Imagine your mother dies after an injury that someone else may have caused. She left no will, no surviving spouse, and no other children. You are her only heir. You file a lawsuit for her estate, and before you ever get a hearing on the merits, the trial court throws it out on jurisdictional grounds. […]
The post When a Son Goes…
Blended families and intestate estates are a recipe for conflict in Texas probate. When someone dies without a will and leaves behind a surviving spouse, children from an earlier marriage, and a single piece of real estate that several people claim, the courthouse is rarely far behind. Those fights get messier still when a relative […]
The post When the Surviving Spouse…
When someone dies unexpectedly, especially in a traumatic accident, a filing deadline buried in the Texas Estates Code is the last thing on the family’s mind. People are grieving. Caregiving duties shift overnight. The paperwork of settling an estate slides to the bottom of the list. And in families where property has passed informally and […]
The post When Life Gets in…
There is a scenario that estate attorneys and probate professionals see more often than they would like: an elderly or grieving testator, weakened by illness and loss, enters a new relationship late in life, and that relationship reshapes the disposition of an estate built over decades. When the new spouse then controls the finances, moves […]
The post When the Court Steps…
Estate fights get personal fast when a house is on the line. A dependent administrator decides the family home has to be sold to pay debts. The heirs see the property as theirs. So when the probate court signs an order allowing the sale, the first instinct is to run to the court of appeals […]
The post Appealable Probate Judgment: When…
An executor who gets removed and stripped of fees has one real shot at fixing it: an appeal. But the clock on that appeal is short, and in probate it does not always start when you think it does. Miss the window and it does not matter how wrong the trial court was — the […]
The post When an Executor Is…
Imagine spending nearly thirty years as a homemaker while your spouse builds a multimillion-dollar business and then discovering, at the moment of divorce, that the community estate is worth less than $85,000. No retirement account. No real property. Half of a joint checking account that totals around $14,000 after credit card debt. Meanwhile, your spouse’s […]
The post When a Premarital Agreement…
Blended families carry complicated histories into probate. When a parent leaves a will that treats children differently, or leaves one child out entirely, the stage is set for a fight. The child who received nothing has every reason to challenge the will. The real question is whether that challenge has legal teeth or just reflects […]
The post When a Will Speaks…
Administering a loved one’s estate is rarely simple, and when property ownership is disputed, it can stretch into years of litigation. An executor takes on a real responsibility: they are the legal face of the estate in court, and the estate cannot act without them. So what happens when an executor resigns in the middle […]
The post When the Executor Walks…
Most people never think about what happens to a mortgage when the borrower dies. The house sits there. The payments stop. And someone—usually a grieving family member who has just been named executor—has to figure out what comes next. For anyone with an informal arrangement tied to that mortgage, the uncertainty can feel like a […]
The post When the Neighbor Who…
