Texas Community Property Laws
Most of what is written about Texas community property is written about a divorce. This page is about the other twenty or fifty years. Community property in Texas is not only a rule about who owns a thing; it is a rule about who may sign for it, whose name raises which presumption, what a written agreement can and cannot do to a creditor who was already there, and which half of the estate a probate court hands to whom. Chapter 3 creates management estates. Chapter 4 lets spouses move the boundary in writing. Chapter 5 puts the homestead outside the whole scheme. And Estates Code section 453.009 carries the management estates straight through the death of a spouse, which is the part nobody writes down. General legal information, not legal advice.
The Short Version
Texas community property is everything acquired by either spouse during the marriage that is not separate property (section 3.002), and anything held during the marriage is presumed community until clear and convincing evidence says otherwise (section 3.003). That is the part every competing page tells you. The part that decides real outcomes is section 3.102, which hands each spouse the sole management of the community property that spouse would have owned if single — personal earnings, revenue from separate property, personal-injury recoveries — and leaves everything else under joint management. Section 3.104 then converts a name on an instrument into a presumption a stranger may act on. Two spouses can move that boundary themselves, but only in writing and only under chapter 4, and the recording rules in sections 4.106 and 4.206 decide whether anyone outside the marriage is bound by what they agreed. The homestead sits outside all of it: section 5.001 requires both signatures whatever its character. And when a spouse dies, the management estates do not dissolve — Estates Code section 453.009 gives the personal representative the decedent’s side and leaves the survivor holding their own. This page is general legal information. A Texas attorney applies it; this firm reads the record it runs on.
Watch: Management, Not Just Ownership
Why the name on the instrument matters in Texas.
Watch Overview
Ownership Is Shared. Management Is Not.
Family Code sections 3.002, 3.003, 3.102 and 3.104.
Section 3.002 defines the community by subtraction: it consists of the property, other than separate property, acquired by either spouse during marriage. Section 3.003 supplies the pressure behind that definition — property possessed by either spouse during or on dissolution of the marriage is presumed community, and the degree of proof required to establish that something is separate is clear and convincing evidence. Two short sections, and between them they decide the default character of almost everything a Texas couple touches.
Equal ownership is where nearly every article on this subject stops. The Family Code does not stop there. Section 3.102(a) hands each spouse, during the marriage, sole management, control and disposition over whatever community property they would have owned had they never married, and the subsection names four categories: what they earn; what their separate property yields; what they recover for a personal injury; and the increase, mutations and revenue of anything already sitting in that estate. Section 3.102(c) leaves everything else under the joint management of both. So the community is not one pool. It is at least two, and usually three, and which one an asset sits in is a different question from who owns it.
Section 3.102(b) then does something that quietly reshapes a long marriage. If community property under one spouse’s sole management is mixed or combined with community property under the other spouse’s sole management, the mixture becomes subject to joint management, unless the spouses have provided otherwise by written power of attorney or other agreement. Two salaries paid into one shared account stop being two sole-management estates on the day they land. Account architecture is therefore a legal fact in Texas, not a matter of household convenience, and it is a fact that leaves a documentary trail.
What the name on the paper actually buys
Section 3.104(a) turns titling into a presumption. Sole management is presumed for whatever is held in that spouse’s name — the subsection will take a muniment, a contract, a deposit of funds or any other evidence of ownership as showing it — and equally for anything merely in that spouse’s possession where no such evidence of ownership exists at all. Section 3.104(b) then allows a third person dealing with that spouse to rely on the spouse’s authority, so long as that person is not a party to a fraud on the other spouse and has neither actual nor constructive notice that the authority is missing.
The popular version of this rule — “it is not yours just because your name is on it” — is correct about ownership and wrong about consequence. The name does not make the asset separate. It does raise a presumption a buyer, a lender or a title company is entitled to act on, and a transaction closed on that presumption is not undone by the fact that the asset was community all along. That is why an inventory that lists assets without listing the name each one is held in has answered the smaller half of the question.
One boundary belongs here rather than later. Which estate answers for which debt — the section 3.202 liability ladder, the tortious-liability rule, and the judge’s power under section 3.203 to set the order in which property is sold — together with inception of title, reimbursement, and the just and right division under section 7.001, are covered in full on our companion page on how a Texas court divides a marital estate at divorce. This page stays with the marriage while it is standing, and with what happens when it ends by death rather than by decree.
The Homestead Answers to Neither Column
Family Code chapter 5, and the missing-spouse petition.
Everything above turns on character and management. The homestead ignores both. Section 5.001 provides that whether the homestead is the separate property of either spouse or community property, neither spouse may sell, convey or encumber it without the joinder of the other spouse, except as chapter 5 or other rules of law provide. A house one spouse bought years before the wedding, which has stayed separate through every tracing rule Texas has, still cannot be sold on one signature once it is the family homestead. Character is irrelevant to the joinder requirement. Occupancy is what does the work.
The exceptions are narrow and each one is a documented event. Sections 5.002 and 5.003 excuse joinder where the other spouse has been judicially declared incapacitated by a court exercising guardianship jurisdiction under Title 3 of the Estates Code — separate homestead and community homestead each get their own subsection, and in both cases it is the court’s declaration, not the family’s assessment, that unlocks the sale.
When the other spouse cannot be found
Sections 5.101 and 5.102 cover what the code calls unusual circumstances, and the list is unusually specific. A spouse may file a sworn petition describing the property and stating the facts that make a sale without joinder desirable, alleging that the other spouse: has disappeared and the location of that spouse remains unknown to the petitioner; has permanently abandoned the homestead and the petitioning spouse; has permanently abandoned the homestead with the spouses permanently separated; or has been reported by an executive department of the United States to be a prisoner of war or missing on public service. Section 5.101 is the separate-homestead version and section 5.102 the community-homestead version; the four grounds are the same in each.
Section 5.103 sets the clock. The petition goes to a court in a county where any portion of the property lies, and it may not be filed earlier than the sixtieth day after the disappearance, abandonment or separation, or less than six months after the prisoner-of-war or missing report. Section 5.108 confirms that these remedies are cumulative of whatever else the law gives a spouse, so choosing this route forecloses nothing.
Read as a set, those three sections describe a records problem wearing a statutory hat. “Disappeared and the location remains unknown to the petitioning spouse” is a factual assertion a petitioner has to be willing to swear to, and the honest way to reach it is a documented search that came back empty rather than a search nobody ran. Establishing where a person is — or establishing, with dated sources, that the record no longer shows — is exactly the work described further down this page.
Spouses Can Move the Boundary. Only in Writing.
Family Code chapter 4, subchapters A and B.
Texas does not force the statutory default on anyone. Chapter 4 gives couples three instruments, and each has its own formalities, its own enforcement test and its own consequences for people who are not in the marriage.
Before the wedding, subchapter A applies the premarital agreement rules. Section 4.001 defines the agreement as one between prospective spouses made in contemplation of marriage and effective on marriage, and defines “property” broadly enough to include income and earnings. Section 4.002 requires writing and both signatures and makes the agreement enforceable without consideration. Section 4.003(a) then lists eight subjects the parties may contract about, from management and disposition rights to the making of a will or trust, the ownership of a life-insurance death benefit, and the choice of law governing construction — while section 4.003(b) forbids any adverse effect on a child’s right to support.
After the wedding, section 4.102 is the workhorse: at any time, spouses may partition or exchange between themselves all or part of their community property, then existing or to be acquired, and property transferred by that agreement becomes that spouse’s separate property. The section goes one step further than most summaries admit — the agreement may also provide that future earnings and income arising from the transferred property shall be the owning spouse’s separate property. Section 4.103 handles the same idea from the other end, letting spouses agree that income or property arising from separate property one of them owns now or acquires later shall be the owner’s separate property.
Section 4.104 requires writing and both signatures for either agreement, again without consideration. Section 4.105 sets the only two ways out: the party resisting enforcement proves they did not sign voluntarily, or proves the agreement was unconscionable when signed and that they were not given a fair and reasonable disclosure, did not expressly waive disclosure in writing, and could not reasonably have had adequate knowledge of the other party’s property and obligations. Unconscionability is decided by the court as a matter of law, and section 4.105(c) makes these the exclusive remedies and defences, common law included.
What the agreement cannot do to somebody who was already owed money
Section 4.106(a) is the sentence competitors leave out. A provision of a partition or exchange agreement is void with respect to the rights of a pre-existing creditor whose rights are intended to be defrauded by it. Spouses may rearrange the community between themselves; they may not rearrange it out from under a creditor who was already there and who the arrangement was aimed at.
Section 4.106(b) supplies the other half, and it is a recording rule. The agreement may be filed in the deed records of the county where a party resides and the county where the affected real property is located — but it is constructive notice to a good-faith purchaser for value, or to a creditor without actual notice, only if it is acknowledged and recorded in the county where the real property sits. An unrecorded partition is real between the spouses and close to invisible to everyone else. That distinction is settled in a county clerk’s index, which is where this firm reads it.
Converting Separate Property Into Community
Family Code chapter 4, subchapter C — and the warning the legislature wrote itself.
The reverse transaction has its own subchapter because it is the more dangerous one. Section 4.202 states the power plainly: at any time, spouses may agree that all or part of the separate property owned by either or both is converted to community property. Section 4.203(a) then imposes formalities that are stricter than anywhere else in chapter 4. The agreement must be in writing, signed by the spouses, must identify the property being converted, and must specify that the property is being converted to the spouses’ community property. It is enforceable without consideration.
Section 4.203(b) closes the door that most people walk through by accident: the mere transfer of a spouse’s separate property into the name of the other spouse, or into the names of both spouses, is not sufficient to convert it. Adding a spouse to a deed is not a conversion. Retitling an account is not a conversion. Nothing short of a document that names the property and says what it is doing will do it.
Section 4.204 then decides who manages the result, and it does so by looking at the paperwork rather than the history. Converted property falls under the sole management of the spouse in whose name it is held; or the sole management of the transferring spouse if there is no evidence of ownership; or joint management if it is held in both names, or if there was no evidence of ownership and both spouses owned it before the conversion. A conversion therefore does two things at once — it changes character, and it re-sorts the asset into one of the management estates described further up this page.
The legislature’s own summary of what changes
Section 4.205(a) makes the agreement unenforceable if the spouse resisting it proves they did not execute it voluntarily, or did not receive a fair and reasonable disclosure of the legal effect of converting the property. Section 4.205(b) then supplies the language that is rebuttably presumed to be that fair disclosure, and requires it to be prominently displayed in bold-faced type, capital letters or underlining. It runs under three headings, and they are the clearest short statement of Texas community property in the statute books: exposure to creditors — converted property may become subject to the liabilities of the other spouse, where separate property generally would not be; loss of management rights — the property may fall under joint management or under the other spouse’s sole management alone; and loss of property ownership — on death or divorce the converted property may become the sole property of the other spouse or that spouse’s heirs, where separate property generally could not be taken away.
Section 4.205(c) is a quiet reminder that these documents outlive the people who sign them: where enforcement is contested after the death of the spouse it is sought against, the proof may be made by an heir of that spouse or by the personal representative of the estate. And section 4.206 mirrors section 4.106 for conversions — a conversion does not affect the rights of a pre-existing creditor of the converting spouse, it may be recorded where a spouse resides and where the land lies, and it is constructive notice to a good-faith purchaser for value or a creditor without actual notice only if acknowledged and recorded in the county where the real property is located.
Which Instruments Bind People Outside the Marriage
Recording, notice and the pre-existing creditor.
| Instrument | What it changes between the spouses | What it takes to bind an outsider |
|---|---|---|
| Premarital agreement (4.002, 4.003) | Rights in any property whenever and wherever acquired; management, disposition, wills and trusts, life-insurance benefits. | Writing and both signatures; no consideration needed. Cannot adversely affect a child’s right to support. |
| Partition or exchange (4.102) Recording decides | Community becomes that spouse’s separate property; may also make future income from it separate. | Void as to a pre-existing creditor it was meant to defraud (4.106(a)). Constructive notice only if acknowledged and recorded where the land is (4.106(b)). |
| Income-from-separate agreement (4.103) | Income or property arising from separate property stays the owner’s separate property. | Writing and both signatures (4.104). Same recording logic where real property is involved. |
| Conversion to community (4.202) | Separate becomes community, and is re-sorted into a management estate by 4.204. | Must identify the property and say it is being converted (4.203(a)). Does not affect a pre-existing creditor (4.206(a)). Notice only on acknowledgement and recording (4.206(c)). |
| Community property survivorship agreement (Est. Code 112.051) | Community covered by it becomes the survivor’s on death. | Writing signed by both (112.052(a)); effective without an adjudication (112.053); may not be inferred from a joint account or a JT TEN designation (112.052(d)). |
| Any homestead conveyance | Nothing. Character is irrelevant here. | Both signatures, always (5.001), unless incapacity or the sworn unusual-circumstances petition applies. |
The right-hand column is the one a records search can answer. Whether a partition was ever acknowledged and recorded in the county where the land sits, whether a survivorship agreement exists at all, whether a homestead deed carries one signature or two — these are questions about filed instruments, and a county clerk’s index answers them the same way for everyone. The nine community property states arrange this differently and the forty-one others do not have the problem at all; the marital property laws by state overview maps where each one lands.
Death Does Not Dissolve the Management Estates
Estates Code chapters 111, 112, 201, 353, 360 and 453.
Start with the default, because it surprises people. Estates Code section 101.002 provides that where two or more persons hold an interest in property jointly and one dies before severance, the decedent’s interest does not survive to the remaining owners — it passes by will or intestacy as if it had been severed. Texas does not give co-owners survivorship for free. Section 111.001(a) lets joint owners agree in writing that it does, and section 111.001(b) adds that such an agreement may not be inferred from the mere fact that property is held in joint ownership.
Chapter 112 is the married-couple version. Section 112.001 defines a community property survivorship agreement as an agreement between spouses creating a right of survivorship in community property, and section 112.051 lets spouses make one at any time over all or part of their community property, then existing or to be acquired. Section 112.052(a) requires writing signed by both spouses; subsection (b) lists four phrases that are sufficient on their own — “with right of survivorship”, “will become the property of the survivor”, “will vest in and belong to the surviving spouse”, “shall pass to the surviving spouse” — and subsection (c) confirms the agreement works without any of them if the chapter’s requirements are otherwise met. Subsection (d) is the one that resolves a very common and very expensive misunderstanding: a survivorship agreement may not be inferred from the mere fact that an account is a joint account, or that it is designated JT TEN, Joint Tenancy, or joint. Section 112.053 makes a compliant agreement effective and enforceable without an adjudication, and section 112.054 sets out revocation — as the agreement provides, or failing that by a written instrument signed by both spouses or signed by one and delivered to the other, or as to specific property by a disposition not inconsistent with the agreement.
No will, and a child from outside the marriage
Section 201.003 governs the community estate of a person who dies intestate leaving a surviving spouse, and it is not the flat “the survivor keeps everything” rule most pages describe. The whole community estate passes to the surviving spouse if the deceased left no children or other descendants, or if all of the deceased’s surviving children and descendants are also children or descendants of the survivor. But where the deceased is survived by a child or other descendant who is not also the survivor’s, the deceased spouse’s undivided one-half interest in the community estate passes to the deceased’s children or descendants instead. The section closes with a line that matters to anyone holding a claim: in every case, the community estate passes charged with the debts against the community estate.
The section that carries chapter 3 across the grave
Section 453.009 is the provision this page was built around, and it is almost never quoted. During administration of a deceased spouse’s estate, the qualified personal representative may administer three things: the decedent’s separate property, the community property that was by law under the management of the deceased spouse during the marriage, and the community property that was under the joint control of the spouses. Meanwhile the surviving spouse, “as surviving partner of the marital partnership”, is entitled to retain possession and control of the community property that was legally under the sole management of the surviving spouse during the marriage, and to exercise over it the powers the chapter grants as though no administration were pending. Subsection (c) lets the survivor waive that role by written instrument filed with the clerk, after which the representative may administer the whole community estate.
The consequence is worth stating slowly. The section 3.102 line drawn during the marriage — whose earnings, whose account, whose name — is the same line a probate court uses years later to decide who administers what. A sole-management estate is not an accounting fiction that dies with the marriage. It determines who has authority over property after one spouse is gone. And where there is no qualified executor or administrator at all, section 453.003 gives the surviving spouse standing to sue and be sued to recover community property, to sell, mortgage, lease or otherwise dispose of community property to pay community debts, to collect claims due to the community, and to wind up community affairs — with section 453.006 requiring a fair and full account of debts paid and of the disposition made.
Partition, exempt property and the family allowance
Section 360.253 gives the survivor a formal exit. After letters testamentary or of administration have been granted and the inventory, appraisement and list of claims returned — or the affidavit in lieu filed — the surviving spouse may apply in writing for a partition of the community property, and the court partitions it into two equal moieties, one delivered to the survivor and one to the executor or administrator. The survivor posts a bond equal to the value of their interest, conditioned for the payment of half of all debts existing against the community property; a lien secures it, and a community creditor may sue on that bond in the creditor’s own name for half the debt and look to the estate for the other half. Anyone weighing that route against ordinary enforcement will find the mechanics of collecting a judgment in Texas useful alongside it.
Chapter 353 then protects the household while all of this happens. Section 353.051 requires the court to set aside the homestead for the surviving spouse and minor children, and the other exempt property described by Property Code section 42.002(a) for the surviving spouse, minor children, unmarried adult children remaining with the family, and each incapacitated adult child. Where those specific articles are not among the decedent’s effects, section 353.053 substitutes a reasonable allowance, capped by the section at $45,000 in lieu of a homestead and $30,000 in lieu of other exempt property, excluding the family allowance. Section 353.101 requires a family allowance sufficient to maintain the surviving spouse, minor children and adult incapacitated children for one year from the date of death, and section 353.101(d) withholds it from a surviving spouse who has separate property adequate for their own maintenance. Section 353.102 lets it be paid in a lump sum or in instalments. The same Property Code list that fixes what gets set aside here also fixes what a creditor can never take, and that list is set out on our page covering Texas exempt property and creditor reach.
Six Places a Texas Community Estate Goes Quiet
None of these requires anyone to have done anything wrong.
An Unrecorded Partition
Real between the spouses; not constructive notice to a purchaser or a creditor without actual notice unless acknowledged and recorded where the land is (4.106(b)).
A Sole-Management Account
Community, divisible, and presumed that spouse’s to manage under 3.104(a) because the name on the deposit says so.
A Survivorship Agreement Nobody Kept
Effective without an adjudication under 112.053, which also means no court file exists to prove it was ever made.
A Deed With One Signature
Section 5.001 requires joinder whatever the homestead’s character, so a single-signature conveyance is a defect visible in the instrument itself.
A Child From Outside the Marriage
Section 201.003(c) sends the decedent’s half of the community to that child rather than to the surviving spouse, and heirship has to be established to know.
A Spouse Nobody Can Locate
Sections 5.101 to 5.103 turn a disappearance into a sworn allegation with a sixty-day clock, which someone has to be able to support.
How a Texas File Is Assembled Here
Basis, names, offices, delivery.
Confirm What the Law Permits Here
Nothing opens without a purpose the law permits under FCRA, GLBA and DPPA, confirmed against the actual request before any search runs.
Pin the Names and the Dates
Marriage date, acquisition dates, and the exact name each instrument is held in, because section 3.104 turns that name into a presumption.
Work the Offices That Hold It
County clerk real property indices across 254 counties, probate inventories and heirship applications, entity and assumed name records, vehicle and vessel titles, address history — none of it gathered by pretending to be someone entitled to it.
Hand It Back as Documents
Every line names the instrument, the office that holds it, the filing date and a candid note on confidence, with the gaps left marked as gaps.
Who Asks Us These Questions
Documents from us; every legal call from counsel.
Texas Probate Attorneys
Community and separate, evidenced
Surviving Spouses
What the record already shows
Title Examiners
Joinder and recording checked
Estate Planners
Agreements located and dated
Community Creditors
Groundwork for a 360.253 bond claim
Heirship Applicants
Descendants identified from records
The need underneath all six roles is identical: a picture of the estate built from instruments a court could pull for itself. Deeds and deeds of trust, recorded partition and conversion agreements, probate inventories, titled vehicles and vessels, and entity records — certified copies of which the Texas Secretary of State issues on request — are all documents rather than opinions. Where a Texas estate concentrates in one metro, that work becomes local very quickly, which is why a file often runs through records research in Harris County and greater Houston before it runs anywhere else, and on into wider skip tracing services when the estate reaches beyond real property. Send the names, the counties and the dates you already hold; a first read typically comes back within 24 hours.
The Standards This Firm Works To
Texas commits an unusual amount of this subject to public files: deed records in 254 county clerks’ offices, recorded partition and conversion agreements, probate inventories and applications to determine heirship, entity and assumed name filings, titled vehicles and vessels. That is where the work is done, and only once a basis the law permits has been established for the request. This is a public-records research firm — not licensed private investigators, and no investigative licensure is claimed by anyone here; nobody on the team practises law. Records are not obtained by posing as another person or by misrepresenting why they are wanted, and no private financial account is opened or read. Neither is this a credit bureau: what we produce is a research file for a legal matter, not a consumer report, and it cannot be used to decide anyone’s employment, housing, credit or insurance. One request is always refused outright. Where the real object is to locate a person who has left after family violence, a party protected by a Texas protective order, or someone shielded by the Attorney General’s Address Confidentiality Program, the answer is no and the reason is given. Texas records work since 2004.
Texas Community Property Questions
Answered from chapters 3, 4 and 5 and the Estates Code.
If we are both on the deed, can one of us sell the house alone?
No, and the answer does not change if only one of you is on it. Tex. Fam. Code section 5.001 provides that whether the homestead is the separate property of either spouse or community property, neither spouse may sell, convey or encumber it without the joinder of the other, except as chapter 5 or other rules of law provide. Character is simply not part of the test. The narrow exceptions are a judicial declaration of incapacity under sections 5.002 and 5.003, and the sworn unusual-circumstances petition under sections 5.101 and 5.102. This is general legal information rather than advice on a specific conveyance.
Does putting my spouse’s name on my separate property make it community?
Not by itself. Section 4.203(b) states that the mere transfer of a spouse’s separate property to the name of the other spouse, or to the names of both spouses, is not sufficient to convert it to community property. A conversion under subchapter C requires a writing signed by both spouses that identifies the property and specifies that it is being converted to community property, and section 4.205 makes it unenforceable if the spouse it is asserted against did not execute it voluntarily or was not given a fair and reasonable disclosure of the legal effect. Whether a particular retitling did anything at all is a question for a Texas attorney.
What is sole-management community property, and why does it matter after a death?
Section 3.102(a) puts four categories under one spouse’s sole management during the marriage: what that spouse earns, what that spouse’s separate property yields, what that spouse recovers for a personal injury, and the increase, mutations and revenue of anything already in that estate. It matters after a death because Estates Code section 453.009 keeps the line intact: the personal representative administers the decedent’s separate property, the community that was under the decedent’s management, and the jointly managed community, while the surviving spouse retains possession and control of the community that was legally under the survivor’s own sole management during the marriage. Section 453.009(c) lets the survivor waive that role in a written instrument filed with the clerk.
Does a joint account mean my spouse inherits it automatically in Texas?
No. Estates Code section 101.002 provides that where joint owners hold an interest and one dies before severance, the decedent’s interest does not survive to the others but passes by will or intestacy. Section 111.001(b) adds that a survivorship agreement may not be inferred from the mere fact of joint ownership, and section 112.052(d) is more specific still: a community property survivorship agreement may not be inferred from the fact that an account is a joint account or is designated JT TEN, Joint Tenancy, or joint. Survivorship in Texas comes from a signed agreement under section 112.051, not from an account label.
My spouse died without a will. Do I keep all of the community property?
Only if the family is not blended. Estates Code section 201.003(b) passes the whole community estate to the surviving spouse where the deceased left no descendants, or where every surviving child and descendant of the deceased is also a child or descendant of the survivor. Section 201.003(c) says that if the deceased is survived by a child or other descendant who is not also the survivor’s, the deceased’s undivided one-half interest passes to the deceased’s children or descendants instead. The section also confirms that in every case the community estate passes charged with the debts against it. Establishing who the descendants are is often the first factual step, and it is a records question.
Can we agree to make community property separate, and does that stop a creditor?
Spouses can agree, at any time, to partition or exchange all or part of their community property under section 4.102, and what is transferred becomes that spouse’s separate property; the agreement may also make future income from the transferred property separate. It does not defeat everyone. Section 4.106(a) makes such a provision void with respect to the rights of a pre-existing creditor whose rights it was intended to defraud, and section 4.106(b) makes the agreement constructive notice to a good-faith purchaser or a creditor without actual notice only if it is acknowledged and recorded in the county where the real property is located. Section 4.206(a) applies the same principle to conversions. What any of that means for a specific debt is a question for counsel.
How does a surviving spouse get their half separated from the estate?
Estates Code section 360.253 supplies the procedure. After letters testamentary or of administration have been granted and the inventory, appraisement and list of claims returned — or the affidavit in lieu filed — the surviving spouse may apply in writing to the court for a partition of the community property, and the court partitions it into two equal moieties, one to the survivor and one to the executor or administrator. The survivor delivers a bond equal to the value of their interest, conditioned for payment of half of all debts existing against the community property; a lien secures it and a community creditor may sue on the bond in the creditor’s own name. Chapter 353 separately requires the homestead and other exempt property to be set aside and a family allowance to be fixed for one year.
What will you actually look at, and what will you refuse?
With a purpose the law permits, established before anything opens: county clerk real property records for deeds, deeds of trust, releases, and any recorded partition or conversion agreement; probate filings including inventories and heirship applications; Secretary of State entity and assumed name records; titled vehicles and vessels; and address history. Financial accounts are not reached into, nothing is obtained by pretending to be someone else, and no one here holds a Texas private investigator licence or practises law. This is not a consumer reporting agency and the work product must not be used to decide employment, housing, credit or insurance. If locating a person would expose that person to danger — someone who has left family violence, a party under a Texas protective order, or a participant in the Attorney General’s Address Confidentiality Program — the request is declined and the reason explained. On a legitimate matter, a first read usually returns within 24 hours.
Find Out What the Record Already Says
Whether an agreement was recorded, whose name an instrument is held in, whether a homestead deed carries one signature or two, and who the descendants are — these are answered from filings, not from memory. Tell us what you are entitled to look for and what the file is missing, and we will read the Texas record back to you with county, instrument, date and confidence, usually within 24 hours. Contact us to get started.
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