Collingsworth County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Wellington, 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 are identical 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 Collingsworth publishes no probate forms, no probate instructions and no fee schedule, so there is no local document to correct a wrong assumption. The people who can tell you what the counter needs are the County Clerk at 806-447-2408 and, for the court's own requirements, the County Judge's office at 806-447-5408, and neither can give you legal advice.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, vehicle, mineral interest and parcel of Collingsworth 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. Sunset's asset-discovery work, searching more than 2,300 financial institutions, exists for exactly this step, so that the application filed with the Collingsworth County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The Collingsworth County Courthouse at 800 West Avenue in Wellington 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 3, and the county court sits in the same building. The court serves every part of Collingsworth County, including Wellington and the rural areas around it. Attorneys file electronically through eFileTexas.gov, so much of an uncontested estate can be handled without standing at the counter, but the county publishes no remote appearance rule, so plan on the courthouse for anything the judge has to hear.

Venue is the ordinary Texas rule: 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 Collingsworth County, the case belongs in the Collingsworth County Court, even if they died in a hospital in Amarillo, Childress or across the state line. 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, and Collingsworth's own website makes it easy to get wrong. The county's navigation menu carries a "County Court at Law" entry, but the page behind it is blank and the Legislature has created no statutory county court in Collingsworth County: Government Code Chapter 25, which is where every county court at law and every statutory probate court in Texas is created, has no Collingsworth provision. So the Collingsworth County Court, the constitutional county court, has original jurisdiction of probate proceedings (Estates Code § 32.002(a)), and the elected County Judge presides. The other trial courts seated in the county are the 100th District Court and the county-wide Justice of the Peace, and neither opens estates.

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 court on the receiving end of a § 32.003(a)(2) transfer is the 100th District Court. By statute the 100th Judicial District is composed of Carson, Childress, Collingsworth, Donley and Hall counties, and its terms in Collingsworth County begin on the first Mondays in April and November, each term beginning at 10 a.m. on the first day (Government Code § 24.202). The county names the Honorable Dale Rabe, Jr. as the presiding district judge, with chambers and a court coordinator in Childress at (940) 937-7070 (verified July 2026). An appeal from a Collingsworth County probate order goes to the Seventh Court of Appeals in Amarillo, which lists Collingsworth among the forty-six counties it serves.

The county's own menu advertises a court the county does not have. Every page of the Collingsworth County website carries a navigation entry reading "County Court at Law". The page behind it is blank, and Government Code Chapter 25, where the Legislature creates every county court at law and every statutory probate court in Texas, contains no Collingsworth provision. Treat the menu label as website boilerplate. The court that hears estates here is the Collingsworth County Court, the constitutional county court (Estates Code § 32.002(a)), and papers should be captioned for it.

One elected officer is both the County Clerk and the District Clerk. The county publishes the same person, the same courthouse box, the same phone, the same fax and the same mailbox on its County Clerk page and its District Clerk page. That is the joint clerkship the Legislature provides for in the smallest counties: Government Code § 51.501(a) requires a county with a population of less than 8,000 to elect a single clerk to perform the duties of the district clerk and the county clerk, unless the voters keep the offices separate (§ 51.501(b)), and § 51.502 then tells that clerk to use the county court seal for county court acts and the district court seal for district court acts. Two practical consequences. First, you still open an estate as a county court filing, with the County Clerk; the district clerk title on the same desk does not change that. Second, if a contested matter is later transferred to the 100th District Court under Estates Code § 32.003(a)(2), the file does not move to a different office, because § 32.003(i) lets the district court's clerk perform any function a county clerk may perform for that matter and here the two clerks are one officer.

Room 3 for the counter, #10 for the mail, #13 for the judge. The County Clerk page publishes only "800 W. Avenue, #10", which is a courthouse mail box rather than a room. The county clerk's own signed election notices are what locate the office: the notice for the March 3, 2026 primary lists "Collingsworth County Clerk's Office, Room 3" and gives the mail-to as 800 West Ave. #10, and the notice for the November 4, 2025 general election lists "COLLINGSWORTH COURTHOUSE, ROOM 3" under the heading for the county clerk's office. The County Judge's box is #13, and the Justice of the Peace is on the 2nd floor in Room 5. Address anything for the estate to the County Clerk at #10 and hand-deliver to Room 3.

Counter hours are not published anywhere, and that is unusual enough to plan around. No Collingsworth County page publishes County Clerk office hours, a lunch closure or a filing cutoff. Other offices in the same building publish their own and they do not match each other: the County Judge's office publishes Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and the Justice of the Peace publishes Monday through Thursday 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. with Friday mornings only. For orientation, the county clerk's own early voting notices ran the clerk's office from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on regular workdays, but that is an election schedule and not a published counter schedule. Call 806-447-2408 before you drive.

The courthouse closes for twelve published holidays in 2026, spanning fourteen weekdays. The county features its "2026 APPROVED HOLIDAYS" list on its homepage: New Year's Day January 1, Martin Luther King Jr. Day January 19, President's Day February 16, Texas Independence Day March 2, Good Friday April 3, Memorial Day May 25, Independence Day July 3, Labor Day September 7, Columbus Day October 12, Veterans Day November 11, Thanksgiving November 26 and 27, and Christmas December 24 and 25. The same sheet adds that when a holiday falls on a weekend the courthouse closes on the Friday before or the Monday after, and that the Commissioners Court "encourages all offices to adhere to the above scheduled holidays", which is an encouragement rather than a command, so confirm before traveling on a day near one of them.

There is a county recording fee, and probate readers run into it. The County Clerk publishes: "Recording Fee for Official Public Records: $16.00 for the first page and $4.00 for each additional page." That is a real-property recording charge, not a probate filing fee, but it is the charge that applies to the documents an estate often has to put on record in the county's deed records, including an affidavit used to transfer a homestead under Estates Code § 205.006, an order admitting a will as a muniment of title under chapter 257 where a title company asks for it of record, and a secured creditor's election notice under § 403.052. Budget it separately from the court costs.

Nothing about this county's probate practice is online, so the phone call does the work. Collingsworth publishes no probate page, no forms, no fee schedule, no e-filing notice, no docket day and no case search. The two documents the County Clerk does post under an "OCA REPORTS" heading are the district clerk's attorney and guardian ad litem appointment and payment reports for September 2020 through May 2021, which are family-law records and have nothing to do with estates. Treat the County Clerk at 806-447-2408 and the County Judge's office at 806-447-5408 as the authoritative sources for local procedure, and get any load-bearing answer confirmed before you file.

An uncontested Collingsworth County estate can be handled without a lawyer, and plenty are. Counsel earns its keep here when a will or an appointment is likely to be challenged, when there is no will and the heirs have to be determined, when real property or mineral interests 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, Collingsworth County publishes no probate forms, no instructions and no fee schedule, so every document is drafted from scratch with no local template to check it against. Second, the caption itself is a trap: the county's website menu names a county court at law that does not exist, and the correct court is the Collingsworth County Court. Third, the contested-matter route matters: 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 100th District Court (Estates Code § 32.003(a)), and a motion for assignment filed before a transfer must be granted (§ 32.003(b)), which is a timing point that is easy to miss without counsel. County Clerk staff can explain procedure but cannot give legal advice. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Collingsworth County and the eastern 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, Collingsworth County real property and mineral interests, and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds and which estate settlement route fits before anything is filed in Wellington.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, captioned for the Collingsworth County Court and addressed to the County Clerk at the courthouse, which matters in a county that publishes no forms, no checklist and no instructions of its own.

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 Collingsworth 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).