Most people who call us know what happened but don’t know what the proceeding is called. The nine pages below are grouped by what the dispute is about, so you can find yours without knowing the statute.
Kreig LLC is a probate litigation firm. We’ve handled more than 500 estates, and everything on this page is contested work.
These cases start in one of two places. Either there’s a will and someone says it shouldn’t stand, or there’s no will and the family can’t agree on who the heirs are.
Read contesting a will if the will admitted to probate was signed by someone who no longer understood it, was signed under pressure from the person who ended up with the house, or doesn’t match the will you were shown years earlier. That page also covers executors defending a will against a contest. The deadline runs from the date of the order admitting the will to probate.
Estates Code Section 256.204 generally allows two years after a will is admitted to probate to file a contest. A contest based on forgery or fraud may be filed within two years after the forgery or fraud is discovered, and an incapacitated person has two years after the disability is removed. Section 55.002 gives a right to a jury trial in a contested probate matter.
Read contested heirship proceedings when there’s no will and the question is who the law counts as an heir. These cases turn into litigation over an earlier marriage, a child nobody acknowledged, or a sibling who won’t sign. An affidavit of heirship is a separate, routine document for families who agree, and we don’t prepare those.
Estates Code Section 202.008 requires that each unknown heir, each person named as an heir in the application, and each record owner of an interest in real property described in the application be made a party. Section 202.009 requires the court to appoint an attorney ad litem to represent heirs whose names or locations are unknown.
Plan for one Travis County filing practice. A contested matter that stands apart from the administration of the estate is often filed as a related or ancillary case under a new cause number.
Local Rule 2.2(3) refers filers to the court’s posted Instructions for Filing Probate and Guardianship Proceedings, Related Matters, and Ancillary Proceedings, which describe which actions belong in the principal case and which go in a new cause number.
An independent executor works with little court supervision until someone asks the court to step in.
Read removing an executor or administrator if the person in charge has stopped answering, won’t account, is living in estate property rent-free, or is quietly paying himself. Start with the statutory demand for an accounting. If the executor ignores it, that refusal is often the clearest evidence in the removal case.
Estates Code Section 404.001 lets any person interested in the estate demand an accounting from an independent executor once 15 months have passed since the clerk first issued letters. If the executor doesn’t comply within 60 days after receiving the demand, the person who made it can sue in the probate court to compel compliance. Sections 404.003 and 404.0035 govern removal, and failing to make a required accounting is a ground for removal under Section 404.0035.
Read breach of fiduciary duty claims when removal alone won’t repair the damage. Removal replaces the person in charge. A breach claim is how the estate recovers money lost to a discounted sale to a friend, commingled accounts, or years of unexplained withdrawals.
Read dependent administration when the estate needs a structural fix more than a change of personnel. The representative usually posts bond, and the judge approves sales and distributions before they happen.
Read contested guardianship when the person at the center is still alive. That covers an application that should never have been filed, a fight between adult children over who serves, and removal of a guardian who is isolating the ward or spending badly.
Estates Code Section 1203.051 (removal without notice) and Section 1203.052 (removal with notice) govern removal of a guardian. Under Local Rule 3.2(c), counsel must confer with the Court Investigator or Assistant Court Investigator before requesting a setting on a temporary guardianship or any other emergency action in a guardianship.
The last three pages deal with the assets themselves.
Read inherited property disputes when the asset is land or a house and the co-owners want different things. One sibling lives in it, another wants it sold, and a third paid the taxes and expects credit for it. With Austin land values where they are, a badly handled partition gets expensive.
Property Code Section 23.001 gives joint owners the right to compel a partition, and Section 23.002 sets where the suit is filed. Chapter 23A covers heirs’ property: Section 23A.002 defines it, Section 23A.006 governs how the court determines value, and Section 23A.007 gives the other cotenants a right to buy out a cotenant who asked for a sale.
Read trust litigation when a trustee won’t account, never funded the trust, is taking fees nobody agreed to, or is administering terms that no longer work. Trust disputes and estate disputes tend to involve the same people and documents, so the choice of court matters.
Property Code Section 115.001 gives district courts original and exclusive jurisdiction over trust proceedings, except as provided in subsection (d), which preserves the jurisdiction conferred by law on a statutory probate court. Estates Code Sections 32.006 and 32.007 give statutory probate courts jurisdiction over trust actions. Travis County has statutory probate courts, so estate and trust claims can be heard by one judge.
Read large and complex estates when the inventory includes an operating business, layered entities, mineral interests with title gaps, or out-of-state property. These estates get hard when many of the numbers rest on valuations someone has reason to dispute.
Travis County has two statutory probate courts at 200 W. 8th Street. Judge Guy Herman presides over Probate Court No. 1, with Associate Judge Tom Ruffner. Judge Nicholas Chu presides over Probate Court No. 2, with Associate Judge Emily Rickers. Your court is determined by the cause number the clerk assigns when the case is filed.
Government Code Section 25.2293 and Local Rule 1.3(a)(3) direct the county clerk to docket odd-numbered probate, guardianship and trust cases, and related cases, in Probate Court No. 1, and even-numbered ones in Probate Court No. 2.
Outside Travis we appear in Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, Caldwell and Burnet counties. Williamson County has five county courts at law and no statutory probate court, so the same dispute filed one county north goes to a county court at law. The trust jurisdiction in Estates Code Section 32.006 applies only in a county that has a statutory probate court.
Government Code Section 25.2291(c) establishes the two Travis County probate courts. Section 25.2481 establishes Williamson County’s five county courts at law and no statutory probate court.
We’d rather tell you now than after you’ve driven downtown.
Muniment of title. Small estate affidavits. Affidavits of heirship. Simple wills and estate planning. Routine uncontested administration. Routine guardianship setup where nobody is objecting.
Heirship is the overlap people miss. A contested heirship proceeding, with disputed heirs and an attorney ad litem, is our work. An affidavit of heirship, signed when the family agrees, is something we don’t prepare.
If you can’t tell which group your problem belongs in, call (512) 273-7444.
Bring the will or trust, the cause number if a case is open, and a short account of who is objecting. We’ll tell you which of the proceedings above fits, or tell you the matter doesn’t need a litigator at all.
The first call is free and usually short. Our Austin office is at 7600 Chevy Chase Drive, Chase Park, Suite 300, Austin, TX 78752, by appointment only.