La Salle County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Cotulla, 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 your first filing matters more than usual in a county this size, because La Salle publishes no probate forms, no checklist and no local procedure sheet to correct a wrong turn, and the County Clerk's counter keeps split-day hours with a midday closure and a short Friday.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, mineral or royalty interest, vehicle and parcel of La Salle 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. Sunset's asset-discovery work, searching more than 2,300 financial institutions, exists for exactly this step, so that the application filed with the La Salle County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The La Salle County Courthouse at 101 Courthouse Square in Cotulla is the single probate filing location for the whole county. There is no branch, annex or satellite counter for estates: the County Clerk takes filings in Suite #107, and the county's own calendar entries place County Court sittings in the District Courtroom of the same building. The court serves every part of the county, including Cotulla, Encinal and Fowlerton and the ranch country between them.

Venue is straightforward for a La Salle 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 La Salle County, the case belongs in the La Salle County Court, even if they died in a hospital in San Antonio, Laredo or Corpus Christi. 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. La Salle County has no statutory probate court and no county court at law: Government Code Chapter 25, which creates every one of them in Texas, contains no La Salle County entry. So the La Salle County Court, the constitutional county court, has original jurisdiction of probate proceedings (Estates Code § 32.002(a)), and the elected County Judge presides. The county's own description of the office confirms it: "The La Salle County Judge also has judicial responsibilities for certain criminal, civil and probate matters." The other trial courts seated in the county are two district courts and four Justice of the Peace courts, and none of them opens estates.

Those two district courts are shared with four neighboring counties, and it is worth knowing their numbers because they are where a contest can end up. The 81st Judicial District is composed of Atascosa, Frio, Karnes, La Salle and Wilson counties (Government Code § 24.183(a)), and the 218th Judicial District is composed of the same five counties (§ 24.396(a)). The Government Code spells the county as one word, LaSalle, in both sections; the county spells itself La Salle. Statutory terms of the 81st District Court begin in the county on the first Mondays in March and September (§ 24.183(b)(4)).

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.

One officer, two clerkships, and probate belongs to the county side. La Salle has a joint clerk: a single elected officer performs the duties of both the county clerk and the district clerk, which the Government Code provides for a county with a population of less than 8,000 unless the voters have kept the offices separate (§ 51.501(a) and (b)). The county publishes the office as the District and County Clerk and explains the rule on its own clerk page. What this means in practice is reassuring and slightly confusing at once: there is only one counter, in Suite #107, so you cannot go to the wrong one, but the capacity matters. A probate application is filed with that officer as county clerk, because the county clerk is the clerk of the county court (Texas Constitution article V, § 20) and the Estates Code sends estate filings to the court clerk throughout. The district clerk duties of the same office serve the 81st and 218th District Courts, which reach a La Salle probate matter only if the County Judge transfers a contested matter under Estates Code § 32.003(a)(2).

The counter hours are split, and Friday is short. The County Clerk publishes its hours day by day: Monday through Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. The 7:30 a.m. opening on four days is earlier than most Texas clerks and the 2:00 p.m. Friday close is earlier than almost any of them. If you are driving in to deliver an original will inside the three business days that Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(12) allows, count the Friday afternoon and the daily lunch hour as closed.

The county publishes its filing cost, and the thirteen line items are not thirteen charges. La Salle's court-cost sheet breaks the local consolidated fee into CLERK, LAW LIBRARY, RECORDS MANAGEMENT, STENO or COURT REPORTER, COURTHOUSE SECURITY, COURT FACILITY FEE, COUNTY JURY FEE, COUNTY DISPUTE RESOLUTION, COURT OF APPEALS, LANGUAGE ACCESS FUND, COURT INITIATED GUARDIANSHIP, JUDICIAL EDUCATION AND SUPPORT and PUBLIC PROBATE ADMINISTRATOR lines, then totals them at $223.00 and adds the $137.00 state consolidated fee for a $360.00 total. Those thirteen figures are the statutory allocation percentages by which the county treasurer must distribute the one fee among thirteen funds (Local Government Code § 135.102(b)), not a menu. And read the probate column: the sheet's $350.00 total belongs to a non-probate civil case, which carries a $213 local fee instead (§ 135.101(a)(1)).

The County Court sits in the District Courtroom, on dates the county posts one at a time. La Salle publishes its County Court sittings as individual entries on the county calendar, each giving the location as the District Courtroom of the La Salle County Courthouse at 101 Courthouse Square. The 2026 entries fall in different weeks and on different weekdays, and no start time is published, so there is no weekly probate docket to plan around and no published filing-to-hearing interval. Call the County Clerk at (830) 483-5120 to get your matter set and to find out when to arrive.

Nothing local is published about e-filing, paper filing or remote appearance, and the silence is worth naming. Unlike some small Texas counties, La Salle publishes no e-filing notice, no county mandate date, no statement about whether it takes paper or mailed filings from a self-represented filer, and no current remote-appearance rule. The only video-hearing notices on the county site are dated 2020, were issued under the Texas Supreme Court's pandemic emergency orders, and name officeholders who no longer hold those offices. Treat the statewide rules as the floor, attorneys must e-file and an unrepresented party may but need not (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(1)), and confirm everything else on the phone.

Two small-county statutory wrinkles to raise with the clerk. First, the creditor notice: an executor or administrator must publish notice to creditors in a newspaper of general circulation in the county within one month of receiving letters, but if there is no newspaper of general circulation in the county the notice must instead be posted, with the return made and filed as the Estates Code otherwise requires (§ 308.051(a) and (c)). Which branch applies in La Salle is a question for the County Clerk. Second, La Salle publishes no online probate case search at all: the county's Kofile QuickLink site covers land record index books from 1880 to January 1, 1952, so a probate lookup means re:SearchTX or a call to the clerk.

Plenty of uncontested La Salle County estates are handled without a lawyer, and the county's filing cost is the same either way. 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 or a mineral or royalty interest has to be sold, divided or leased, 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. First, La Salle County publishes no probate forms, no checklist and no local procedure sheet, so every document is drafted from scratch and there is no county instruction to check it against. Second, almost nothing local is published about procedure: no e-filing notice, no statement on paper filings, no docket start time and no remote appearance rule, so an out-of-town filer is working from the statewide rules and the clerk's phone line. Third, the contested-matter 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 without counsel. County Clerk staff can explain procedure but cannot give legal advice. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving La Salle 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, La Salle County real property and mineral interests, and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds and which estate settlement route fits before anything is filed in Cotulla.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, styled for the La Salle County Court and ready to file with the La Salle County Clerk in Suite #107 or to submit through eFileTexas.gov, which matters in a county that publishes no forms 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 La Salle 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).