Castro County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Dimmitt, know what is actually in the estate and what it owes. Which Texas route fits, and whether an administration is needed at all, turns on whether there is a will, who the distributees are, what the assets are worth, and whether there are unpaid debts. Those routes are set by state statute and work the same way in all 254 Texas counties; they are explained on the Texas state page. Getting the answer before your first filing matters more than usual in a county this size, because Castro County publishes no probate instruction sheet, no probate forms and no docket calendar to check your assumptions against. Nearly everything you need to know beyond the statute has to come from a phone call to the County Clerk at 806-647-3338, and a wrong route means starting over.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, vehicle, and parcel of Castro County or out-of-county real property, along with every debt, before you apply. How each asset is titled decides whether it passes through the estate at all: survivorship accounts, accounts with a named beneficiary and land covered by a recorded transfer on death deed pass outside the estate and never reach the county court. In a farming and ranching county, mineral interests, equipment, stored grain and leases are easy to miss and are exactly the assets an inventory has to describe. Sunset's asset-discovery work, searching more than 2,300 financial institutions, exists for this step, so that the application filed with the Castro County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The Castro County Courthouse at 100 East Bedford Street in Dimmitt is the single probate filing location for the whole county. There is no branch, satellite or annex counter for estates: the County Clerk takes filings in Room 101 and the County Judge sits in Room 111 of the same building. The court serves every part of the county, including Dimmitt, Hart, Nazareth and the farming communities between them. Since June 19, 2023 the public enters only from the west side of the courthouse, because the commissioners court installed a controlled access system and closed the north and east doors to the public.

Venue is straightforward for a Panhandle resident: you file in the county where the decedent lived, if the decedent had a domicile or fixed place of residence in Texas (Estates Code § 33.001(a)(1)). If the person lived in Castro County, the case belongs in the Castro County Court, even if they died in a hospital in Amarillo, Plainview or Lubbock, which is where many Castro County residents are treated. For a decedent with no Texas domicile or fixed residence, venue depends on where the death happened and where the estate or the nearest of kin are (§ 33.001(a)(2)).

Which court hears the case is the fact most often gotten wrong on a small Texas county page. Castro County has no statutory probate court and no county court at law, so the Castro County Court, the constitutional county court, has original jurisdiction of probate proceedings (Estates Code § 32.002(a)), and the elected County Judge presides. The county's own guardianship form proves the point in its caption: "In County Court, Castro County, Texas". The only other trial courts serving the county are the 64th and 242nd District Courts and the Justice of the Peace, and none of them opens an estate. Appeals go to the Seventh Court of Appeals, which the County Clerk names as the appellate court serving Castro County and which sits in Amarillo.

If a matter in the proceeding becomes contested, the case does not stay with the County Judge by default. Under Estates Code § 32.003(a), in a county with no statutory probate court and no county court at law exercising original probate jurisdiction, when a matter in a probate proceeding is contested the judge of the county court may, on the judge's own motion, or shall, on the motion of any party to the proceeding, either request the assignment of a statutory probate court judge to hear the contested matter (Government Code § 25.0022) or transfer the contested matter to the district court, which may then hear it as if originally filed there. Three details matter in practice. A party's motion for assignment of a statutory probate court judge beats a transfer: if it is filed before the county judge transfers the matter, the county judge shall grant it and may not transfer the case unless the motion is withdrawn (§ 32.003(b)). A party may file that motion before anything becomes contested, and it takes effect if the matter later does (§ 32.003(c)). And the county court keeps the rest of the case: if only the contested matter is assigned out or transferred, the county court continues to exercise jurisdiction over the management of the estate until the contested matter is finally disposed of (§ 32.003(g)), and the matter returns to the county court when it is resolved.

The district courts are worth knowing about before that happens, because in Castro County they are not down the hall. The 64th District Court and the 242nd District Court both serve Castro County as part of the Ninth Administrative Judicial Region, and the county publishes both judges' chambers at Broadway Boulevard addresses in Plainview, in neighboring Hale County. A transfer of a contested matter under § 32.003(a)(2) therefore moves that part of the case to a court whose judge is seated outside the county, which is a practical reason to raise a motion for assignment of a statutory probate court judge early if the family expects a fight.

One officer, two clerkships, one counter. Castro County's County Clerk page and its District Clerk page publish the same name, the same room, the same phone number, the same fax and the same hours: Amanda Fisher at 100 East Bedford Street, Room 101 (verified July 2026). That is not a website error. Texas general law provides that a county with a population of less than 8,000 elects a single clerk to perform the duties of the district clerk and the county clerk, unless the county's voters keep the offices separate (Government Code § 51.501(a) and (b)), and Castro County is comfortably under that line. What it means for you is practical: when you call or walk in, say that you are opening a probate matter in the county court, because the same staff also handle district court filings. An estate belongs on the county clerk side of the office. The district clerk side serves the 64th and 242nd District Courts and only meets a probate case if a contested matter is transferred there under Estates Code § 32.003(a)(2).

The Friday close at 2:00 p.m. is the local fact most likely to cost you a deadline. The counter runs 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday, then 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Friday, and the clerk states that the office is open during lunch. That is a friendlier midday than most Texas county clerks, who close from noon to one, but the Friday afternoon is gone. If you e-file an application to probate a will on a Tuesday, the original will has to be with the clerk within three business days (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(12)), and the last of those days may end at 2:00 p.m. Plan a Panhandle drive or a courier around that, not around a 5:00 p.m. assumption.

Enter from the west. The county published a notice that the courthouse made entrance changes effective June 19, 2023, that the commissioners court approved a controlled access system for the courthouse doors, and that from June 19 "the North and East entrance will be closed to the public and all access to the courthouse will be through the West entrance". The notice is the county's own; nothing about screening, parking or interior routing is published, so allow time on a first visit.

Nothing is published about the probate docket, and that is the honest answer. Castro County has no probate page, no docket calendar, no docket start time, no published filing-to-hearing interval and no remote appearance policy. Larger Texas counties publish all of that; this one does not, so any figure you read elsewhere for how long a Castro County probate takes to reach a hearing is guesswork. Ask the County Clerk at 806-647-3338 how a setting is obtained. Note also the county's own instruction on the County Judge's page: do not attempt to contact the judge by mail, email, phone or in person about a pending matter. Scheduling and procedural questions go to the clerk or, for the county court's calendar, to the court coordinator in Room 111 at 806-647-4451.

The clerk cannot notarize and cannot advise, and both are published. The County Clerk's page carries the line that the County Clerk and staff cannot give legal advice or answer legal questions, and the clerk's records-filing requirements sheet repeats it with a cite to Government Code § 81.101 and adds that "The Clerk's Office DOES NOT notarize any documents". A probate application, an oath and a proof of death are sworn documents, so line up a notary before you go to the courthouse. That sheet also takes payment by cash, check or money order only, and not by credit or debit card, at the records counter; ask the clerk how a probate filing fee should be paid rather than assuming a card will work.

Do not record the letters. The same county sheet lists "LETTERS TESTAMENTARY" among the documents that should not be filed in the official public records, alongside military discharge records, birth and death certificates, and an "UNPROBATED WILL (unless attached to an affidavit)". People often assume that letters, like a deed, get recorded in the county's land records so that a title company can find them. In Castro County the clerk says otherwise: keep the certified letters and hand them to the institution that needs them. Certified copies of court records are $1.00 per page plus $5.00 for the certification per document, which is also the statutory rate the county clerk collects (Local Government Code § 118.060).

One court, one filing counter, and the district courts sit out of county. Castro County has no statutory probate court and no county court at law, so there is no question of which court to choose: the Castro County Court hears the estate (Estates Code § 32.002(a)) and the County Clerk in Room 101 takes the filing. The 64th and 242nd District Courts serve the county as part of the Ninth Administrative Judicial Region, but the county publishes both judges' chambers at Broadway Boulevard addresses in Plainview, in Hale County. If a contested matter is transferred to a district court under § 32.003(a)(2), that part of the case moves to a judge seated outside Castro County, while the county court keeps the management of the rest of the estate (§ 32.003(g)).

Plenty of uncontested Castro County estates are settled without a lawyer, and nothing in the county's rules requires one for an ordinary application. Counsel earns its keep when a will or an appointment is likely to be challenged, when there is no will and the heirs have to be determined, when farm or ranch land, mineral interests or equipment have to be sold or divided, when the estate is insolvent or a creditor is pressing, when a business or out-of-state property is involved, or when a guardianship has to run alongside the estate. Three local factors weigh in favor of an attorney more than they would in a metro county. First, Castro County publishes no probate forms and no probate instruction sheet, so every document is drafted from scratch, and the County Clerk's page says plainly that the clerk and staff cannot give legal advice or answer legal questions. Second, the county publishes no docket calendar or hearing procedure, so a filer without counsel is relying on phone calls to learn how a setting is obtained. Third, the contested-matter route has a timing trap: if a matter becomes contested, the County Judge may on the judge's own motion, and shall on the motion of any party, request the assignment of a statutory probate court judge or transfer the contested matter to the district court (Estates Code § 32.003(a)), and a motion for assignment filed before a transfer must be granted (§ 32.003(b)), which matters here because the district courts serving Castro County are seated in Plainview. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Castro County and the surrounding Panhandle.

Find the accounts and assets. Sunset searches more than 2,300 financial institutions and public records to surface bank and credit union accounts, retirement plans, brokerage holdings, life insurance, Castro County real property and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds and which estate settlement route fits before anything is filed in Dimmitt.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, drafted for the Castro County Court and captioned the way the county's own filings are, ready to file with the Castro County Clerk in Room 101 or to e-file through eFileTexas.gov.

Find a local probate attorney. When a matter is contested or otherwise calls for counsel, Sunset connects families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Castro County.

Sunset is free for families. Revenue comes from bank partners that pay Sunset while estate funds sit in an FDIC-insured estate account ($3M coverage).