Kenedy County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Sarita, 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, and they are explained on the Texas state page. Doing that work first matters more than usual in Kenedy County, because the county publishes no probate instructions, no forms and no checklist to correct a wrong start, and because the one office that takes the filing is also the county's district court counter. A wrong route here means a phone call to a very small office and, usually, starting over.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, vehicle, mineral or royalty interest and parcel of Kenedy 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. Mineral and royalty interests deserve their own look, because they are easy to miss and they are exactly the kind of asset a buyer or operator will not transfer without a court-issued authority document. Sunset's asset-discovery work, searching more than 2,300 financial institutions, exists for this step, so that the application filed with the Kenedy County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The Kenedy County Courthouse in Sarita is the single probate filing location for the whole county. There is no branch, satellite or annex counter for estates, and no second courthouse: the County Clerk takes the filing and the County Judge hears it. The court serves every part of the county, including Sarita and Armstrong and the ranch country in between; the county publishes office addresses in Sarita for the County Judge, County Clerk, County Attorney, Treasurer, Tax Assessor and Elections Administrator, and in Armstrong for one of its county commissioners.

Get the name right before you drive anywhere, because two Texas places share it. Kenedy County's courthouse is in Sarita, ZIP 78385, in area code 361. The city of Kenedy is a different place: it is in Karnes County, ZIP 78119, in area code 830, and Karnes County publishes its own Justice of the Peace Precinct 1 office at 707 W. Main Street in Kenedy and its own Kenedy Police Department listing. If the person who died lived in the city of Kenedy, the estate is filed with the Karnes County Clerk at 210 W. Calvert, Suite 100, Karnes City, TX 78118, (830) 780-3938, and the Karnes County Court hears it. If the person lived anywhere in Kenedy County, the case belongs in Sarita. Nothing about the two is interchangeable: different clerks, different judges, different district courts and different area codes.

Venue itself is straightforward. 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 Kenedy County, the case belongs in the Kenedy County Court, even if they died in a hospital in Kingsville, Corpus Christi or Harlingen. 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, and Kenedy County is unambiguous. Government Code Chapter 25, which creates every statutory county court and every statutory probate court in Texas, contains no Kenedy County section at all, so the county has neither. That leaves Estates Code § 32.002(a): in a county in which there is no statutory probate court or county court at law exercising original probate jurisdiction, the county court has original jurisdiction of probate proceedings. So the Kenedy County Court hears the estate and the elected County Judge presides. Do not caption a Kenedy County filing for a probate court or a county court at law; the county has neither, and the paperwork should read as a matter in the County Court of Kenedy County, Texas.

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 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.

The district court in that second route is the 105th District Court. Government Code § 24.207 provides that the 105th Judicial District is composed of Kenedy, Kleberg and Nueces counties, that the court shall give preference to criminal cases, and that its terms begin in Kenedy County on the first Mondays in June and December, in Kleberg County on the first Mondays in April and October, and in Nueces County on the first Mondays in February and August. It is the only judicial district in Chapter 24 that includes Kenedy County. Those statutory terms are worth knowing when you weigh the two § 32.003 routes with your attorney, and they are the reason the assignment motion is not a formality. The 105th does not open estates; a district court reaches a Kenedy County probate matter only through § 32.003.

One officeholder covers both clerkships, and that shapes everything. Kenedy County publishes the same person, the same telephone number (361-294-5220) and the same fax number (361-294-5218) for the County Clerk and for the District Clerk. Government Code § 51.501(a) is the provision behind that pattern: a county with a population of less than 8,000 shall elect a single clerk to perform the duties of the district clerk and the county clerk, unless the voters keep the offices separate (§ 51.501(b)), and a joint clerk uses the county court seal for county court acts and the district court seal for district court acts (§ 51.502). For you this means there is one number to call and one counter to visit, but it also means you should say plainly, on the phone and on your paperwork, that you are opening an estate in the County Court of Kenedy County, Texas, so the filing is docketed as county court business rather than as anything on the district court side.

The county publishes essentially nothing about probate, and that is the single most important local fact. There is no probate page, no fee schedule, no forms, no checklist, no docket calendar, no e-filing notice, no remote appearance policy and no online records search on the Kenedy County site. Every page of the site carries the same courthouse block, and the County Clerk's page carries permits, vital records links and Commissioners Court minutes. That is not a gap in this page's research; it is the condition a Kenedy County filer works in. Treat the telephone call to the clerk as the equivalent of another county's instruction sheet, and do not assume a practice you have seen in Kingsville, Corpus Christi or San Antonio carries over.

Use 151 Mallory for the clerk, but confirm before you send an original will, because one county page disagrees. The County Clerk's own page gives the office as 151 Mallory, Sarita, TX 78385, and the County Judge, County Attorney and Commissioners Court pages all place their offices at 151 N. Mallory, so the weight of the county's own site puts the clerk at 151 Mallory. The outlier is the District Clerk's page, which covers the same office and the same officeholder and prints 101 Mallory, while the footer on every page carries the courthouse itself at 101 East La Parra Avenue. No county page explains the difference, and no post office box is published for the clerk. The original will has to reach the clerk within three business days of an electronically filed application (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(12)) and the clerk has to keep it in a numbered file folder (Rule 21(f)(13)), so a misdirected envelope is a real problem. Call 361-294-5220, ask exactly where to send it, and use a tracked delivery.

The counter stays open through lunch, and the county closes for seventeen holidays. Kenedy County states on the clerk's page that the office remains open during lunch, which is the opposite of most small Texas counties and useful if you are driving in from out of the county. Against that, the county's 2026 holiday schedule, approved by the Commissioners Court on December 12, 2025, closes county offices on seventeen days, several of which a filer would not predict: the day after New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Columbus Day, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. With one small office covering both clerkships, a closure is a full closure. Also note the County Judge's office hours differ from the clerk's: 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with a closure from 12:00 p.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Creditor notice may have to be posted rather than published, and only the clerk can tell you which. The Estates Code normally requires a personal representative, within one month after receiving letters, to publish notice to creditors in a newspaper of general circulation in the county in which the letters were issued (§ 308.051(a)(1)). But § 308.051(c) provides that if there is no newspaper of general circulation in that county, the notice must be posted instead, and the return made and filed as the Estates Code otherwise requires. Kenedy County publishes no newspaper of record, so this is a live question here rather than a footnote. Ask the County Clerk which route applies before you buy publication, and get the answer before the one-month clock runs.

A contest goes to a court that sits in Kenedy County twice a year. If a matter becomes contested, the County Judge may on the judge's own motion, and shall on the motion of any party, either request the assignment of a statutory probate court judge or transfer the contested matter to the district court (Estates Code § 32.003(a)). The district court is the 105th, which Government Code § 24.207 composes of Kenedy, Kleberg and Nueces counties, which gives preference to criminal cases, and whose terms begin in Kenedy County on the first Mondays in June and December. That is why the timing rule in § 32.003(b) is worth knowing: a party's motion for assignment of a statutory probate court judge, filed before the county judge transfers the matter, must be granted, and the matter may not then be transferred unless the motion is withdrawn. Meanwhile the Kenedy County Court keeps the management of the rest of the estate (§ 32.003(g)).

Watch out for three places that borrow the name. Kenedy County is not the city of Kenedy, which is in Karnes County and files with the Karnes County Clerk in Karnes City. The Sarita Kenedy East Law Library listed in the Texas State Law Library's directory is an academic library at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, named for a member of the Kenedy family, not a Kenedy County facility. And the Nueces County law library in Corpus Christi is named for the Honorable Noah O. Kennedy, Jr., spelled with two letter n's. If a search result puts a Kenedy County courthouse anywhere other than Sarita, or in an area code other than 361, it is the wrong place.

An uncontested Kenedy County estate can be handled without a lawyer, and people do it. But the case for counsel is stronger here than in most Texas counties, for reasons that have nothing to do with the size of the estate. Kenedy County publishes no probate instructions, no forms and no fee schedule, so every document is drafted from scratch and every local requirement has to be established by telephone with a very small office. No remote appearance policy is published, so nothing tells you in advance how much of the case can be handled without going to Sarita. Creditor notice may have to be posted rather than published, depending on whether the county has a newspaper of general circulation (Estates Code § 308.051(c)), which is not a judgment call to make on your own. And the contested-matter route rewards someone who knows it: 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 (§ 32.003(a)), a motion for assignment filed before a transfer must be granted (§ 32.003(b)), and the district court here is the 105th, whose Kenedy County terms begin only on the first Mondays in June and December (Government Code § 24.207). Counsel also earns its keep when there is no will and the heirs have to be determined, when real property or mineral and royalty interests have to be sold or divided, when the estate is insolvent or a creditor is pressing, or when a guardianship has to run alongside the estate. County Clerk staff can explain procedure but cannot give legal advice. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Kenedy 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, Kenedy County real property, mineral and royalty interests and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds and which estate settlement route fits before anything is filed in Sarita.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, drafted for a county that publishes no forms of its own and captioned for the County Court of Kenedy County, Texas, ready to file with the Kenedy County Clerk.

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 Kenedy 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).