Galveston County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Galveston County, know what is in the estate, how each asset is titled, and what is owed. Which Texas route fits depends on whether there is a will, whether the estate owes unpaid debts other than debts secured by liens on real estate, whether all the heirs agree, and what the assets are actually worth. Those routes are created by state statute and are identical in all 254 counties, so they are covered on the Texas state page. Two Galveston specifics make the debt picture more important here than in most counties. The court will not sign an order probating a will as a muniment of title without a Medicaid answer, and it says so in writing: if the decedent applied for and received Medicaid benefits on or after March 1, 2005, the Medicaid Estate Recovery Program claim is a debt of the estate and must be paid before the court can sign the order (Estates Code § 257.001). And the court's pro se policy warns that anyone falsely swearing that the estate has no creditors, including Medicaid estate recovery, is subject to a perjury charge.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, vehicle, business interest and parcel of Galveston County real estate, along with every debt, before you file. Titling decides whether an asset reaches the court at all: property held with a right of survivorship, accounts with a named beneficiary, and land covered by a transfer on death deed recorded before death pass directly to the survivor or beneficiary and never reach the Probate Court. Sunset's asset-discovery work, searching more than 2,300 financial institutions, exists for this step, so the application you or your attorney e-file describes the estate accurately the first time, so the inventory that follows is right, and so you do not pay the $360 filing fee twice (Local Government Code § 135.102(a)(1)).

Galveston County's probate work runs through one court and one filing counter, in one building. The Probate Court of Galveston County is created by Government Code § 25.0861(b), and in a county that has a statutory probate court, that court has original jurisdiction of probate proceedings (Estates Code § 32.002(c)). The court sits at the Galveston County Justice Center, 600 59th Street, Suite 2305, Galveston. Every application, whatever the route, is filed with the Galveston County Clerk at 600 59th Street, Suite 2001, in the same building, because the county clerk serves as clerk of each statutory probate court (Government Code § 25.0030(b)). The court serves the whole county from that one location, including the city of Galveston, the county seat, and the mainland and bayside communities: Texas City, League City, Friendswood, La Marque, Dickinson, Santa Fe, Hitchcock, Kemah, Clear Lake Shores, Bayou Vista, Tiki Island, Jamaica Beach, the unincorporated communities of Bacliff, San Leon and Algoa, and the Bolivar Peninsula. The county clerk's League City and Texas City branch offices handle records work; confirm with the clerk before taking a probate filing to either.

Venue is the county where the decedent lived. You file in the county in which the decedent resided, if the decedent had a domicile or fixed place of residence in Texas (Estates Code § 33.001(a)(1)). 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)). This matters more in Galveston County than in most of Texas, because the county sits inside greater Houston and borders Harris and Brazoria counties. A Houston, Pearland, Webster or Friendswood mailing address does not by itself put an estate in Galveston County, and Friendswood straddles the Galveston and Harris county line. Harris County runs five statutory probate courts and Brazoria routes probate through county courts at law, so the wrong choice means the wrong court, the wrong clerk and a second filing fee. The presiding judge's own small estate letter to the county clerk states the point flatly for that route: the decedent must have resided in Galveston County. Confirm which county the decedent's home actually sat in before you file.

A contested matter does not leave this court, and that is the biggest structural difference between Galveston County and the 156 Texas counties that have only a constitutional county court. In a county with a statutory probate court, that court has exclusive jurisdiction of all probate proceedings, regardless of whether contested or uncontested, and a cause of action related to the probate proceeding must be brought in a statutory probate court unless its jurisdiction is concurrent with a district court under Estates Code § 32.007 or with another court (§ 32.005(a)). So a will contest or an heirship dispute stays with the same Galveston County probate judge: there is no transfer to a district court and no request for an assigned judge. What the local rules add is how a contested matter is handled once it arrives. Under the Local Rules for the Probate Court of Galveston County, Texas, signed and approved December 20, 2022, the court will refer a case for alternative dispute resolution under chapter 154 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code on its own motion or by agreement, and any party may move for that referral if agreement cannot be reached; cases are set for trial on written request and representation that the case is ready, no sooner than 45 days from the date of the request unless the court gives leave or all counsel agree, with any objection filed within 7 days; and a trial or hearing date cannot be moved without the court's consent, with a motion for continuance due no later than five days before the date.

Case numbering tells you how the court will treat your filing, and Galveston publishes an example. Estate cases are styled In re Estate of the decedent, Deceased, in the Probate Court of Galveston County, Texas, under a cause number in the form PR-00,000, while the court's own small estate affidavit form uses an SE- prefix. Under Local Rule 1.4 every matter filed in the court is assigned a number, and once a case number is assigned and docketed, all matters relating to it stay in that court under the same cause number. An ancillary matter takes the same cause number followed by the letter A, then B, C and so on for further ancillary matters, and its style names the party bringing the action and the opposing party as well as the estate. Ancillary matters are lawsuits brought by or against a personal representative, or on behalf of an estate, that do not concern the routine administration of the estate, such as note collection, personal injury, breach of contract and trust litigation; everything else litigated is a contested matter in the main file. The court also publishes the state statutory probate judges' Administrative Order 2006-14 and its filing instructions, which set the same core-file and ancillary-file division for all Texas statutory probate courts.

The court has no number, and that trips up filers and search engines alike. Most Texas statutory probate courts carry a number, and where a county's first court does not, as in Dallas and Denton, there is at least a numbered second court alongside it. Galveston has neither. Government Code § 25.0861(b) reads that Galveston County has one statutory probate court, the Probate Court of Galveston County, so the correct style is In the Probate Court of Galveston County, Texas, which is exactly what the court's published example case style and its own small estate affidavit form use. There is no Probate Court No. 1 of Galveston County, and a filing or a search that assumes one is looking for a court that does not exist. The county brands the same court simply as the Galveston County Probate Court on its web pages and letterhead, which is a fine prose form.

The pro se policy is written down, and the court enforces it by taking no action. Under the court's Policy Regarding Pro Se Applicants, adopted by Administrative Order 2011-2 and effective February 22, 2011, individuals applying for letters testamentary, letters of administration, determinations of heirship, and guardianships of the person or estate must be represented by a licensed attorney, because only a licensed attorney may represent the interests of third parties. The policy is published as an FAQ and answers the obvious objection: you may serve as executor, administrator or guardian without being a lawyer, but an executor does not represent only himself or herself, and creating legal pleadings while acting as a fiduciary would be the unauthorized practice of law. The named carve-out is a muniment of title where the applicant is the sole beneficiary under the will and there are no debts against the estate other than those secured by liens against real estate (Estates Code § 257.001), plus a small estate affidavit that all of a decedent's heirs may work together to file without a lawyer. Two cautions. The earlier version of the policy, adopted by Administrative Order 2007-02 on January 31, 2007 and still on the court's rules page, adds that although the clerk will accept documents for filing by pro se applicants, the court will take no action on the documents unless there is an attorney of record. And the 2011 policy still cites the repealed Texas Probate Code for the small estate affidavit, so read chapter 205 of the current Estates Code alongside it.

The 72-hour rule, and the Thursday docket for old wills. the court's Administrative Order 2022-10 is short and consequential. All conditions precedent to the court acting on an application that has been filed and set for hearing must be filed no later than 72 hours before the scheduled time, or the case is stricken from the docket for that date, and the order lists proposed orders, proposed proofs of death, proposed oaths, waivers, consents, declinations to serve and registered agents as examples. The same order sends any hearing to admit a will where the decedent has been dead more than four years (Estates Code § 256.003), or to admit a copy of a will, to the Thursday docket only, set only on written request. Plan the paperwork backwards from the hearing date, and pair it with the court's own advance-review policy: it reviews documents before the hearing for most prove-ups, not just uncontested ones.

Muniment of title requires a Medicaid answer in the proof of death. This is the sharpest Galveston-specific drafting requirement, and the court publishes a whole sheet on it. Because Texas has not adopted a Medicaid-lien approach, Medicaid Estate Recovery Program claims are debts of the estate, so a Medicaid claim blocks the no-unpaid-debt finding a muniment of title needs (Estates Code § 257.001). The court states that it cannot probate a will as a muniment of title unless the testimony, reduced to writing in a proof of death and other facts, includes one of two statements: that the decedent did not apply for and receive Medicaid benefits on or after March 1, 2005, or that the decedent did but there is no Medicaid claim against the estate, in which case a Medicaid Estate Recovery Program certification must also be filed. The court publishes the certificate form and a Medicaid estate recovery brochure, and its small estate affidavit form carries the same three-way Medicaid checkbox.

Contested matters stay here, and the local rules say how they are handled. In a county with a statutory probate court, that court has exclusive jurisdiction of all probate proceedings, regardless of whether contested or uncontested (Estates Code § 32.005(a)). There is no transfer of a contested matter to a district court and no request for an assigned judge, both of which are the norm in the 156 Texas counties that have only a constitutional county court. Galveston's own Local Rule 1.2 records the concurrent side of its jurisdiction, over actions by or against a person in the capacity of a personal representative and over inter vivos, charitable and testamentary trust actions. The rules then set the contested track: referral to alternative dispute resolution under chapter 154 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code on the court's own motion or by agreement, trial settings no sooner than 45 days after a written request, and an ancillary lawsuit filed under the estate's cause number with an A suffix rather than as a new case.

The county's own e-filing rules are older than the statewide mandate, and one page is looser than the rule. Galveston publishes a set of local rules and standing order of the probate court concerning the electronic filing of court documents, adopted in April 2011 and submitted to the Supreme Court of Texas for approval, to take effect on that approval. Its Rule 1.3 says electronic filing is wholly optional unless the court orders otherwise, which was true in 2011 and is not the rule now: attorneys must electronically file in courts where e-filing has been mandated, and unrepresented parties may but are not required to (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(1)), and the order adopting that rule supersedes local rules on electronic filing. What remains useful in the 2011 rules is the list of documents excluded from e-filing, which tracks current practice: citations and writs bearing the court's seal, returns of citation, bonds, wills and codicils, subpoenas and proofs of their service, in camera and sealed documents, and documents whose access is restricted. Separately, the county's e-filing FAQ says you have approximately three to five business days to mail in the original will, while the court's own prove-up sheet correctly quotes the three-business-day rule (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(12)). Follow the rule.

Three county courts at law, and none of them hears an estate. Government Code § 25.0861(a) gives Galveston County three statutory county courts, County Court No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 of Galveston County, which the county brands County Court at Law No. 1 through No. 3 and which carry district-court civil jurisdiction under § 25.0862(a). None of them can take a probate case, because in a county that has a statutory probate court the statutory probate court is the only county court created by statute with probate jurisdiction (§ 25.0003(e)), and a statutory county court does not have the jurisdiction of a statutory probate court (§ 25.0003(f)). The county clerk serves all four courts, which is why its court information page lists them together, but estates belong to the Probate Court alone.

Hearings are recorded electronically, not by a stenographer. The court publishes rules governing the procedure for making a record of civil court proceedings by electronic recording. They provide that no stenographic record is required of a proceeding that is electronically recorded, and they set out the court recorder's duties: keeping the recording system working and the recording clear and transcribable, keeping a detailed legible log indexed by date and location and showing the number and style of the proceeding, the correct name of each speaker, the nature of each part of the proceeding, the time of day of each event and the offer, admission or exclusion of exhibits, filing the original log and exhibits with the clerk after the proceeding, and delivering a certified copy of the recording to the court within ten days. The court staffs a court recorder for the purpose.

Fee applications are measured against a published standard with rate bands. The court publishes Standards for Court Approval of Attorney Fee Petitions, effective January 1, 2023, opening with its duty to ensure that estates of decedents and wards pay only reasonable and necessary attorney's fees and expenses (Estates Code § 352.051 for decedents' estates and § 1155.054 for guardianship estates). It sets out what the court considers appropriate hourly rates for a court-appointed fiduciary's attorney, by years of practice in probate and guardianship law: up to $190 an hour at zero to two years, $191 to $220 at three to five years, $221 to $275 at six to ten years and $276 to $375 at eleven or more years, and it says the standards are not absolute rules and that the court will make exceptions where fairness demands. In an independent administration the court is generally not involved in fees at all (Estates Code § 402.001), so this matters in dependent administrations, guardianships and appointee fee applications. The county also publishes the monthly appointments and fees reports it files with the Office of Court Administration, and the court publishes its ad litem list.

The county's records portal is down, and the county says so. Galveston runs its own Tyler Odyssey portal at portal.galvestoncountytx.gov/portal, with a Smart Search for court records and a Search Hearings tool the portal tells users to rely on for hearing dates and times. As of the date this page was reviewed, the county publishes a standing notice on the clerk's own pages that court records search through Tyler's portal is currently unavailable for public and attorney access until further notice because of unscheduled maintenance, and asks the public to call the county clerk's office at (409) 766-2200, the district clerk at (409) 766-2424 or the district attorney at (409) 766-2355 for information. Do not confuse the county's real property, marriage and assumed name search tools, which run on other vendors' sites, with a probate case search; they index deeds and licenses, not estates.

Galveston County is one of the few Texas counties where this question has a published answer, so start there rather than with general Texas advice. Under the court's Policy Regarding Pro Se Applicants, adopted by Administrative Order 2011-2 and effective February 22, 2011, individuals applying for letters testamentary, letters of administration, determinations of heirship, and guardianships of the person or estate must be represented by a licensed attorney, because an executor, administrator or guardian acts for beneficiaries, creditors or a ward rather than only for himself or herself, and because creating legal pleadings while acting as a fiduciary would be the unauthorized practice of law. You do not need to be a lawyer to serve in those roles; you need a lawyer to apply for them. The policy carves out two routes a person may bring alone: probate of a will as a muniment of title where the applicant is the sole beneficiary and the estate owes no debt other than debts secured by liens against real estate (Estates Code § 257.001), and a small estate affidavit that all of the heirs work together to file, and it adds that whether a muniment of title is the correct procedure is itself a legal decision best made by a lawyer. The earlier version of the policy, still published on the court's rules page, states the practical consequence: the clerk will accept a pro se filing, but the court will take no action on it unless there is an attorney of record. Beyond the policy, counsel makes sense for the usual reasons and for some Galveston-specific ones: when a will is contested or an heirship is disputed, because a statutory probate court keeps the contested matter rather than sending it to a district court (Estates Code § 32.005(a)) and the local rules push contested cases toward alternative dispute resolution before trial; when a will is being offered more than four years after death (Estates Code § 256.003) or a copy of a will is being offered, both of which are heard only on the Thursday docket (the court's Administrative Order 2022-10); when Medicaid estate recovery may be a debt of the estate; when Galveston County real estate has to be sold through a dependent administration; when a nonresident must appoint a resident agent to qualify (Estates Code § 304.003(a)(3)); and when a guardianship runs alongside the estate. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Galveston County probate attorney when the situation calls for counsel.

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, Galveston County real estate, business interests and unclaimed property, so you know the estate's value and its debts, and therefore which Texas route fits during estate settlement, before anything is filed at 600 59th Street.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route and pairs it with the Galveston court's own forms and instruction sheets, prepared so an attorney can e-file it through eFileTexas.gov in the format the county requires, and timed so that everything the court needs is on file 72 hours before the hearing.

Find a local probate attorney. The Probate Court of Galveston County requires a licensed attorney for letters, heirship determinations and guardianships, so counsel is the norm here rather than the exception. Sunset connects families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Galveston County and the greater Houston area.

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).