Kaufman County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Kaufman, know what is actually in the estate and what it owes. Which Texas route fits, and whether a court 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 work identically in all 254 Texas counties; they are explained on the Texas state page. Getting the answer first matters more than usual here, because Kaufman publishes a policy that its probate judges require an attorney to file a case, with a small estate affidavit as the stated exception, and because the county's fee schedule prices each application type differently. Choosing the wrong one means paying twice.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, vehicle and parcel of Kaufman 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. Sunset's asset-discovery work, searching more than 2,300 financial institutions, exists for exactly this step, so that the application filed with the Kaufman County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time and the fee paid at the counter is the right one.

The Kaufman County Justice Center at 1902 E. US Highway 175 in Kaufman is the single probate filing location for the whole county. There is no branch probate counter. The county does run a courthouse annex at 100 N Washington Street in Kaufman and sub-courthouses in Forney, Terrell and Kemp, but those are the tax assessor and collector's offices and the county publishes no probate service at any of them. The court serves every part of the county, including Kaufman, Terrell, Forney, Crandall, Kemp, Mabank, Scurry, Combine and Heartland and the rural areas between them, all of which appear as Kaufman County locations in the county's own 2026 election notices. One caution about the address: some of the County Clerk's older probate documents are still letterheaded 100 W. Mulberry Street with a (972) 932-4331 phone number, which is the county's former courthouse, and so is the entry for the county law library in the Texas State Law Library's statewide directory. File at the Justice Center.

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 Kaufman County, the case belongs here even if they died in a hospital in Dallas, Mesquite or Terrell. 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 a generic page gets wrong here. Kaufman County has no statutory probate court. It has two statutory county courts, the County Court at Law of Kaufman County and the County Court at Law No. 2 of Kaufman County (Government Code § 25.1311), and because there is no statutory probate court in the county each of them holds probate jurisdiction concurrently with the Kaufman County Court, the constitutional county court presided over by the elected County Judge (Estates Code § 32.002(b); Government Code § 25.0003(d)). Nothing in Kaufman's own chapter 25 subchapter takes probate away from its county courts at law: § 25.1312 adds district-court jurisdiction and withholds only capital murder, escheat and penalty suits, official-misconduct misdemeanors and contested elections. In practice the county narrows it further than the statute does, and says so: the County Clerk serves as clerk of the court for County Court at Law 2 and the County Judge, and those are the courts that hear estates. The clerk's own posted probate citations bear it out, reciting applications "filed in the County Court at Law 2 of Kaufman County, Texas".

If a matter in the proceeding becomes contested, the route is a transfer to a county court at law, not to a district court. Under Estates Code § 32.004, in a county in which there is no statutory probate court but in which there is 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 judge of the county court may also transfer the entire proceeding there. That is the mechanism in Kaufman. The assignment of a statutory probate court judge and the transfer to a district court that apply in Texas counties with only a constitutional county court (§ 32.003) are not Kaufman's route. Because the county already sends estates to County Court at Law No. 2, a Kaufman contest usually stays with a judge who is a licensed attorney from the start.

The county publishes an attorney requirement, and it has one stated exception. This is the single most important local fact for a family thinking about doing it themselves. The county's Probate and Guardianship page states: "The Probate Judges in Kaufman County require an attorney to file a case. In exception of a Small Estate Affidavit." The same page explains why the counter cannot help you around it: "The Kaufman County Clerk's office is happy to help you file documents or locate records, but we cannot answer legal questions. Legal matters often require the assistance of an attorney, and the law prevents us from providing legal advice to any person." That is the county's own policy statement rather than a statute, so if your situation is a small estate affidavit, or if you think it should be an exception, raise it with the County Clerk's probate line at 469-376-4738 before you draft anything. It is also why the county publishes a small estate affidavit packet and nothing else.

Estates go to County Court at Law No. 2 or the County Judge, not to the first county court at law. The statute gives both of Kaufman's county courts at law probate jurisdiction concurrently with the Kaufman County Court (Estates Code § 32.002(b); Government Code §§ 25.0003(d), 25.1311), but the county assigns the work more narrowly and says so: "The County Clerk serves as Clerk of the Court for County Court at Law 2 and the County Judge. These courts hear issues associated with the estates of deceased persons, guardianships for incapacitated persons and mental health commitments." The clerk's posted citations are captioned in the County Court at Law 2 of Kaufman County, Texas, and Kaufman probate cause numbers carry a P, as in 24P-277-2. Caption your papers for the court that will actually hear them.

The County Clerk is the probate clerk by name in Kaufman's own statute. In many Texas county court at law counties the clerkship is split by a general rule; in Kaufman the Legislature wrote it out: "The district clerk serves as clerk of a statutory county court except that the county clerk serves as clerk of the statutory county court in matters of mental health, probate, juvenile and criminal misdemeanor docket, and all civil matters in which the statutory county court does not have concurrent jurisdiction with the district court" (Government Code § 25.1312(c)). So estates, wills and guardianships go to the County Clerk at the Justice Center. The Kaufman County District Clerk serves the 86th, 422nd and 489th District Courts and does not open estates.

The clerk publishes thirteen document requirements, and they are stricter than the statewide rules. The Kaufman County Probate E-Filing Requirements document requires text-searchable PDF at 300 dots per inch, white 8.5 by 11 inch pages with a minimum one inch margin on all sides, double-spaced text in a 14 point conventional typeface with 12 point footnotes, black and white scanner settings, the filer's complete contact information including an email address in the signature block, no password protection or embedded media, no PDF packages or portfolios, one filing per submission, complete page numbering across appendices, alphanumeric filenames under 50 characters, and no sensitive data (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21c). Where multiple documents belong to one filing they must be combined into a single PDF, and "Each document should be submitted as a 'Lead Document' when filing multiple documents." It also asks that a notice of hearing be filed separately rather than inside a pleading, and that eFileTexas text boxes be typed in proper case rather than all capitals. The same document lists the reasons a filing is returned, which is a useful checklist: documents not separated, exhibits not bookmarked, incomplete filer contact information or filing description, incorrect case number, case type, filing code, document format, jurisdiction, party name, constable, county or payment amount, missing cover sheet, no physical address listed for service, and no email address included.

Two of the county's own probate documents are out of date, and knowing which parts are stale saves a wasted trip. The E-Filing Requirements document is letterheaded with the former courthouse at 100 W. Mulberry Street and a (972) 932-4331 number with extensions 1110 and 1201, and its seventeenth question answers that "Pro per and pro se parties are currently not eligible to use the e-filing system", which is not the current rule: under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(1) attorneys must e-file where e-filing is mandated and unrepresented parties may e-file but are not required to. The same document still mentions Microsoft Silverlight and Internet Explorer 7. Its formatting and rejection lists are still what the clerk applies; its contact details and its self-represented answer are not. Separately, the file the county links from its probate pages as "General & Standing Orders COVID 19" is a March 18, 2020 general order about parent visitation in state conservatorship cases and has nothing to do with estates.

Kaufman posts its probate citations online, which is genuinely useful. The county runs a Citation by Posting page carrying the current citations as PDFs, each headed with the probate cause number and the relief sought, for example "Independent Administration, Letters Testamentary", and each carrying the clerk's citation, the sheriff's return and the $20.00 posting fee on its face. If you want to know whether an application has been filed on a Kaufman estate and when it will be heard, that page is often faster than a case search. It is also how the statutory posting requirement is documented (Estates Code §§ 51.053, 258.001).

There is a county law library in the same building, and the state directory has the wrong address for it. The Kaufman County Law Library is at the Kaufman Justice Center, 1902 E. Hwy 175, phone 469-376-4759, open Monday through Friday 8 am to 5 pm, established by the Commissioners' Court and funded from civil court filing fees. It serves "the general public, members of the legal profession, law students, paralegals, and all litigants", and it is candid about the limit: "By law, no member of the Law Library staff may give any patron legal advice", so staff can point you to the right materials but cannot help you fill out a form. The Texas State Law Library's statewide law-libraries directory still lists the library at 100 W. Mulberry Street, 2nd Floor, with a (972) 932-4331 extension; use the county's own figures.

In most Texas counties the question is whether counsel is worth it. In Kaufman County the county has answered it for you in most cases: its Probate and Guardianship page states that "The Probate Judges in Kaufman County require an attorney to file a case. In exception of a Small Estate Affidavit." That is a local policy statement rather than a statute, and it is worth raising with the County Clerk's probate line at 469-376-4738 if you believe your matter should be treated differently, but it means the realistic plan for an application to probate a will, an administration or a determination of heirship in Kaufman starts with a lawyer. Counsel also earns its keep independently where a will or an appointment is likely to be challenged, where there is no will and the heirs have to be determined, where real property has to be sold or divided, where the estate is insolvent or a creditor is pressing, where a business or out-of-state property is involved, or where a guardianship runs alongside the estate. Three local factors sharpen the point. The County Clerk publishes thirteen document formatting requirements and a list of reasons a filing is returned, so a rejected envelope is easy to earn. A heirship needs an attorney ad litem, which the county prices at $450.00 and appoints from its own list. And if a matter becomes contested, the judge of the county court may on the judge's own motion, and shall on the motion of any party, transfer the contested matter, or the whole proceeding, to a county court at law (Estates Code § 32.004). Clerk and court staff can explain procedure but say plainly that they cannot give legal advice. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Kaufman County and the wider Dallas 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, Kaufman County real property and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds and which route and which fee apply before estate settlement papers are filed in Kaufman.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset prepares the paperwork for your route, built to Kaufman County's own requirements, including the County Clerk's published document formatting and lead-document rules for the eFileTexas.gov envelope, ready to file with the Kaufman County Clerk.

Find a local probate attorney. Kaufman County states that its probate judges require an attorney to file a case, with a small estate affidavit as the exception, so this is usually the first step rather than the last. Sunset connects families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Kaufman 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).