Lipscomb County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in Lipscomb, 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. Getting the answer before your first filing matters more than usual here, because Lipscomb County publishes no forms, no checklist and no procedure sheet to correct a wrong turn, and the County Clerk's staff can explain what the counter needs but cannot tell you which route to take.

Identify every bank and credit union account, retirement plan, brokerage holding, life insurance policy, vehicle, mineral or royalty interest and parcel of Lipscomb 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 Lipscomb County Clerk describes the estate accurately the first time.

The Lipscomb County Clerk's office at the courthouse, 101 S. Main Street in Lipscomb, is the single probate filing location for the whole county. There is no branch, satellite or annex counter for estates and no separate probate department. The court serves every part of the county, and most of the county's people are not in the county seat: the county's own election day voting locations list places its precincts at Booker FirstBank Southwest on S Main Street in Booker, the Darrouzett Senior Citizen Building on Main Street in Darrouzett, the Follett Community Center on Bruce Street in Follett and the Higgins Multi-Purpose Building in Higgins, with no polling place in Lipscomb itself. Whichever of those towns the decedent lived in, the estate is filed at the courthouse in Lipscomb.

Venue is straightforward for a Lipscomb 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 Booker, Darrouzett, Follett, Higgins or Lipscomb, the case belongs in the Lipscomb County Court, even if they died in a hospital in Perryton, Pampa, Amarillo or across the line in Oklahoma. 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 page. Lipscomb County has no statutory probate court and no county court at law: Government Code Chapter 25, which creates every statutory county court and statutory probate court in Texas, contains no Lipscomb provision at all, and the county's own list of offices names a County Judge, a Commissioners Court, a Justice of the Peace, the district court and the constitutional offices, and no court at law. So the Lipscomb County Court, the constitutional county court, has original jurisdiction of probate proceedings (Estates Code § 32.002(a)) and the elected County Judge presides. Caption your papers for the county court, not for a probate court or a court at law that the county does not have.

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 comes back when it is resolved.

The district court in that route is the 31st District Court. Government Code § 24.133(a) provides that "The 31st Judicial District is composed of Gray, Hemphill, Lipscomb, Roberts, and Wheeler counties", and § 24.133(b)(3) sets its terms in Lipscomb County to begin on the fourth Monday in March and the second Monday in September. The county publishes the 31st District Judge as Steven Emmert, P.O. Box 766, Wheeler, Texas 79096, 806.826.5501, with a district court coordinator and court reporter named alongside. That court does not open estates; it reaches a Lipscomb probate matter only on a § 32.003 transfer.

One officer holds both clerkships, and it does not change where you file. The county publishes the same person as County Clerk and as District Clerk, at the same street address, the same post office box, the same phone and the same fax, brands the counter the "Lipscomb County & District Clerk's Office", titles her "County & District Clerk, Election Clerk" on its elections page, and tells the public that "ALL PUBLIC INFORMATION REQUESTS SHOULD BE SUBMITTED TO OUR DISTRICT/COUNTY CLERK BY MAIL OR EMAILED." The Office of Court Administration's 2025 clerk directories say the same thing in one word, noting "Combo Clerk" on both the county clerk and district clerk entries for Lipscomb. Government Code § 51.501(a) requires a county with a population of less than 8,000 to elect a single clerk to perform the duties of both offices unless the voters vote to keep them separate (§ 51.501(b)), and § 51.502 has the joint clerk use the district court seal for district court acts and the county court seal for county court acts. An estate is a county court matter and stays on the county-clerk side of that combined office. OCA's directory bears this out: probate is listed among the case types filed with the office for the County Court and is not listed on the district clerk entry. The district-court side only comes into play if the County Judge sends a contested matter to the 31st District Court under Estates Code § 32.003(a)(2).

The county publishes two courthouse street addresses. The clerk's own documents give 101 S. Main Street, Lipscomb, for in-person filing and for overnight delivery, and the clerk's web page and the County Judge's page both publish 101 S. Main. The county website's site-wide directions block gives the Lipscomb County Courthouse as 105 Oak Street. Lipscomb is a very small county seat with one courthouse, so this is a labeling difference rather than two buildings, but use the clerk's own address for a filing and call 806-862-3091 if you are driving in and want to be sure.

The published fee sheet is a recording schedule, not a probate schedule, and the numbers on it are the ones most likely to mislead you. The only fee document Lipscomb County publishes is headed "Filing Fees for Official Public Records", effective January 1, 2024, and it prices RECORDING a land or assumed-name instrument in the official public records: $25.00 for the first page, $4.00 for each page after that, 25 cents for every name indexed after the fifth grantor or grantee, and $23.00 for an assumed name certificate, with a page-count table running up to 120 pages. None of that is the cost of opening an estate. The probate filing fee is the statewide statutory $360 ($223 under Local Government Code § 135.102(a)(1) plus $137 under § 133.151(a)(1)), and the county sets none of it. The recording sheet does matter to an estate in one situation: if you have to record something in the deed records, for example a small estate affidavit that transfers a homestead under Estates Code § 205.006, those recording prices are what the clerk will charge.

The counter opens at 8:30 a.m., not 8:00 a.m., and closes for lunch. The clerk publishes, in its own words, "We are open at 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and are closed from 12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m. for Lunch". Most Texas county clerks open at 8:00 a.m., so a half hour is easy to lose if you have driven from Booker, Follett, Higgins or Darrouzett, or across the state line. The county does not publish which days of the week the counter is open, nor any filing cutoff, so confirm both by phone before you travel.

The county's "2026 Case Schedule" is a district court calendar and is not a probate docket. The clerk's district-side page publishes a Lipscomb County 2026 case schedule whose column headings are grand jury, docket call and hearings, arraignment and hearings, and trial. That is the 31st District Court's calendar. The Lipscomb County Court publishes no probate docket day and no docket time at all, and the only county court documents the clerk publishes are its Office of Court Administration appointments and fees reports, the March 2026 one of which was filed showing no activity. Nothing about a probate hearing date in Lipscomb County can be read off a published calendar; ask the clerk.

Nothing else local is published, so assume nothing. Lipscomb County publishes no probate fee schedule, no probate forms, no probate checklist, no e-filing notice, no statement about paper filings from self-represented parties, no local probate rules, no docket day, no docket time and no remote appearance policy, and it runs no online probate case search. The 31st District Court's local rules are published as a scanned image with no machine-readable text, so nothing is quoted from them here, and the court's only published standing order is about disclosure in tax cases. This is normal for a county this size and it is not a reason to guess: every one of those questions has an answer, and the way to get it is to call the County Clerk at 806-862-3091 before you file.

Plenty of uncontested estates in small Panhandle counties are handled without a lawyer, and nothing in Lipscomb County's published rules requires one for an ordinary application. 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 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. Two local factors weigh in favor of an attorney more than they would in a metro county. First, Lipscomb County publishes no probate forms, no checklist and no procedure sheet, so every document is drafted from scratch and there is no local template to check your work against. Second, 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 31st 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 Lipscomb County and the surrounding Panhandle.

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, Lipscomb County real property, mineral and royalty interests and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds and which route fits before estate settlement begins in Lipscomb.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, captioned for the Lipscomb County Court and ready to e-file through eFileTexas.gov with the Lipscomb County Clerk, which matters in a county that publishes no forms or checklist 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 Lipscomb 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).