Garza County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Post, 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 Garza 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 Garza 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 like this one, where ranch land, farm equipment and oil and gas royalty interests often matter more than 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 Garza County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The Garza County Courthouse at 300 West Main Street in Post is the single probate filing location for the whole county. There is no branch, satellite or annex counter for estates, and no second window: the clerk who takes the filing on the first floor is the same officer who keeps the records of the 106th District Court. The court serves every part of Garza County, including Post and the ranching and farming country on and below the caprock around it.

Venue is straightforward for a Garza 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 Garza County, the case belongs in the Garza County Court, even if they died in a hospital in Lubbock, Snyder or Lamesa. 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. Garza 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 Garza County entry. So the Garza 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 Garza County Clerk for the county court and listing no county court at law at all. The county says it in its own words too, on its Probate and Civil Courts page: "The County Clerk's office keeps records for the Garza County Civil and Probate courts", and the clerk "issues citations, writs of execution, abstracts of judgment, letters of guardianship, letters testamentary, protective orders, notices, and other documents as required by law".

The other trial court seated in the county is the 106th District Court. Government Code § 24.208(a) provides that the 106th Judicial District is composed of Dawson, Gaines, Garza and Lynn counties, and § 24.208(b)(3) sets the terms of that court in Garza County to begin on the first Monday in March and the fourth Monday in September. The county publishes the same geography in its own words, "The 106th District Court serves the following counties: Garza, Lynn, Gaines and Dawson", and names Judge Reed Filley of the 106th Judicial District at P.O. Box 1268, Lamesa, TX 79331, (806) 872-3740 (verified August 2026). 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 Garza 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 Garza 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 Garza County lies in the Seventh Court of Appeals District (Government Code § 22.201(h)). That court sits in Amarillo, on the second floor of the Potter County Courts Building, and names Garza in its own list of counties served.

One officer, two clerkships, one counter. This is the defining local fact in Garza County and it removes a warning that applies almost everywhere else in Texas. The county publishes Terri Laurence as "District and County Clerk" on both its County Clerk page and its District Clerk page, at the same first-floor address, the same phone and the same fax, titles its payment and open-records pages "District and County Clerk's Office", and the Office of Court Administration's directory records the office as a combo clerk. Government Code § 51.501(a) is the provision behind it: a county with a population of less than 8,000 elects a single clerk to perform the duties of the district clerk and the county clerk, unless a majority of the qualified voters choose at an election to keep the offices separate (§ 51.501(b)). In practice that means you cannot go to the wrong window in Post. It does not change which court has your case: an estate is filed in the Garza County Court and is taken by the same officer acting as clerk of that court (Texas Constitution article V, § 20).

The counter keeps a four and a half day week, and that interacts with a hard deadline. The clerk publishes business hours of Monday through Thursday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., open during the noon hour, and Friday 8:00 a.m. to noon, closed Friday afternoon. Staying open through lunch is convenient; the Friday half day is the part to plan around, because the original will must reach the clerk within three business days of the application (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(12)) and a Friday afternoon delivery will not land. The county's published holiday schedule compounds it: several of its 2026 closures begin at noon on the preceding day, and the county posted that the courthouse would be closed on Monday, September 7, 2026 for Labor Day.

Two phone numbers and two fax numbers circulate, and only one pair reaches the clerk. Every page of the county website carries a footer giving the Garza County Courthouse at 806-495-4425 with a fax of 806-990-4030, and that pair is what most outside listings pick up. The clerk's own line is 806-495-4430 and the clerk's fax is 806-495-4431, both confirmed on the County Clerk page, the District Clerk page and in the Office of Court Administration's 2025 directory. The 806-990-4030 fax is also the County Judge's, whose office is 806-495-4405. Use 806-495-4430 for anything about a filing.

The county publishes a court calendar, but not a probate docket. The Calendar and Holiday Schedule page lists sitting dates under three separate headings, Garza County Court, District Court and Commissioner's Court; at the time of this review the County Court dates were two Thursdays at 9:30 a.m. That is real and useful, and it is more than most counties this size publish, but the county does not say which of those settings are probate and publishes no docket call, no case list and no interval between filing and hearing. Nothing on this page should be read as a promised hearing day. Call 806-495-4430 and ask how a probate setting is arranged.

There is a probate page, and its most useful line is about money. The county's Probate and Civil Courts page states that the clerk's office keeps the records for the county's civil and probate courts and issues letters testamentary and letters of guardianship among other documents, and then says, on costs, "Costs and Fees Are new in 2022. Call 806-495-4430 for details." Take that at face value: the county is telling you it does not publish a probate fee schedule and that the counter is the source of truth. The base filing fee is still statutory and still $360.00 (Local Government Code § 135.102(a)(1) and § 133.151(a)(1)); what the call settles is the citation, service and posting charges stacked on top. The same page links the state's guardianship registration site, which is the right starting point if a guardianship has to run alongside an estate.

Nothing about a case can be looked up online, from the county or reliably from the state. Garza County runs no online case search, and it links no online land-records portal either, which is unusual even for a county this size. Documents e-filed in a Garza County probate case may reach the statewide re:SearchTX portal, but coverage is set county by county and the Office of Court Administration's directory records Garza's case management system as Local Government Solutions rather than the Tyler Technologies platform behind that portal, so do not assume a Garza case appears there. One thing the county does publish month by month is its appointments and fees reports for civil cases in the district and county courts, which is where court-appointed attorney work in this county shows up.

Garza sits in a four-county judicial district whose Garza terms are fixed by statute. Government Code § 24.208(a) composes the 106th Judicial District of Dawson, Gaines, Garza and Lynn counties, and § 24.208(b)(3) provides that the terms of the 106th District Court in Garza County begin on the first Monday in March and the fourth Monday in September. The county names Judge Reed Filley of the 106th Judicial District, based at P.O. Box 1268, Lamesa, TX 79331, (806) 872-3740 (verified August 2026), and says in its own words that the court serves Garza, Lynn, Gaines and Dawson. None of that changes where an estate starts: original probate jurisdiction is in the Garza County Court (Estates Code § 32.002(a)), and the district court reaches a probate matter only when the County Judge transfers a contested matter to it or a statutory probate court judge is assigned instead (§ 32.003(a)). Because the district judge sits across four counties from Lamesa, a transfer is worth understanding before a dispute starts.

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 Garza 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 Garza in its own counties-served list, has its offices on the second floor of the Potter County Courts Building at 350 SE 6th Avenue, Suite 2C, Amarillo, TX 79101-2462, mails to P.O. Box 9540, Amarillo, TX 79105-9540, and answers on (806) 342-2650.

Uncontested estates are settled without a lawyer in counties like this one every year, but Garza 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 and no fee schedule, and tells callers its costs and fees changed in 2022, so every document is drafted from scratch and every local cost has to be established by telephone. The contested 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. And the district court that would receive such a transfer, the 106th, sits across four counties from Lamesa (Government Code § 24.208(a)), so a dispute here is not simply a matter of walking back into the same courthouse. County Clerk staff can explain procedure but cannot give legal advice. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Garza 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, Garza County real property and mineral interests, and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds and which route fits before anything is filed in Post.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your estate settlement route, captioned for the Garza County Court, the constitutional county court that actually has the case, and ready to file with the Garza County Clerk at 300 West Main Street. That matters more in a county that publishes no forms 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 Garza 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).