San Augustine County, TX Probate Information

Before you file anything in San Augustine, 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 the first filing matters more than usual here, because San Augustine publishes no probate instruction sheet, no local forms and no docket schedule, so there is no county document to correct a wrong start. The people who can tell you what the counter needs are at the County Clerk's office at 106 S Broadway, and they close at 3:00 p.m. on Friday.

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

One county, one court, one filing counter, and two buildings. Probate applications for the whole of San Augustine County are filed with the San Augustine County Clerk at 106 S Broadway in the city of San Augustine, which is not the courthouse; the San Augustine County Courthouse, where the County Judge's office is Room 105, is at 100 W Columbia Street. There is no branch or annex counter for estates. The court serves every part of the county, including the city of San Augustine and the city of Broaddus, which are the two municipalities the county lists on its own city departments page, along with the rural communities the county names elsewhere on its site, among them Denning, New Hope and Powell Town.

Venue is straightforward for a 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 San Augustine County, the case belongs in the San Augustine County Court, even if they died in a hospital in Nacogdoches, Lufkin or Center. 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)).

San Augustine County has no statutory probate court and no county court at law: Government Code Chapter 25, which creates every statutory county court and every statutory probate court in the state, contains no San Augustine entry at all. So the San Augustine County Court, the constitutional county court, has original jurisdiction of probate proceedings (Estates Code § 32.002(a)), and the elected County Judge presides. The Office of Court Administration's 2025 county clerk offices directory records the same thing from the clerk's side: the San Augustine entry marks the County Court case types "Probate: Yes" and lists no county court at law.

The filing office is the County Clerk, and San Augustine keeps that office separate from the District Clerk. 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 the district clerk and the county clerk, unless a majority of the qualified voters keep the offices separate (§ 51.501(b)). San Augustine has two separate elected clerks, and the County Clerk is the one who takes estates: the clerk's own fee schedule carries the county's probate fee section. The District Clerk, in Room 202 of the courthouse, serves the district courts.

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. In San Augustine County that district court is the 1st Judicial District Court or the 273rd Judicial District Court, the two district courts the county's own District Clerk page names. 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 filing counter is not in the courthouse, and a third address is still in circulation. The San Augustine County Clerk is at 106 S Broadway, published on the clerk's own page and printed on the letterhead of the county's fee schedule. The San Augustine County Courthouse, where the County Judge's office is Room 105 and the District Clerk is Room 202, is at 100 W Columbia Street. The Office of Court Administration's 2025 county clerk offices directory, dated 5/23/2025, still lists the clerk at 223 N Harrison. Directories repeat one or another of these three addresses, so use the county's own, 106 S Broadway, and call 936-275-2452 before mailing anything you cannot afford to lose, starting with an original will.

The counter closes early on Friday. The County Clerk publishes hours of 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Friday, with no published lunch closure. That matters in one specific way: an electronically filed document is timely if it is filed before midnight on the due date (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(5)), but anything physical, and above all the wet-ink original will that must reach the clerk within three business days of the application (Rule 21(f)(12)), has to arrive while the counter is open. A Friday afternoon delivery can miss by an hour.

The county's fee document prints a probate total higher than the statutory base, and the difference is service charges, not a different filing fee. Page 3 of the County Clerk's fee schedule itemizes an original filing for probate of a will, guardianship, letters testamentary, a small estate or a determination of heirship line by line and totals it at $412.00. Every line but two is a component of the statutory consolidated fees: the local lines other than the $50.00 sheriff fee and posting citation and the $2.00 judge's signature sum to $223.00, the local consolidated fee (Local Government Code § 135.102(a)(1)), and with the $137.00 state consolidated fee (§ 133.151(a)(1)) that is the $360.00 statutory base. The probate pages carry no printed effective date of their own, the January 1, 2024 heading on page 1 covers the real property and vital records section, so ask the clerk for the figure the office is collecting today.

The county's only published e-filing statement is on the wrong office's page. San Augustine posts nothing about electronic filing on the County Clerk's page. Its District Clerk page carries the notice: "Beginning July 1, 2015, the Texas Supreme Court requires all Civil, Family and Probate cases to be filed electronically. San Augustine County is live and accepting filings." That statement is useful because it confirms the county is on eFileTexas.gov, but a decedent's estate is county court business and the application goes to the County Clerk at 106 S Broadway. The District Clerk serves the 1st and 273rd District Courts and does not open estates. Whether the County Clerk will take a paper filing from an unrepresented party is not published; the statewide rule is that an unrepresented party may e-file but is not required to (Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 21(f)(1)), so call and ask.

There is no online probate case search, and the clerk's records link is for land. The "Access County Clerk Documents" link on the County Clerk's page opens the Texas Land Records real property search, which indexes deeds and other recorded instruments, not estates. The state directory records the office's case management system as iDocket, but the county publishes no public search for it. For a probate case, the answer is re:SearchTX, with its registration requirement, its per-document charges and its own statement that it supplies an unofficial copy, or a call to the County Clerk.

Recording anything in the real property records now takes photo identification in person. The County Clerk's page carries a dated notice: "BEGINNING JANUARY 1ST 2026 SB 16- LOCAL GOVERNMENT CODE 191.010(B) A COUNTY CLERK SHALL REQUIRE A PERSON PRESENTING A DOCUMENT IN PERSON FILLING IN THE REAL PROPERTY RECORDS OF THE COUNTY TO PRESENT A VILAD PHOTO IDENTIFICATION TO THE CLERK." The typing errors are the county's. The statute behind it is Local Government Code § 191.010(b), which S.B. 16 of the 89th Legislature's 2nd Called Session changed from a permission to a requirement effective December 4, 2025, and which lists the acceptable forms of identification in § 191.010(a). This reaches a probate reader whenever an estate document has to be recorded in the deed records rather than filed in the case, which includes a small estate affidavit used to transfer a homestead (Estates Code § 205.006(a)) and a certified copy of an order admitting a will as a muniment of title (chapter 257). Take a driver's license or passport to the counter.

One court, one judge, and the district courts ordinarily enter only on a contest. San Augustine County has no statutory probate court and no county court at law, so the San Augustine County Court hears the estate (Estates Code § 32.002(a)) and the County Clerk takes the filing. The 1st and 273rd Judicial District Courts sit in the county, and one statutory wrinkle is worth knowing: Government Code § 24.101(b) also gives the 1st District Court the civil jurisdiction of a county court in Sabine and San Augustine counties. The county's own published routing is unambiguous all the same: the County Clerk's fee schedule carries the county's probate fees, and the state directory records probate as filed with the County Clerk for the County Court, so estates open in the county court unless the court itself directs otherwise. In an estate case the district courts' ordinary role begins if the County Judge transfers a contested matter under § 32.003(a)(2), and even then the county court keeps the management of the rest of the estate (§ 32.003(g)).

Plenty of uncontested San Augustine County estates are handled without a lawyer, and the county clerk's counter is used to walk-in filers. 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 mineral interests are involved, when the estate is insolvent or a creditor is pressing, 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, San Augustine County publishes no probate forms, no instruction sheet, no local rules and no docket schedule, so every document is drafted from scratch and the procedure has to be learned from the clerk. 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 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 San Augustine County and the surrounding East 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, San Augustine County real property and unclaimed property, so you know what the estate holds and which estate settlement route fits before anything is filed.

Generate the probate packet. Sunset assembles the paperwork for your route, drafted for a county that publishes no forms of its own, ready to file with the San Augustine County Clerk at 106 S Broadway or to e-file through eFileTexas.gov.

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 San Augustine 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).