Settling a deceased person's estate under Texas law, including probate procedures in county courts, attorney fees, and the assets that pass outside the court entirely
Which Assets Skip Texas Probate, and What That Leaves for the Court
Before choosing a probate procedure in Texas, subtract everything that passes by contract or deed, then look hard at what remains.
Ask each insurer and plan administrator for the beneficiary on file, along with the date it was signed. A relative's recollection is not evidence a court or a custodian will accept.
Written proof of designation
Divorce and stale forms
An ex-spouse left on a decades-old form is one of the most common problems in Texas estates. Whether the designation still stands depends on state law and, for employer plans, on the plan document itself.
Payable-on-death accounts
A bank account can name someone to receive the balance on proof of death, bypassing probate entirely. The bank's signature card or account agreement is the controlling document.
Brokerage TOD registration
Investment accounts can carry a transfer-on-death registration that works the same way as a payable-on-death bank account. Request the registration details in writing from the firm.
The first useful hour after a Texas death is not spent at the courthouse. It is spent at the kitchen table with the statements, the policies, the deed, and a legal pad, sorting what actually needs a judge from what does not. A surprising share of an ordinary estate moves on its own, by contract or by recorded instrument, without any filing at all. What is left after that subtraction is the estate the county court cares about, and its size and shape decide which procedure fits. Do the arithmetic before you hire anyone.
1. The beneficiary form beats the will, every time
Life insurance, annuities, an IRA, a 401(k) at the plant or the school district: each one pays whoever is named on the company's own form, and a will that says otherwise does not change that. The careful reader does not accept a family member's memory of who was named. Call the insurer and the plan administrator, ask for the designation on file with its date, and get it in writing. Stale forms are common, an ex-spouse from a 1990s marriage still sitting in the primary slot, and the fix is a legal question rather than a clerical one. The IRS oversees how inherited retirement accounts are taxed and distributed, so the beneficiary's next decision has a deadline attached.
2. Payable-on-death accounts turn on the words on the signature card
A checking account can carry a payable-on-death designation, meaning the bank hands the balance to the named person on proof of death, and a certificate of deposit or a brokerage account can do the same thing under a transfer-on-death registration. What matters is the document the institution holds, not the label the family uses. Ask the bank for a copy of the signature card or account agreement, and read the survivorship language on it. Texas law is specific about the words that create these arrangements, and an account merely held in two names, with no survivorship provision, may belong to the estate in whole or in part.
3. Two names on a deed is not automatically survivorship
Texas does not presume a right of survivorship simply because two people own something together. Joint ownership with survivorship requires a written agreement saying so, and married couples have a second route: a community property survivorship agreement, signed by both spouses, which lets community property pass to the survivor without administration. Pull the actual deed from the county clerk's records and read the granting language. If it says the property goes to the survivor of the two grantees, that is one outcome. If it just names two people, the deceased owner's half is estate property, and the court will need to see it.
4. A transfer on death deed has to be recorded before the death
Texas allows an owner to sign a deed that conveys real property at death, revocable during life, and it keeps that tract out of probate entirely. The condition people miss is recording. The instrument must be filed with the county clerk where the land sits, before the owner dies, and a signed deed found in a desk drawer afterward does nothing. Check the recording stamp, the date, and the county. Check too whether the estate has enough other assets to pay its debts, because creditors retain a route to property that passed this way for a limited period after death.
5. Subtract it all, then see which procedure the remainder allows
Write down the gross value of everything the deceased touched, then strike out each contract asset and each survivorship asset, and look at the number that survives. Often it collapses. A house that passed by recorded deed, an IRA with a living beneficiary, and a payable-on-death savings account can leave a truck, a small checking balance, and some household goods. That remainder is what determines the path: a small estate affidavit where the non-exempt personal property is modest and there is no will, a muniment of title where there is a will and no unpaid debts beyond a mortgage, or a full administration where debts and disputes require someone with authority to act.
Two estates of identical size can need completely different filings depending on how the paperwork was set up years earlier. That is why the inventory comes before the decision about counsel, and why the documents themselves, rather than anyone's recollection, are the thing to gather first.