Johnson County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Cleburne, 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 the same in all 254 Texas counties; they are explained on the Texas state page. Getting the answer before the first filing matters in Johnson County because the county prices each route the same at the counter, because the clerk assigns the case to one of two county courts at law on a rotating basis as soon as the filing is accepted, and because Johnson County requires its own form for a small estate affidavit. A wrong route means starting over.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, vehicle and parcel of Johnson 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 court. The county's own required small estate affidavit form makes the point concrete, because it asks you to list every asset with enough detail to identify it, to say whether each is community or separate property, and to list every debt including credit card balances, doctor and hospital bills and utility bills. Sunset's asset-discovery work, searching more than 2,300 financial institutions, exists for exactly this step, so that what you file with the Johnson County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The Guinn Justice Center at 204 S. Buffalo Avenue in Cleburne is the single probate filing location for the whole of Johnson County. The County Clerk runs two other counters, at the Historic Courthouse at 2 N. Main Street in Cleburne for real property recording and at the Burleson Sub-Courthouse at 247 Elk Drive in Burleson for assumed names, court record searches, passports and vital statistics, and neither one opens an estate. The Burleson location exists because of the county's northward growth toward Fort Worth, and the county's own history page records that growth as the reason an ancillary courthouse was established there, but a probate application belongs in Cleburne. The court serves every part of the county, including Cleburne, Burleson, Joshua, Keene, Alvarado, Grandview, Godley, Venus, Rio Vista and the rural areas between them.

Venue is straightforward for a Johnson 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)). The county puts the same rule in its own words on its Probate and Guardianship page: "As a general rule probate cases are heard in the deceased or wards county of residence except in certain instances." If the person lived in Johnson County, the case belongs here, even if they died in a hospital in Fort Worth or Dallas. 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 Texas county court at law county. Johnson County has no statutory probate court. Government Code § 25.1281 gives it two statutory county courts, the County Court at Law No. 1 of Johnson County and the County Court at Law No. 2 of Johnson County, and each of them has, concurrent with the county court, the probate jurisdiction provided by general law for county courts (Government Code § 25.0003(d)). Under Estates Code § 32.002(b) the county courts at law and the Johnson County Court therefore have CONCURRENT original jurisdiction of probate proceedings. There is no Johnson County exception to that general rule: the county's own Chapter 25 provisions, Government Code § 25.1281 and § 25.1282, contain no probate carve-out, unlike Harris, Parker and Hood counties, whose county courts at law are expressly cut out of original probate jurisdiction by statute. In practice Johnson County routes estates to the two county courts at law, and the clerk assigns each accepted case to one of them on a rotating basis.

If a matter in the proceeding becomes contested, the mechanism in a county court at law county is a transfer, not an outside assignment. Under Estates Code § 32.004(a), in a county with no statutory probate court but with a 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, transfer the contested matter to the county court at law, and the county judge may also transfer the entire proceeding there. A county court at law that receives it may hear the proceeding as if originally filed in that court, and if only the contested matter was transferred, the matter returns to the county court once it is resolved (§ 32.004(b)). Because Johnson County already files estates in its county courts at law, a contest in a Johnson County estate normally stays in the court the case was assigned to. Note what does NOT apply here: § 32.003, the provision that sends a contested matter to an assigned statutory probate court judge or to a district court, is for counties that have no county court at law, and Johnson County has two.

Two courts, one counter, and a rotation you do not control. Johnson County has two county courts at law, and you do not choose between them. The County Clerk states that all cases heard by County Court at Law No. 1 and No. 2 originate with its Court Section and that "Cases are assigned to a specific Court on a rotating basis." The county's own required small estate affidavit form is drafted around that fact: its caption reads "IN THE COUNTY COURT AT LAW NUMBER ____ OF JOHNSON COUNTY, TEXAS", with the number blank for the clerk to supply. Practically, this means you cannot check one judge's practices before filing and rely on them, and it means the court you deal with is whichever one the rotation lands on. The rotation itself is not published.

The clerk publishes its own electronic filing rules, and they are more permissive than some Texas counties in one respect and stricter in another. Johnson County's local practices document allows multiple lead documents in one filing and allows attachments, but requires that "each attachment must be a separate document. Do not combine all attachments into one document." Everything that needs a file mark at the time of filing must be a lead document, and so must proposed orders, documents requiring court action, notices of hearing and correspondence. Exhibits may be merged into the lead document or filed as an attachment. Sensitive numbers must be redacted to all but the last four digits, and where a document is required by statute to contain sensitive data the clerk must be told, either by designating it in the filing interface or by putting the phrase "NOTICE: THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS SENSITIVE DATA" at the top left of the first page. The document carries no printed revision date, so confirm anything load-bearing on Ext. 1304.

There is a filing-code trap the county warns about, and it will otherwise cost you a rejected envelope. Johnson County states: "All possible case types or filings are not available due to JCIT Standards. For example, there is not a Probate Case Category for 'Application to Determine Heirship w/o Administration,' however, you can find it under All Other Estate Proceedings." So if the route you want is not in the picker, the county's answer is to use the nearest listed category rather than to improvise or call it a civil filing. Citation requests go in under the filing code, not under optional services; copies go under optional services.

Three clerk locations, and only one of them opens an estate. This is the most common practical mistake in Johnson County. The County Clerk's Court Section, at the Guinn Justice Center, 204 S. Buffalo Avenue in Cleburne, is the probate counter. The Historic Courthouse at 2 N. Main Street in Cleburne handles real property recording, passports and vital statistics, with its own mailing box. The Burleson Sub-Courthouse at 247 Elk Drive in Burleson handles assumed names, court record searches, passports and vital statistics. Court record searches being available in Burleson is exactly why people assume they can file there; they cannot.

The county runs its own probate case search, and it is better than the statewide alternative for a Johnson County case. The clerk's Search Online Records page links a court records portal with a "Civil & Probate Records" search and a "Probate and Mental Health" case category, searchable by case number, party name, attorney or filing date. It publishes no coverage start date, so an empty result does not prove an absence; call the Court Section on Ext. 1316 to be sure. Keep it separate from the county's property records search, which indexes deeds and is not a case search.

Both courts share one probate auditor, which is unusual at this county size and tells you something about how closely accounts are reviewed. The county's staff directories for County Court at Law No. 1 and No. 2 each list the same Probate Auditor and Assistant Probate Auditor. If you are running a court-supervised administration or a guardianship, expect the annual and final accounts to be examined rather than rubber-stamped, and note that County Court at Law No. 2 publishes written standards for court approval of attorney fee applications in probate matters.

Plenty of uncontested Johnson County estates are handled without a lawyer, and the county writes for filers who may be doing it alone: it publishes its own small estate affidavit form, a fee waiver form and a plain-language electronic filing guide. 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 real property 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 elsewhere. First, apart from the small estate affidavit the county publishes no probate forms at all, and it says so: the application and every subsequent instrument are prepared by the party or the party's attorneys. Second, the case is assigned to one of two county courts at law on a rotation you cannot predict, and both courts share a probate auditor who reviews accounts, with County Court at Law No. 2 publishing written standards for approving attorney fee applications. Third, the county's own required small estate affidavit form carries an attorney signature block and refers to a court checklist that is not published online. If the matter becomes contested, the county judge may on the judge's own motion, and shall on the motion of any party, transfer the contested matter, or the entire proceeding, to a county court at law (Estates Code § 32.004(a)). County Clerk staff can explain procedure but cannot give legal advice. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Johnson County and the surrounding Dallas and Fort Worth area.

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, Johnson County real property and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds, what estate settlement may involve and which route fits before anything is filed in Cleburne.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, drafted to Johnson County's own requirements, including the clerk's lead-document and separated-attachment rules for eFileTexas.gov and the county's required small estate affidavit form where that is the path, ready to file with the Johnson County Clerk's Court Section.

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 Johnson 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).