Crosby County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Crosbyton, 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. Doing that work first matters more than usual in Crosby County, because the county publishes no probate instructions, no forms and no fee schedule to correct a wrong assumption for you, and the person at the counter can explain procedure but cannot tell you which route to take.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, vehicle, mineral interest and parcel of Crosby 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. That question is worth settling early on the South Plains, where cotton ground, irrigation equipment and mineral interests often outweigh the bank balances. Sunset's asset-discovery work, searching more than 2,300 financial institutions, exists for exactly this step, so that the application filed with the Crosby County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The Crosby County Courthouse at 201 West Aspen in Crosbyton is the single probate filing location for the whole county. There is no branch, satellite or annex counter for estates. The court serves every part of Crosby County, including Crosbyton and Ralls, both of which appear in the county's own election paperwork, and the farming country around them. Inside the courthouse there are two clerk's offices and they are not interchangeable: the County Clerk is in Suite 102 on 806-675-2334 and the District Clerk is in Suite 207 on 806-675-2071. An estate goes to the County Clerk.

Venue is straightforward for a Crosby County 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 Crosby County, the case belongs in the Crosby County Court, even if they died in a hospital in Lubbock, Plainview or Amarillo. 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 in Crosby County the county's own website invites the mistake. Its menu carries a "County Court at Law" entry, but the page it opens is empty, with no court, no judge and no contact information on it, and there is no such court. Government Code Chapter 25, which creates every statutory county court and statutory probate court in the state, contains no Crosby County entry at all. So the Crosby County Court, the constitutional county court, has original jurisdiction of probate proceedings (Estates Code § 32.002(a)), and the elected County Judge presides. The Office of Court Administration's 2025 county clerk directory records the same thing from the clerk's side, listing probate among the case types filed with the Crosby County Clerk for the county court and listing no county court at law. Caption your application for the Crosby County Court.

The other trial court seated in the county is the 72nd District Court. Government Code § 24.174(a) provides that the 72nd Judicial District is composed of Crosby and Lubbock counties, and § 24.174(b)(1) that the terms of the 72nd District Court begin in Crosby County on the second Mondays in May and November. That is the district court's own calendar, not a probate calendar, and it does not change where an estate starts: original probate jurisdiction is in the county court and the application goes to the Crosby County Clerk. The county names Judge John Grace as the 72nd District Court judge, at P.O. Box 10536, Lubbock, Texas 79408, 806-775-1041 (verified July 2026), and the District Clerk's published email address, [email protected], carries the district number.

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 the 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.

One step further out, an appeal from a Crosby County probate order does not go to the district court either. A final order issued by a probate court is appealable to the court of appeals (Estates Code § 32.001(c)), and Crosby County lies in the Seventh Court of Appeals District (Government Code § 22.201(h)). That court sits in Amarillo, names Crosby in its own list of forty-six counties served, and is linked from the Crosby County Clerk's own page as the court serving the county.

Two clerks, two suites, and one of them is the wrong one. This is the first thing to get right in Crosby County, and it runs opposite to the pattern in the very smallest Texas counties, where one officer holds both clerkships and there is no wrong window. Crosby County publishes a County Clerk in Suite 102 of the courthouse on 806-675-2334, with fax 806-675-2980 and the mailboxes [email protected] and [email protected], and a separate District Clerk in Suite 207 on 806-675-2071, with fax 806-675-2433 and the mailbox [email protected]. The Office of Court Administration's directory carries no combo-clerk note for the county. An estate is a county court matter and is taken by the County Clerk as clerk of that court (Texas Constitution article V, § 20). Suite 102 is the counter for a probate application.

Do not trust the "County Court at Law" item in the county website's menu. It is there, it opens, and the page behind it is empty: the site's standard courthouse footer and nothing else, no court, no judge, no address. Crosby County has no county court at law. Government Code Chapter 25, which creates every statutory county court and statutory probate court in Texas, contains no Crosby County entry, and the Office of Court Administration's 2025 clerk directory shows Crosby with a county court case-type block marked "Probate: Yes" and no county court at law block at all. This matters in a practical way: an application captioned for a court that does not exist is an application that has to be redone.

Nothing about probate is published, and that is itself the local condition to plan around. Crosby County has no probate page, no probate fee schedule, no probate forms or checklists, no e-filing notice, no published local rules, no docket information, no online case search and no published counter hours. The county is not doing anything wrong: nothing requires a county of this size to publish any of it. But it means the statewide rules do the work here. Attorneys must e-file (Misc. Docket No. 13-9164), an unrepresented party may but need not (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(1)), the original will goes to the clerk within three business days (Rule 21(f)(12)), the base fee is $360.00 by statute (Local Government Code § 135.102(a)(1) and § 133.151(a)(1)), and everything genuinely local has to be confirmed on 806-675-2334.

The county's case management software is a reason not to assume your case will show up online. The Office of Court Administration's 2025 directory records Crosby County's case management system as KiCorp, which is not the Tyler Technologies platform that runs eFileTexas.gov and re:SearchTX. Crosby County runs no case search of its own and, unusually for a Texas county, links no online land-records portal either. So plan to get information about a Crosby County estate the way people always have, by calling or visiting the County Clerk.

The district court sits here on a published calendar, and it is a four-times-a-year kind of calendar. Government Code § 24.174(a) provides that the 72nd Judicial District is composed of Crosby and Lubbock counties, and § 24.174(b) that the terms of the 72nd District Court begin in Crosby County on the second Mondays in May and November and in Lubbock County on the second Mondays in February and August; § 24.174(c) adds that the 72nd, 99th, 137th and 140th district courts have concurrent jurisdiction in Lubbock County. Those are the district court's terms, not a probate docket, and original probate jurisdiction stays with the county court under Estates Code § 32.002(a). But the shape of that calendar is worth knowing before a contest sends part of your case to a judge based in Lubbock.

An appeal goes to Amarillo, not to the district court. A final order issued by a probate court is appealable to the court of appeals (Estates Code § 32.001(c)), and Crosby County is one of the forty-six counties in the Seventh Court of Appeals District (Government Code § 22.201(h)). The Seventh Court of Appeals names Crosby in its own counties-served list and publishes its address as 350 SE 6th Avenue, Suite 2C, Amarillo, with mail to P.O. Box 9540, Amarillo, TX 79105-9540, on (806) 342-2650. The Crosby County Clerk's own page links that court as "Seventh Court of Appeals serving Crosby County", which is a useful piece of orientation on a site that otherwise says nothing about courts.

One court, one counter, and the district court enters on a contest. Because Government Code Chapter 25 contains no Crosby County entry, there is no question of choosing a court: the Crosby County Court hears the estate (Estates Code § 32.002(a)) and the County Clerk takes the filing. The 72nd District Court reaches a Crosby probate matter only if the County Judge requests the assignment of a statutory probate court judge or transfers a contested matter under § 32.003(a), and even then the county court keeps the management of the rest of the estate (§ 32.003(g)).

Uncontested estates are settled without a lawyer in counties like this one every year, but Crosby County gives a self-represented filer less to work from than most. 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 real property or a mineral interest has 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. The county publishes no probate forms, no instructions, no hours and no fee schedule, so every document is drafted from scratch and every local cost and deadline has to be established by telephone. The county's own website misleads on the court, listing a county court at law that does not exist behind an empty page, and a caption naming the wrong court has to be redone. And 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 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. County Clerk staff can explain procedure but cannot give legal advice. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Crosby County and the surrounding South Plains counties.

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, Crosby 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 Crosbyton.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, captioned for the Crosby County Court, the constitutional county court that actually has the case, and ready to file with the Crosby County Clerk in Suite 102 at 201 West Aspen. That matters more in a county that publishes no forms and whose own website names a court it does not have.

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 Crosby 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).