Frio County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Pearsall, 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 in Frio County because the county publishes a fee schedule but no probate instructions, no forms and no docket information for estates, 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 or royalty interest and parcel of Frio 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 in a county where farm, ranch 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 Frio County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The Frio County Courthouse at 500 East San Antonio Street in Pearsall 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 Frio County, including Pearsall and Dilley, where the county seats its Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace at 101 N. Commerce Street, and the farming and ranching country around both. Take a probate filing to the County Clerk at Box 6 in the courthouse; the District Clerk at Box 8 in the same building serves the district courts, not estates.

Venue is straightforward for a Frio 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 Frio County, the case belongs in the Frio County Court, even if they died in a hospital in San Antonio, Uvalde or Laredo. 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. Frio County has no statutory probate court and no county court at law: Government Code Chapter 25, which creates every statutory county court and statutory probate court in the state, contains no Frio County entry. So the Frio 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 Frio County Clerk for the county court and listing no county court at law at all.

Frio County is served by two district courts, and both are composed of the same five counties. Government Code § 24.183(a) provides that the 81st Judicial District is composed of Atascosa, Frio, Karnes, LaSalle and Wilson counties, and § 24.396(a) provides that the 218th Judicial District is composed of the same five. Section 24.183(b)(2) adds that the terms of the 81st District Court in Frio County begin on the fourth Mondays in May and November. The two courts share an office in Jourdanton at 1405 Campbell Avenue, 830-769-3750, and their own site states the point that matters most to a Frio County family: "Cases are heard in the county where the case is filed", with the Frio location given as 500 East San Antonio, Pearsall, 830-334-8073. That is the same courthouse the County Clerk works in. None of that changes where an estate starts: original probate jurisdiction is in the county court under Estates Code § 32.002(a) and the application goes to the Frio County Clerk.

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 Frio 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 Frio County lies in the Fourth Court of Appeals District (Government Code § 22.201(e)). That court sits in San Antonio at the Cadena-Reeves Justice Center, 300 Dolorosa, Suite 3200, names Frio in its own list of counties served, and is linked from both the Frio County Clerk's page and the Frio County District Clerk's page, the latter describing it as the "Fourth Court of Appeals serving Frio County."

The published fee schedule is the thing to get right, and the thing most likely to mislead you. Frio County publishes a genuine one-page fee schedule with a dedicated probate block, which most counties of this size do not, and its probate lines read $308.00 for letters of administration, for letters testamentary and for muniment of title (Estates Code chapter 257), $244.00 for a small estate and $242.00 for a declaration of heirship. Since January 1, 2022, however, every Texas county clerk has had to collect a consolidated $223 local fee (Local Government Code § 135.102(a)(1)) and a consolidated $137 state fee (§ 133.151(a)(1)) on the filing of a probate case, a $360.00 base that is not a local decision. The county schedule carries no printed effective date. The county plainly knows about the change, because its own Justice of the Peace page explains that justice court civil filing fees "have been consolidated and have increased ... pursuant to SB 41 passed by the 87th Legislature signed into law with an effective date of January 1, 2022". Read the schedule for the county's recording, copy, certification and fax rates, which are local and useful, and telephone the clerk for the probate total.

The published County Court dockets are criminal, not probate. Frio County maintains a County Court Dockets page with dozens of settings posted from October 5, 2022 through July 17, 2026, which at first glance looks like the published probate calendar that small Texas counties almost never offer. It is not. Every page of every docket sheet checked is headed "ALL CRIMINAL DOCKETS", every case on those sheets is styled "THE STATE OF TEXAS vs.", and the July 17, 2026 sheet ends "109 RECORD(S) LISTED". Frio County publishes no probate docket, no probate hearing day and no docket time, so this page asserts none and tells you to ask the clerk how a setting is arranged.

The county clerk's address has a box number that is not a post office box, and there is a second clerk in the building. Frio County numbers the offices inside its courthouse: the County Clerk is Box 6, the County Judge is Box 7, the District Clerk is Box 8 and the Precinct 1 Justice of the Peace is Box 9, all at 500 East San Antonio Street, Pearsall, TX 78061. Frio County publishes no separate P.O. box for the County Clerk, so mail goes to that street address with Box 6 on it. Unlike the smallest Texas counties, Frio has a separate elected District Clerk with its own phone, fax, email and fee sheet; that office serves the district courts. An estate is filed with the County Clerk, who is the clerk of the county court (Texas Constitution article V, § 20).

Two district courts serve Frio County, and both of them sit in the same Pearsall courthouse. Government Code § 24.183(a) composes the 81st Judicial District of Atascosa, Frio, Karnes, LaSalle and Wilson counties, and § 24.396(a) composes the 218th Judicial District of the same five counties, with § 24.183(b)(2) fixing the terms of the 81st District Court in Frio County on the fourth Mondays in May and November. The courts share an office and court coordinators in Jourdanton at 1405 Campbell Avenue, 830-769-3750, and their own website states that "Cases are heard in the county where the case is filed", giving the Frio location as 500 East San Antonio, Pearsall, 830-334-8073. That is worth knowing before a dispute starts: if a contested matter is transferred to the district court under Estates Code § 32.003(a)(2), the hearing does not move to another county. The county's District Clerk and the courts both publish "Local Rules of Practice, 81st and 218th Judicial District Court", which govern the district courts rather than a probate filing, and the county's copy is a scanned image with no text layer, so no rule from it is quoted here.

The clerk's online records portal is a land-records search that its own documentation says can also carry court cases. The Frio County Clerk links an "Online Records Search" at public.lgsonlinesolutions.com, run by Local Government Solutions, and describes it on the clerk's page as a search of deed and land records. The clerk's own frequently asked questions sheet for the portal says something broader: that a guest login shows index information and image previews only, that registration is needed to buy images, that a subscription is required after a small number of image purchases, that every purchase carries a mandatory $0.30 transaction fee, and that images may be bought "for Court Cases, such as Criminal, Civil, Probate, or Property Records". Whether Frio's probate index is loaded could not be established from outside the portal, and the Office of Court Administration's directory records Local Government Solutions as the county's case management system, so ask the County Clerk rather than assume either way. Do not confuse the county's separate online court payment link, which is for traffic and justice court fines, with a case search or a way to pay a probate filing fee.

Recording an instrument in person now requires photo identification. The clerk posts a notice, headed as a new procedure for recording starting September 1, 2025, that reads "EFFECTIVE 9-1-2025 ALL PERSONS PRESENTING A DOCUMENT FOR FILING (IN PERSON) INTO THE REAL PROPERTY RECORDS OF FRIO COUNTY, ARE REQUIRED TO PROVIDE A PHOTO ID TO THE CLERK", citing section 191.010 of the Texas Local Government Code. That reaches one probate step directly: where a decedent's homestead is the only real property in the estate, the affidavit used to transfer title must be recorded in the deed records of a county in which the homestead is located (Estates Code § 205.006(a)). Bring identification, and read the clerk's recording requirements sheet before you go, because it also asks for margins, a grantee mailing address, a preparer's name and address and a self-addressed stamped envelope.

Older links to the county clerk are broken, including the one in the state's own directory. The county rebuilt its website and the previous clerk address, /page/frio.County.Clerk, now returns a 403 error, while other old-style paths on the same site still work. The Office of Court Administration's May 23, 2025 county clerk directory points at a different old address that returns the Frio County home page with no clerk contact information on it, which is worse than a plain error because it looks like it worked. The live page is the one linked from this page, and the courthouse switchboard, 830-505-2988, is not the clerk's line.

Uncontested estates are settled without a lawyer in counties like this one every year, and Frio County gives a self-represented filer a little more to work from than most small Texas counties, because the clerk publishes a fee schedule and recording instructions. Counsel still 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 estates forms and no probate instructions, so every document is drafted from scratch. The county's published probate fee figures do not match the statutory base, so the cost of the filing has to be established by telephone rather than read off a page. 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 Frio County and the surrounding South Texas 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, Frio 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 Pearsall.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, captioned for the Frio County Court, the constitutional county court that actually has the case, and ready to file with the Frio County Clerk at 500 East San Antonio Street, Box 6. That matters more in a county that publishes no estates forms 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 Frio 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).