Texas law gives a family stuck with one inherited house and several owners a way to end the standoff, and you’re better off choosing how it ends than letting the tax bill and the roof decide. Usually the house is in three names now and nobody picked the arrangement. One of you lives in it, one wants the money out, and one has stopped answering the phone.
When land passes to heirs, they take it as tenants in common. Each owner holds an undivided fractional interest in the whole property, so nobody owns the back bedroom. The arrangement holds only as long as everyone cooperates.
If the real question is who the owners are, because a death two generations back was never probated, settle that first. Start with an heirship proceeding.
Sometimes the family is fighting over a tract that is also being condemned for a road or a utility. In Travis County, that case goes to the probate court, which surprises most people.
Government Code 25.2293(c) gives a statutory probate court eminent domain jurisdiction and requires eminent domain proceedings under Property Code Chapter 21 or Transportation Code 251.101 to be filed and docketed in Travis County Probate Court No. 1, which may transfer a proceeding to a county court at law. Travis County Probate Courts Local Rule 1.3(a)(1) repeats the filing and docketing requirement.
So a condemnation of inherited Travis County land will usually sit in Probate Court No. 1 at 200 W. 8th Street in Austin. Every cotenant has a stake in the award.
When co-owners can’t agree, the remedy is a partition suit. Any joint owner can file one, and it goes forward whether or not the others consent.
Property Code 23.001 allows a joint owner or claimant of real property or an interest in real property to compel a partition among the joint owners or claimants. Section 23.002 allows the action to be brought in a district court of a county where any part of the property is located.
Ranch land can sometimes be divided into pieces. A house on a city lot can’t, so partitioning a residence usually means a sale and a split of the proceeds. That’s why Chapter 23A matters to a family that wants to keep the house.
Property Code Chapter 23A, the Uniform Partition of Heirs’ Property Act (enacted in 2017), applies to heirs’ property as defined in Section 23A.002: real property held in tenancy in common, with no written agreement binding all the cotenants on partition, where at least one cotenant acquired title from a relative and relatives hold at least 20 percent of the interests (or one of the other 20 percent tests is met). Under Section 23A.003, property that qualifies must be partitioned under the chapter unless all cotenants agree otherwise in a record. Section 23A.006 has the court determine the property’s fair market value. If any cotenant asked for a sale, Section 23A.007 then lets the cotenants who didn’t ask for one buy out the interests of those who did, with 45 days after the court’s notice to elect.
That changes the posture of the case. The sibling in the house doesn’t have to outbid investors at an auction. He has to finance a value the court has already set, and the sibling who wants out still gets paid.
Travis County also pushes the parties to finish this themselves. Local Rule 5.1 states the courts’ policy of encouraging early settlement and allows the court to refer a case to mediation or another alternative dispute resolution procedure on its own motion or by agreement, and any party may ask for a referral. A co-owned house with a court-determined value and a statutory buyout on the table is about as settleable as probate litigation gets.
The last two work differently, because the house still belongs to an open estate.
Title vests in the heirs or devisees at death, but it vests subject to the estate’s debts and to administration. While the estate is open and the representative needs the house to pay what the estate owes, the sale runs through the probate court, and a partition suit should wait.
Estates Code 101.001 and 101.051 vest the estate in the heirs or devisees subject to the payment of the decedent’s debts. Estates Code 356.251 governs when estate property may be sold. Section 356.252 sets the contents of the written application, including the verified exhibit showing the condition of the estate. Sections 356.551 and 356.552 govern the report of the successful bid or contract and the court’s confirmation of the sale.
In a dependent administration that sequence is mandatory, and in Travis County it runs into a scheduling fact that surprises out-of-county counsel. Local Rule 3.1(a) lists the courts’ dockets as jury, uncontested guardianship, uncontested probate, sales, mental health, and a regular docket for everything else. Sales have their own docket, and under Rule 3.2(b)(2) the court sets it. Counsel don’t pick the date.
If the dispute ends in a court-supervised sale, that docket is the bottleneck and nobody on your side controls it. File early, file clean, and warn the buyer.
This fact pattern produces the most anger and the least clarity. A cotenant in possession generally isn’t liable for rent just because the others live elsewhere, since each of them has the same right to occupy and chose not to use it. That changes when the occupant shuts the others out, and again when the court divides the proceeds.
The accounting is where receipts matter. On one side is the value of exclusive use. On the other are the taxes, insurance, mortgage payments and repairs the occupant paid. Both sides arrive convinced the number runs their way.
If the occupant is also the executor or administrator, there’s a second and worse claim, because living in an estate asset while holding the keys is a fiduciary duty problem on top of the property dispute.
We take probate litigation and large or complex estates.
Bring the deed, the latest tax statement, and a list of everyone who owns a piece of it, including the ones who aren’t speaking to you. We’ll tell you whether you’re looking at a partition case, a buyout, or an estate matter that has to come first.
The first conversation is free, and it’s usually short.