1800010118000101.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-2-403, Exempt property. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Amended by Chapter 93, 2010 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter2/C75-2-S403_1800010118000101.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-2-404, Family allowance. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Repealed and re-enacted by Chapter 39, 1998 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter2/C75-2-S404_1800010118000101.html
Title: Utah Code Section 75-2-405, Source, determination, and documentation. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Amended by Chapter 93, 2010 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title75/Chapter2/C75-2-S405_1800010118000101.html
Title: Utah Code Section 78A-2-301, Civil fees of the courts of record -- Courts complex design. Publisher: Utah State Legislature. Publication Date: Effective 5/6/2026, amended by Chapter 284, 2026 General Session. URL: https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title78A/Chapter2/C78A-2-S301_2026050620260506.html
Title: Small Estates. Publisher: Utah State Courts. Publication Date: Not listed, accessed 2026-08-28. URL: https://www.utcourts.gov/en/self-help/case-categories/probate/small-estates.html
Title: Estate Consumer Price Index, the cumulative list of adjusted dollar amounts published under Utah Code 75-1-110(3). Publisher: Utah State Courts, Administrative Office of the Courts. Publication Date: Not listed, accessed 2026-08-28. URL: https://www.utcourts.gov/en/about/miscellaneous/legal-community/price.html
Title: Form TC-569C, Survivorship Affidavit. Publisher: Utah State Tax Commission. Publication Date: Not listed, accessed 2026-08-28. URL: https://tax.utah.gov/forms/current/tc-569c.pdf
Title: Deceased Vehicle Owners. Publisher: Utah Division of Motor Vehicles, Utah State Tax Commission. Publication Date: Not listed, accessed 2026-08-28. URL: https://dmv.utah.gov/titles-overview/deceased-owners/

It is not legal advice.