Donley County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Clarendon, 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 Donley publishes no probate page, no forms, no instructions and no fee schedule, so there is no local document to catch a wrong assumption. The people who can tell you what the counter needs are the County Clerk at (806) 874-3436 and, for the court's own requirements, the County Judge's office at (806) 874-3625, 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 Donley 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 matters in a ranching and farming county, where land, equipment and mineral interests are often the largest things on the list and the ones most likely to be held in a form nobody has looked at in years. Sunset's asset-discovery work, searching more than 2,300 financial institutions, exists for exactly this step, so that the application filed with the Donley County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The Donley County Courthouse at 300 S. Sully Street in Clarendon is the single probate filing location for the whole county. There is no branch or satellite counter for estates: the County Clerk takes filings at the courthouse, mail goes to the clerk's PO Drawer U in Clarendon, and the county court sits in the same building. The court serves every part of Donley County, including Clarendon, Howardwick, Hedley and Lelia Lake and the ranch and farm country around them. 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 Donley County, the case belongs in the Donley County Court, even if they died in a hospital in Amarillo, Childress or Lubbock. 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. Donley County has no statutory probate court and no county court at law: Government Code Chapter 25, where every county court at law and every statutory probate court in Texas is created, contains no Donley provision, and the county's own website lists no such court among its offices. So the Donley 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 connected to the county are the 100th District Court and the two Justice of the Peace precinct courts, and none of them opens estates. Caption your papers for the Donley County Court.

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 Donley County begin on the first Mondays in March and October, each term beginning at 10 a.m. on the first day (Government Code § 24.202). The county names the Honorable Dale A. Rabe Jr. as the district judge, with chambers and a court coordinator in Childress at 100 Ave. E North West, Box 3, Childress, TX 79201, phone 940-937-7070 (verified July 2026). An appeal from a Donley County probate order goes to the Seventh Court of Appeals in Amarillo, which lists Donley among the forty-six counties it serves. Note that the county clerk's own page carries a link captioned as the court of appeals serving Donley County that points to a different court of appeals; the Seventh is the correct one.

One elected officer is both the County Clerk and the District Clerk, and the county says so in as many words. The Donley County Clerk page and the District Clerk page publish the same officer, the same PO Drawer U, the same phone, the same fax, the same mailbox and the same two deputy clerks, and the county's Contact Us page lists the office in a single line as "County/District Clerk". 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 a majority of the county's voters choose to keep the offices separate at an election held for that purpose (§ 51.501(b)), and § 51.502 then has that clerk use the county court seal for county court acts and the district court seal for district court acts. The county's own overview page puts its population at 3,828, citing the 2000 federal census. Two practical consequences follow. First, you still open an estate as a county court filing at the County Clerk's counter; 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.

The counter week is short at both ends, and it is published. The County Clerk's own page gives the hours as 7:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 7:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Friday. So the office closes for an hour at midday four days a week, closes fifteen minutes before the hour on those afternoons, and shuts for the week at 1:00 p.m. on Friday. If you are driving in from Amarillo or from out of state to hand over an original will, that Friday cutoff is the single most useful fact on this page. The County Judge's office keeps different hours again, publishing 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on its main weekday listing and 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Friday, so do not assume one visit reaches both offices.

Mail goes to a drawer, not to the courthouse street address. The clerk publishes PO Drawer U, Clarendon, TX 79226 as the mailing address on its County Clerk page, its District Clerk page and the county's Open Records page. The County Judge's office uses PO Box 909 and the County Attorney uses PO Box 876, so an envelope addressed to the courthouse generally rather than to the County Clerk at Drawer U can go to the wrong desk. The courthouse itself is at 300 S. Sully Street; the County Attorney and the Justice of the Peace for Precincts 1 and 2 are at 309 S. Sully, a different address, and the county runs a separate Donley County Annex used for elections. No room or suite number is published for the County Clerk, so ask at the door rather than wandering the building with an original will in hand.

The county's published email does not match its own mail links. Both clerk pages display [email protected] as the office address, but the mail link behind that text on each page still points at an older address on a private internet provider, and the two pages point at two different ones. The displayed address is an office mailbox rather than an individual's, but the disagreement is on the county's own pages, so call (806) 874-3436 and confirm the working address before you send anything you cannot afford to have bounce.

There is a county recording fee, the county's two pages disagree about it, and probate readers run into it. The County Clerk page and the District Clerk page, for the same office, publish two different first-page recording fees for official public records, one dollar apart, so this page prints neither: ask the clerk for the current figure. Either way it is a real-property recording charge, not a probate filing fee, and it applies to the documents an estate often has to put on record in the county's deed records: 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 wants 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. Donley publishes no probate page, no forms, no fee schedule, no e-filing notice, no docket day and no records search of any kind, not even a land-records portal. Its County Holidays page is a calendar widget rather than a published closure list, so confirm holidays too. One more small defect worth knowing: the link on the clerk's page captioned as the court of appeals serving Donley County points to a different court of appeals. Appeals from a Donley County probate order go to the Seventh Court of Appeals in Amarillo, which names Donley in its own counties-served list. Treat the County Clerk at (806) 874-3436 and the County Judge's office at (806) 874-3625 as the authoritative sources for local procedure, and get any load-bearing answer confirmed before you file.

An uncontested Donley 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 farm or ranch land, equipment 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, Donley 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, there is no online record to work from: the county runs no case search, so tracking what is on file means calling the clerk. 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 Donley 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, Donley County real property and mineral interests, and unclaimed property, so estate settlement starts with a clear view of what the estate holds and which route fits before anything is filed in Clarendon.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, captioned for the Donley County Court and addressed to the County Clerk at the courthouse or at PO Drawer U, 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 Donley 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).