Liberty County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Liberty, 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 work the same way in all 254 Texas counties; they are explained on the Texas state page. In Liberty County the answer also decides your cost on day one, because the County Clerk's schedule, effective January 1, 2026, prices a probate of a will and a small estate affidavit at $408.00 and an administration at $516.00 plus an attorney ad litem fee set by the judge. Clerk staff can tell you what the counter needs; the office says plainly that it cannot give legal advice.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, vehicle, mineral interest and parcel of Liberty 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 a Liberty County court. Rural acreage, timber and mineral interests are common here and are often held in ways no one has examined in years, so check the deed records before you describe the estate to 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 Liberty County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

Every Liberty County estate is filed at one counter: the Liberty County Clerk, Room 209, Liberty County Courthouse, 1923 Sam Houston Street, Liberty. The court serves the whole county, including Liberty, Dayton, Cleveland, Daisetta and the rural areas between them, and the county's Justice of the Peace offices in those towns do not take probate filings. The County Clerk also keeps a Cleveland office at the courthouse annex, 304 Campbell Street, but the county does not publish it as a probate counter, so probate paperwork and the original will go to Room 209 in Liberty. One convenience of this county: the clerk, the County Judge and both county courts at law are all in the same courthouse, so a hearing day does not mean driving between buildings. Attorneys file electronically through eFileTexas.gov, so most of the paperwork in an uncontested estate reaches the clerk without a trip to Liberty at all.

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 Liberty County, the case belongs here, even if they died in a hospital in Houston or Beaumont. 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 in a county like this one, and Liberty County answers it on its own website. Liberty has no statutory probate court. It has two statutory county courts, named by Government Code § 25.1481 as the County Court at Law of Liberty County and the County Court at Law No. 2 of Liberty County, and it has the constitutional Liberty County Court presided over by the elected County Judge, currently Jay H. Knight. A statutory county court has, concurrent with the county court, the probate jurisdiction provided by general law for county courts (Government Code § 25.0003(d)), which the county quotes verbatim on its own civil-cases page, so a Liberty county court at law and the Liberty County Court have concurrent original jurisdiction of probate proceedings (Estates Code § 32.002(b)). Neither county court at law is a statutory probate court, and neither has had its probate jurisdiction switched off: Government Code § 25.1482 adds only concurrent family law jurisdiction with the district court. In practice the county splits the work and publishes the split. The County Judge's office says it presides over probate matters, guardianship matters and small estate proceedings; the County Court at Law says it hears contested or complex probate matters; and the county's own Small Estate Affidavit form is captioned for the County Court of Liberty County, Texas.

If a matter in the proceeding becomes contested, Liberty County follows the county-court-at-law route, not the small-county route. Under Estates Code § 32.004(a), 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 same subsection lets the county judge transfer the entire proceeding there instead of just the contested piece. The county court at law then hears it as if originally filed there, and if only the contested matter moved, it goes back to the county court once it is resolved (§ 32.004(b)). There is no assignment of an outside statutory probate judge and no transfer to a district court in a county built like Liberty: the contest stays inside the county's own courthouse, and the County Court at Law says in its own words that contested or complex probate matters are part of its docket.

The county tells you which court does what, and that is rare. Most Texas county-court-at-law counties leave a reader to guess whether the County Judge or a county court at law will hear an estate. Liberty publishes the answer on both sides: the County Judge's office lists among its duties that it presides over probate matters, guardianship matters and small estate proceedings, and the County Court at Law lists contested or complex probate matters among the cases it hears. That is the Estates Code § 32.002(b) and § 32.004 structure working the way the statute imagines it, and it means an uncontested will probate in Liberty County is a County Judge matter. All three courts keep concurrent original jurisdiction, so confirm your own setting with the clerk.

One courthouse, four rooms. The County Clerk is in Room 209, the County Judge in Room 201, the County Court at Law in Room 203 and County Court at Law No. 2 in Room 123, all at 1923 Sam Houston Street, per the county's own published courthouse directory. The clerk adds one detail that saves a lap of the building: the entrance is on the west side, on Travis Street. The clerk's second office, at the courthouse annex at 304 Campbell Street in Cleveland, is a County Clerk counter but is not published as a probate counter, so probate filings and original wills go to Liberty.

The probate postings are published online, one PDF per estate. Texas requires citation on a probate application to be posted at the courthouse (Estates Code § 51.053), and Liberty has moved that notice board onto the web: the clerk states that "Paper notices on the indoor bulletin board are being replaced with electronic notices", and the county's electronic notice board carries a Probate section of dated PDFs named for each estate. For a family waiting out the posting period, that is a way to confirm the case is moving without calling the courthouse. The clerk also files public notices into the official public records database.

The fee schedule is dated, itemized and cited, and two of them are in circulation. Liberty's current schedule is printed "Effective January 1, 2026" and its detailed probate section names the statute behind every line, which is unusual in Texas and makes it possible to see exactly what you are paying for. The version still linked from the clerk's probate page is the January 1, 2024 schedule, on which an application for letters of administration was $491.00 rather than $516.00. The difference is entirely the sheriff publication fee, which went from $75.00 to $100.00. Check the date on the PDF you are reading.

Liberty gets the inventory fee right, and it is worth knowing why. The county's schedule prices the inventory as "Inventory (filed after due date)", $27.00, rather than as a routine filing charge. That matches the statute: the fee for filing an inventory and appraisement applies only if the instrument is filed after the 90th day after the personal representative qualified, or after an extended deadline the court sets (Local Government Code § 118.056(d)). File the inventory before the 91st day after qualifying (Estates Code § 309.051(a)) and there is no clerk fee for it at all.

Remote appearance is a court-by-court question here, and the court that hears routine probate is the one that says nothing about it. County Court at Law No. 2 publishes an express notice that it is holding court in person and that Zoom and hybrid hearings happen only with prior approval, along with instructions to deliver exhibits to the court coordinator at least 24 hours ahead. The County Court at Law publishes a Zoom and public live-stream posture for civil settings. Neither statement is about probate, and the County Judge, who hears routine probate, publishes no remote rule. Ask before you assume you can appear from out of state.

Plenty of uncontested Liberty County estates are handled without a lawyer, and the county gives a self-represented filer more to work with than most: a written explanation of the probate process, a small estate affidavit form, a dated and itemized fee schedule, and a published posting board. 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 has to be sold or divided, when the estate is insolvent or a creditor is pressing, when mineral, timber or out-of-county property is involved, or when a guardianship has to run alongside the estate. Three Liberty-specific signals point the same way. First, the county's own guidance says that where a decedent died without a will it is highly recommended that you speak to an attorney experienced in probate before proceeding, and that a determination of heirship involves an attorney ad litem's report. Second, the clerk's schedule adds an attorney ad litem fee set by the judge to every application for letters of administration. Third, contested or complex probate matters move to the County Court at Law, which is a different judge and a different room from the one where an uncontested probate is heard. The County Clerk's office is explicit that it cannot give legal advice and that it has no authority over the courts it serves. Sunset can connect families to a vetted Texas probate attorney serving Liberty County and the surrounding Southeast 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, Liberty County real property, mineral interests and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds and which estate settlement route fits before anything is filed in Liberty.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, including the documents Liberty County does not publish a template for, ready to e-file through eFileTexas.gov and lodge with the Liberty County Clerk in Room 209.

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 Liberty 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).