Sample Petition for Letters of Administration in New York: Form A-1

To open an estate for a New York resident who died without a will, you file a Petition for Letters of Administration in New York on Form A-1 with the Surrogate’s Court in the county where the decedent lived. The petition asks a Surrogate’s Court judge to appoint you as administrator, giving you legal authority to collect assets, pay debts, and distribute what remains to the heirs identified under state intestacy law. The form is short. The preparation around it is where most people get stuck.

Who Has the Right to Be Appointed

New York does not let you volunteer for the job in whatever order suits the family. SCPA 1001 sets a strict priority list, and the court works down it in this sequence:

Surviving spouse, whether or not there are children
Children, if there is no surviving spouse
Grandchildren, if no children survive
Parents
Siblings
More distant distributees, with preference to whoever inherits the largest share

You cannot skip a higher-priority relative just because they are not interested in serving. That person has to sign a formal renunciation (Form A-8) waiving the right before the court will consider you.¹² Silence is not renunciation.

Check Whether You Even Need Form A-1

If the decedent’s personal property totals $50,000 or less, and any real estate was jointly owned, you probably do not need the full administration petition at all. New York’s voluntary administration process uses a Small Estate Affidavit instead of Form A-1. It is faster, cheaper, and involves far less court oversight. You still need a certified death certificate, the names and addresses of the closest living relatives, and documentation of assets and debts, but the paperwork is much lighter.³

Once personal property exceeds $50,000, or any real property was owned solely by the decedent, the full petition is your only path.

What You Need Before You File

Assemble everything first. The court will reject an incomplete filing, and rebuilding the packet mid-process costs weeks.

A certified copy of the death certificate. If you file electronically through NYSCEF, some counties require the certified copy to be mailed to the court within two business days.
A complete list of distributees: every person who would inherit under New York’s intestacy statute, with name, address, age, and relationship to the decedent. Missing a single heir is one of the most common reasons petitions bounce back.
Estimated values of the decedent’s personal property (bank accounts, vehicles, investments) and any New York real property. These figures drive the filing fee.
A copy of the paid funeral bill.⁴

Identifying distributees means applying EPTL 4-1.1. You do not calculate exact shares on the petition, but you do need to correctly name everyone in the inheriting class.⁵

One boundary while you are tallying assets: several common holdings do not go through administration and should not appear on the petition. Life insurance and retirement accounts with named beneficiaries pay out directly. Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death bank accounts pass automatically. Property held as joint tenancy with right of survivorship or tenancy by the entirety transfers to the surviving co-owner by operation of law. Only assets the decedent owned individually, without a beneficiary or survivorship feature, are estate assets.

Filling Out Form A-1

Form A-1 is the official Petition for Letters of Administration under the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations.⁶ Download it from the New York State Unified Court System website or pick up a paper copy at your local Surrogate’s Court clerk’s office.

The form opens with the decedent’s domicile, meaning the primary residence at the time of death. That address fixes which county’s Surrogate’s Court has jurisdiction. Filing in the wrong county means starting over.

Next come estimated values for personal property and New York real property. Be accurate. These numbers determine your filing fee, and a significant understatement causes trouble later when the court compares your petition to what you actually collect. Reasonable estimates from account statements, tax assessments, and fair market value are enough at this stage.

Section 6 is where the preparation pays off. List every distributee under EPTL 4-1.1 with name, address, relationship, and whether the person is of legal age and competent. The form instructs you to indicate the number of survivors in each class, marking “No” for classes above the inheriting class and “X” for classes below. Getting this section wrong is the single most common cause of rejection.⁶

The end of the form contains a verification (your sworn statement that everything is true), an oath (your commitment to carry out the administrator’s duties), and a designation (appointing the Clerk of the Surrogate’s Court as your agent for service of process if you become unreachable). All three require your signature, all must be notarized.

Where to File and What It Costs

File the completed Form A-1 and supporting documents with the Surrogate’s Court in the county of the decedent’s domicile. You can file at the clerk’s window, by mail, or electronically through the New York State Courts Electronic Filing system.⁷ Not every Surrogate’s Court accepts NYSCEF filings, so confirm with your county first.

SCPA 2402 sets the filing fee on a sliding scale tied to the total estate value:

Under $10,000: $45
$10,000 to under $20,000: $75
$20,000 to under $50,000: $215
$50,000 to under $100,000: $280
$100,000 to under $250,000: $420
$250,000 to under $500,000: $625
$500,000 and over: $1,250

The clerk compares your reported asset values against the fee before processing anything, so the two need to match.⁸ Keep stamped copies of every document.

What Happens After You File

Citations or Waivers

If every distributee signs a Waiver of Process and Consent to Appointment (Form A-2) before you file, the court can proceed without further notice. When any waiver is missing, the court issues citations, which are formal legal notices telling those heirs that someone is petitioning for letters. Each cited distributee gets a deadline to appear and object, or the appointment moves forward by default.⁹ Citations add time. The court will not skip them.

The Fiduciary Bond

Administrators, unlike executors named in a will, generally must post a fiduciary bond before the court issues letters. Under SCPA 801, the bond amount must be at least the value of all personal property you will receive, plus estimated gross rents from any real property for 18 months, plus any probable recovery from lawsuits the estate is pursuing.¹⁰

There are exceptions. If you are the sole distributee, the court may waive the bond. The court can also reduce or eliminate it if every interested party files written consent, and very small estates require no bond at all.¹¹ Bonding companies charge a premium, typically a percentage of the bond amount, paid from the estate. Most first-time administrators are not expecting that cost.

The Decree and Your Letters

Once citations have been served, objections resolved, and any required bond posted, the Surrogate signs a decree directing that letters of administration be issued to you.⁴ The letters are the document that proves your authority. Banks, title companies, and government agencies will each want their own certified copy, so order several from the court up front.

What You Take On as Administrator

Creditors

Receiving letters is not the end. One of your first duties is notifying the decedent’s creditors that the estate is open. Creditors who do not receive proper notice can come back later and create problems for you personally. Pay attention to the order in which debts get paid: federal tax debts carry a legal priority that overrides other claims, and paying other creditors ahead of the IRS can expose you to personal liability.¹² Funeral expenses and administrative costs also have priority. If the estate may not cover every claim in full, get an attorney’s help before you write any checks.

Taxes

Federal tax obligations come in two flavors. An estate that earns income after death (interest, rent, dividends) generally must file IRS Form 1041 once gross income reaches $600. To file, you first need a federal Employer Identification Number for the estate, which you get by submitting Form SS-4.¹³

A federal estate tax return (Form 706) is required for 2026 deaths only when the gross estate exceeds $15,000,000. Most estates fall well under, but confirming the filing obligation is still your job.¹⁴ Do not forget the decedent’s final individual return for the year of death, due the following April.

Your Commission

Administering an estate is real work, and SCPA 2307 provides a statutory commission calculated on the total moved through your hands:

First $100,000: 5%
Next $200,000: 4%
Next $700,000: 3%
Next $4,000,000: 2.5%
Everything above $5,000,000: 2%

Half the stated rate applies to receiving funds and half to paying them out. Collect $100,000 and distribute the full amount, and you earn 2.5% on the way in and 2.5% on the way out for the full 5%. On a $300,000 estate, the total commission runs roughly $13,000. It is taxable income to you and is paid from estate funds before distribution to the heirs.¹⁵

1
New York State Senate. New York Surrogate’s Court Procedure Act 1001
2
New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. Surrogate’s Forms
3
New York Courts. Small Estate Affidavit Program
4
New York State Unified Court System. Administration Information Packet
5
New York State Senate. New York Estates, Powers and Trusts Law 4-1.1 – Descent and Distribution of a Decedent’s Estate
6
Legal Information Institute. Surrogate’s Forms, Form A-1 – Petition for Letters of Administration
7
New York State Unified Court System. New York State Courts Electronic Filing
8
New York State Senate. New York Surrogate’s Court Procedure Act 2402
9
Legal Information Institute. Surrogate’s Forms, Form A-2 – Citation
10
New York State Senate. New York Surrogate’s Court Procedure Act 801
11
New York State Senate. New York Surrogate’s Court Procedure Act 805
12
Internal Revenue Service. Insolvencies and Decedents’ Estates
13
Internal Revenue Service. Application for Employer Identification Number
14
Internal Revenue Service. Estate Tax
15
New York State Senate. New York Surrogate’s Court Procedure Act 2307