Texas Bankruptcy Exemptions
Before any Texas exemption applies to anybody, a federal question has to be answered first: has this debtor been domiciled in Texas for the 730 days immediately preceding the petition? 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(3)(A) makes that the threshold, with a 180-day look-back behind it when the answer is no, and a savings clause in 522(b)(3)(C) for the debtor whom the rule would otherwise leave with no exemptions at all. Clear that hurdle and Texas is generous in an unusual way. Tex. Prop. Code 41.001 exempts a homestead from seizure without stating any dollar figure anywhere, and 41.002 defines the homestead by acres and use rather than value – up to 10 acres if urban, up to 200 for a family or 100 for a single adult if rural. Which of those a property gets is decided by 41.002(c), a services test with a counting rule inside it rather than a line on a map. Outside the home, chapter 42 caps personal property at $100,000 for a family or $50,000 for a single adult and then itemises what fits, down to two firearms and 120 fowl. This page works through those provisions and shows where a dated public record settles a question a schedule leaves open. We are a public-records research firm working under a permissible purpose; the legal analysis stays with counsel, the trustee and the court. General information, not legal advice.
The Short Version
The first Texas question is not a Texas question. 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(3)(A) gives a debtor the exemption law of wherever they were domiciled for the 730 days before filing, with a 180-day look-back if that was not one state and a savings clause in 522(b)(3)(C) if the result would be no exemptions at all. Texas is a non-opt-out state – not because a statute says so, but because no section of Property Code chapters 41 or 42 bars 11 U.S.C. 522(d), which is a conclusion reached by enumeration rather than citation. The homestead in Tex. Prop. Code 41.001 carries no dollar cap at all; 41.002 sizes it in acres, and 41.002(c) decides urban or rural with a services test. Personal property is capped at $100,000 for a family or $50,000 for a single adult under 42.001(a), with four categories sitting outside the cap entirely, and 42.0021 exempts qualified savings plans whether vested or not. General information, not legal advice.
Watch: When the Homestead Is Off-Limits
Why the margins matter in Texas.
Watch Overview
Two Years of Domicile Decide Whose Exemptions You Get
11 U.S.C. 522(b)(3)(A), the 180-day fallback, and the savings clause in (3)(C).
Texas exemptions are attractive enough that the first thing to establish about a Texas filer is whether Texas law applies to them at all. The controlling sentence is federal. 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(3)(A) makes exempt “any property that is exempt under Federal law, other than subsection (d) of this section, or State or local law that is applicable on the date of the filing of the petition to the place in which the debtor’s domicile has been located for the 730 days immediately preceding the date of the filing of the petition.” Two years, measured backwards from the petition, and measured by domicile rather than by where the debtor happens to be sleeping.
The same subparagraph then handles the debtor who fails that test: “or if the debtor’s domicile has not been located in a single State for such 730-day period, the place in which the debtor’s domicile was located for 180 days immediately preceding the 730-day period or for a longer portion of such 180-day period than in any other place.” So the fallback is not the state the debtor has just left. It is a 180-day window sitting behind the 730-day window – roughly two and a half years before the filing – and the applicable law can therefore be that of a state the debtor departed years ago. Read as one instruction: check the two years first; if it is not one state, go back another six months and take whichever state held the domicile longest inside that earlier window.
The provision that stops this producing an absurdity is 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(3)(C), and it is the part almost every competing page drops: “If the effect of the domiciliary requirement under subparagraph (A) is to render the debtor ineligible for any exemption, the debtor may elect to exempt property that is specified under subsection (d),” which can be read in context in the full text of 11 U.S.C. 522. Some state schedules are written to apply only to their own residents, so a debtor who has left can be pointed at a list that excludes them. The savings clause hands that debtor the federal schedule. It is narrow – it is engaged by ineligibility, not by preference – and whether the facts engage it is a question for counsel and the court. What a records file can settle is the input: where the debtor actually was, and when. That evidentiary question is the same one behind locating a judgment debtor, and it is answered from dated public records rather than assertion.
Texas Never Opted Out – and 41.008 Is Not the Exception
Where to look, what is there, and the one section that looks like an opt-out.
Every summary of Texas exemptions says Texas has not opted out of the federal schedule, and every one of them is right. The mechanism is 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(2): the subsection (d) schedule is available unless the applicable state law specifically declines to authorise it, the way Florida did in Fla. Stat. 222.20 and California did in Code of Civil Procedure 703.130. Proving that a legislature did not enact something is a particular kind of problem, and our Hawaii bankruptcy exemptions page owns that method; what follows is the Texas application of it and the Texas near-miss.
Property Code chapter 41, Interests in Land, contains sections 41.001, 41.002, 41.003, 41.004, 41.005, 41.006, 41.007 and 41.008, together with 41.0021, 41.0022 and 41.0051, and subchapter B’s 41.021, 41.022, 41.023 and 41.024. Chapter 42, Personal Property, contains 42.001, 42.002, 42.003, 42.004 and 42.005, together with 42.0021. Read the captions and then the text, and no provision of either chapter bars, restricts or conditions 11 U.S.C. 522(d).
Be precise about what that enumeration proves. It establishes that the two chapters carrying the homestead and the personal-property exemptions contain no opt-out – which is where an opt-out would sit, and where every commentator looks for one. It does not by itself establish a negative across the whole of Texas law, because Texas exemption provisions are not confined to those chapters: Insurance Code 1108.051 exempts the cash value and proceeds of life, health and accident policies and annuity contracts, and says so in bankruptcy terms, making them exempt from “a demand in a bankruptcy proceeding of the insured or beneficiary”; Government Code 811.005 exempts retirement annuity payments, member contributions and rights accruing under the state retirement systems from garnishment, attachment, levy, sale “and any other process.” Neither is an opt-out either – both add protection rather than removing the federal election – but a reader should know they exist, because a page that says “the whole of Texas exemption law lives in two chapters” is overstating its own search. What the enumeration supports is the operative conclusion: nothing in Texas law switches the federal list off, so under 522(b)(2) it stays on, and a qualifying Texas debtor chooses between the two schedules. Those two provisions are also where pre-filing planning tends to point in this state, because value moved into a policy or an annuity is protected by a different code rather than by chapter 41 or 42; whether a particular move is ordinary planning or a fraudulent conveyance or asset transfer is for the trustee and the court, and what a records file supplies is the dating – the recorded sale, the release, the deed that appeared in the same month.
The near miss is worth naming so nobody cites it wrongly. Section 41.008, Conflict with Federal Law, provides that “to the extent of any conflict between this subchapter and any federal law that imposes an upper limit on the amount, including the monetary amount or acreage amount, of homestead property a person may exempt from seizure, this subchapter prevails to the extent allowed under federal law,” added by Acts 1999, 76th Leg., ch. 1510, Sec. 4. That is a supremacy-savings clause pointed outward – Texas asserting its homestead against a federal ceiling. An opt-out points inward and gives a federal option up. They are opposite postures and 41.008 is not an opt-out, nor is there a permissive section to cite instead, because none exists. It is also the only Texas provision in either chapter that mentions federal law at all, which is why it is the one that gets miscited.
Urban or Rural Is a Services Test, Not a Line on a Map
Tex. Prop. Code 41.002(c), and the acreage that follows from it.
Texas sizes the homestead in acres, and which acreage a property gets differs by a factor of ten or twenty. Section 41.002(a) gives an urban home – or a property used as both an urban home and a place to exercise a calling or business – “not more than 10 acres of land which may be in one or more contiguous lots, together with any improvements thereon.” Section 41.002(b) gives a rural home “not more than 200 acres” for a family, in one or more parcels with the improvements, or “not more than 100 acres” for a single adult not otherwise entitled to a homestead. Ten acres against two hundred is the whole ballgame, and the provision that decides it is subsection (c).
Subsection (c) does not ask whether the property feels urban. It sets a two-limb test applied “at the time the designation is made.” The first limb is locational, and it is satisfied three different ways: the property lies inside municipal limits, or inside a municipality’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, or inside a platted subdivision. Any one of the three will do. The second limb is a count of services, and it stacks. The property must be served by police protection. It must also be served by fire protection, “paid or volunteer” – the statute takes either. Then, on top of both, it must have “at least three of the following services provided by a municipality or under contract to a municipality,” and the statute names five and letters them: “(A) electric; (B) natural gas; (C) sewer; (D) storm sewer; and (E) water.”
Read that carefully, because the arithmetic is specific. Police protection is mandatory. Fire protection is mandatory and either paid or volunteer will do. Only then does the count of three begin, and it runs across exactly five named utilities – note that sewer and storm sewer are listed separately, so a property with both has already banked two of its three. A property inside a city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction with police and volunteer fire cover, electricity and water but no gas, sewer or storm sewer has two of five and is not urban under this test, whatever its address looks like. Subsection (d) then extends the definition backwards: it “applies to all homesteads in this state whenever created.” Whether a particular parcel satisfies the test is a matter of fact about that parcel – which service districts reach it, which utilities are provided by or under contract to a municipality, and where the extraterritorial jurisdiction line runs – and those are questions county and municipal records answer.
No Dollar Cap at All, but Seven Encumbrances Can Still Be Fixed on It
Tex. Prop. Code 41.001(a), (b)(1)-(7) and (c).
Section 41.001(a) is a single sentence protecting two things, and the second is easy to miss on a page everybody reads for the house: a homestead, and “one or more lots used for a place of burial of the dead.” Both are put beyond seizure for creditors’ claims, with one carve-out – “encumbrances properly fixed on homestead property.” That is the whole of subsection (a), as it stands in the Legislature’s published text of Property Code chapter 41. Notice what is not in it. There is no figure, no ceiling, no equity limit and no adjustment mechanism – and there is none in 41.002 either. The value-unlimited character of the Texas homestead is established by absence rather than by an affirmative grant, which is a more accurate way to describe it than saying the exemption is unlimited, and it is the same shape of reasoning as the opt-out question above. The exemption also reaches burial lots, which is easy to miss in a section everyone reads for the house.
The exception in that sentence is developed in 41.001(b), and it is a closed list of seven. Encumbrances may properly be fixed on homestead property for: (1) purchase money; (2) taxes on the property; (3) work and material used in constructing improvements on the property, if contracted for in writing as provided by Sections 53.254(a), (b) and (c); (4) an owelty of partition imposed against the entirety of the property by court order or by written agreement of the parties, including a debt of one spouse in favour of the other resulting from a division or award of a family homestead in a divorce proceeding; (5) the refinance of a lien against a homestead, including a federal tax lien resulting from the tax debt of both spouses if the homestead is a family homestead, or from the tax debt of the owner; (6) an extension of credit meeting the requirements of Article XVI, Section 50(a)(6) of the Texas Constitution; and (7) a reverse mortgage meeting the requirements of Article XVI, Sections 50(k) through (p). Count them in the section rather than taking anyone’s word: the subsection stops at (7).
Subsection (c) covers the moment the homestead becomes money: “The homestead claimant’s proceeds of a sale of a homestead are not subject to seizure for a creditor’s claim for six months after the date of sale.” Six months, running from the sale date, and the section says nothing about reinvestment as a condition of the shelter. Both the encumbrance list and the proceeds clock are questions of recorded fact – what is filed against the parcel, and when the deed was recorded. What a judgment creditor may reach in Texas outside a bankruptcy case, under the turnover and execution statutes, is a different subject covered in our Texas judgment collection guide, and how long the underlying claim stays enforceable is on our page about the Texas debt collection statute of limitations.
Urban Designation vs. Rural Designation
The same statute, two outcomes, decided by Tex. Prop. Code 41.002(c).
| Question | Urban homestead | Rural homestead |
|---|---|---|
| Acreage, family | Not more than 10 acres 41.002(a) | Not more than 200 acres – 41.002(b)(1) |
| Acreage, single adult not otherwise entitled | Not more than 10 acres, same subsection | Not more than 100 acres – 41.002(b)(2) |
| Parcels | One or more contiguous lots | One or more parcels; contiguity not required by the text |
| Location limb | Inside a municipality, its extraterritorial jurisdiction, or a platted subdivision | Fails the location limb, or fails the services count |
| Services limb | Police, plus paid or volunteer fire, plus three of five: electric, natural gas, sewer, storm sewer, water | Not applicable – rural is what a property is when (c) is not satisfied |
| Business use | Expressly contemplated: an urban home or both a home and a place to exercise a calling or business | The subsection is silent on calling or business use |
| When it is assessed | At the time the designation is made – 41.002(c); and 41.002(d) applies the definition to all homesteads in this state whenever created | |
This table paraphrases 41.002 and is not advice about how a particular parcel should be designated. The inputs are all matters of record: appraisal district parcel data, municipal and extraterritorial jurisdiction boundaries, plat filings, and which utility services are provided by or under contract to a municipality at the relevant address. What a judgment creditor may reach outside bankruptcy, which is a different statutory question with a different answer, is set out on our page about Texas asset exemptions from creditors.
$100,000 or $50,000 – and Four Things That Sit Outside the Cap
Tex. Prop. Code 42.001(a), (b), (d) and (e).
Chapter 42 works differently from chapter 41. Instead of a per-item list of dollar values, it sets one aggregate ceiling and then says what may be counted under it. Section 42.001(a) exempts personal property described in 42.002 from garnishment, attachment, execution or other seizure if either “the property is provided for a family and has an aggregate fair market value of not more than $100,000, exclusive of the amount of any liens, security interests, or other charges encumbering the property,” or “the property is owned by a single adult, who is not a member of a family, and has an aggregate fair market value of not more than $50,000,” on the same exclusive-of-liens basis; the section sits in the Legislature’s Property Code chapter 42 text. Both figures are measured net of encumbrances, which is why a financed pickup consumes far less of the ceiling than its sticker value. Measuring net of encumbrances is also why the asset search a judgment creditor needs in Texas is really a lien search: the titles say what exists, the filings say how much of it is already spoken for, and only the difference is measured against the ceiling.
Section 42.001(b) then puts four categories outside the aggregate limitation entirely: (1) current wages for personal services, except for the enforcement of court-ordered child support payments; (2) professionally prescribed health aids of a debtor or a dependent; (3) alimony, support or separate maintenance received or to be received for the support of the debtor or a dependent; and (4) a religious bible or other book containing sacred writings, where it is seized by a creditor other than a landlord exercising a contractual or statutory right to seize personal property after a tenant breaches or abandons a lease. Subsection (e) covers the landlord case the fourth category excludes, keeping such a book out of the aggregate as well. Subsection (c) preserves a secured creditor’s position: except as provided by (b)(4), the section does not prevent seizure by a secured creditor with a contractual landlord’s lien or other security interest in the property.
Subsection (d) is easy to misread and worth stating exactly: unpaid commissions for personal services “not to exceed 25 percent of the aggregate limitations prescribed by Subsection (a) are exempt from seizure and are included in the aggregate.” Exempt, but counted – so up to $25,000 of commissions for a family, or $12,500 for a single adult, is protected and consumes that much of the ceiling. Neither figure indexes. The caps were last set by Acts 2015, 84th Leg., R.S., Ch. 793 (H.B. 2706), Sec. 1, effective September 1, 2015, having previously been raised by Acts 2007, 80th Leg., R.S., Ch. 444 (H.B. 167). They move when the Legislature moves them, which is a real structural contrast with the federal schedule under 11 U.S.C. 522(d), whose amounts re-index every three years under 11 U.S.C. 104.
What the List Itemises, Down to the Livestock
Tex. Prop. Code 42.002(a)(1)-(11), and the savings plans in 42.0021.
Section 42.002(a) enumerates eleven paragraphs of property that may be claimed under the 42.001(a) cap: (1) home furnishings, including family heirlooms; (2) provisions for consumption; (3) farming or ranching vehicles and implements; (4) tools, equipment, books and apparatus, including boats and motor vehicles used in a trade or profession; (5) wearing apparel; (6) jewellery, not to exceed 25 percent of the 42.001(a) aggregate; (7) two firearms; (8) athletic and sporting equipment, including bicycles; (9) a two-wheeled, three-wheeled or four-wheeled motor vehicle for each member of a family or single adult who holds a driver’s licence, “or who does not hold a driver’s license but who relies on another person to operate the vehicle for the benefit of the nonlicensed person”; (10) animals and forage on hand for their consumption; and (11) household pets.
Paragraph (10) is the one everybody quotes and most pages round off. The exact counts are: (A) two horses, mules or donkeys, and a saddle, blanket and bridle for each; (B) 12 head of cattle; (C) 60 head of other types of livestock; and (D) 120 fowl. Two paragraphs deserve a second look as well. The jewellery limit in (6) is proportional rather than fixed, so it is $25,000 for a family and $12,500 for a single adult. And the vehicle rule in (9) is per person rather than per household, and it expressly reaches a non-driver who depends on someone else to drive – which is a distinct rule, not a drafting flourish. Subsection 42.002(b) then makes clear that a security interest or lien fixed on this property under the Business and Commerce Code or the Certificate of Title Act may not be avoided on the ground that the property is exempt.
Retirement and savings sit in their own section outside the cap. Section 42.0021(b) exempts “a person’s interest in and right to receive payments from a qualified savings plan, whether vested or not,” and 42.0021(a) defines that term across twelve enumerated categories: employer-sponsored retirement plans, self-employed plans, simplified employee pensions, individual retirement accounts and annuities including inherited ones, Roth IRAs including inherited Roths, health savings accounts, Coverdell education savings accounts, Texas prepaid tuition contracts and savings trust accounts under Education Code chapter 54, Section 529 qualified tuition programs of any state, Section 529A ABLE programs of any state, and annuities purchased with distributions from any of these. Subsection (c) carries an interest acquired by reason of another person’s death through at the same extent it was exempt on the date of that death. Two limits: (d) excludes excess contributions under Internal Revenue Code Section 4973 and the earnings accrued on them, and (e) exempts distributed amounts for only 60 days unless they qualify as a rollover contribution, in which case the exemption continues. Both of those limits are dated questions rather than arguments, which is where a search for value that never reached a schedule earns its place: a contribution carries a date and an amount, a distribution carries a date and a destination, and neither is characterised by us.
Six Texas Questions a Dated Record Answers
Each one maps to a provision above.
Where the Domicile Actually Was
Recorded addresses across the 730-day window and the 180 days behind it.
Inside the ETJ or Outside It
The location limb of 41.002(c), which the appraisal district and city maps settle.
Acreage on the Plat
Whether a parcel is inside 10 acres or spread across 200, from the filed plat and deed.
Liens Fixed Under 41.001(b)
Purchase money, mechanic’s liens contracted in writing, owelty, refinance and reverse mortgage instruments.
The Six-Month Proceeds Window
A recorded sale date, which is what starts the 41.001(c) clock running.
Titles Against the 42.001 Ceiling
Vehicle and vessel titles, with the encumbrances the cap is measured exclusive of.
How a Texas Record File Is Assembled
Purpose first, then county records, then corroboration, then delivery.
Establish the Permissible Purpose
Who is asking, what the matter is, and the lawful basis for the research. Without one we do not begin.
Work the County Sources
County clerk official public records, appraisal district parcel and plat data, recorded deeds, liens and releases, all with dates.
Resolve Owners and Entities
Secretary of State filings, registered agents and title records, so a company on a deed is identified rather than guessed at.
Hand Over an Attributed File
Each item tied to the office it came from, uncertainty labelled, and no characterisation of anything as exempt or hidden.
Who Asks for a Texas Exemption File
The people who need the inputs, not the conclusions.
Creditor’s Counsel in Texas
Deed, plat and lien history in one file
Panel Trustees
Address chronology for a 730-day question
Rural Land Lenders
Acreage and designation facts under 41.002
Holders of a Texas Judgment
What is recorded before the meeting of creditors
Valuation Professionals
Encumbrances the 42.001 cap is measured net of
Suppliers Owed by a Filer
Entity holdings a personal-name search misses
The common need is inputs rather than opinions. A 730-day domicile question is answered by dated addresses; a 41.002(c) designation question by parcel, plat and service-district records; a 42.001 ceiling question by titles and the liens against them. We compile those from Texas county clerk and appraisal district files, Secretary of State filings, recorded instruments and other lawful sources, attribute each item to its office, and say plainly where the record is silent. Locating a debtor who has moved is part of the same job and is described on our skip tracing services page.
The Limits We Work Inside on a Texas Matter
A permissible purpose is confirmed before any search runs, and where there is not one we say no. The record is built from Texas county clerk official public records, appraisal district data, Secretary of State filings, recorded instruments and other lawful sources, with every line attributed to where it came from. We never pretext, never impersonate a clerk, an agent or a party, and never use a false identity to obtain a document. No one on this desk holds a Texas private investigator license and nothing offered here requires one, so a Texas matter carries no stakeout, no covert watching and no field assignment of that character. Private financial accounts stay closed to us and we do not report balances. Where a person appears to have left because of abuse, or is protected by a Texas protective order, we decline the request rather than pass it along. We do not provide consumer reports and are not a consumer reporting agency, so using a Texas file from us to decide about somebody’s employment, credit, insurance cover or housing is outside what it is for and outside what we permit. Applying Tex. Prop. Code 41.002, 42.001 or 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(3) to a set of facts is likewise not ours to do – the debtor’s lawyer, the creditor’s lawyer, the panel trustee and the bankruptcy judge do that.
Texas Exemption Questions
How long must someone live in Texas before Texas exemptions apply?
730 days. Under 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(3)(A) the applicable exemption law is that of the place where the debtor’s domicile has been located for the 730 days immediately preceding the filing. If the domicile was not in a single State for that whole period, the statute sends you back further: to the place where the domicile was located for the 180 days immediately preceding the 730-day period, or for a longer portion of that 180-day period than any other place. So a recent arrival in Texas is generally measured by the law of somewhere else, and the calculation runs from the petition date backwards, not from a move-in date forwards.
What happens if the old state’s exemptions do not reach a debtor who has left it?
That is what 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(3)(C) is for, and most summaries of the 730-day rule omit it. The concluding sentence of paragraph (3) provides that if the effect of the domiciliary requirement under subparagraph (A) is to render the debtor ineligible for any exemption, the debtor may elect to exempt property specified under subsection (d) – the federal schedule. It is a savings clause against a debtor being stranded between two states, not a general election, and whether it is engaged on particular facts is for counsel and the court.
Did Texas opt out of the federal bankruptcy exemptions?
No. An opt-out has to be an affirmative enactment: 11 U.S.C. 522(b)(2) makes the federal schedule available unless the applicable State law specifically does not so authorize. Property Code chapter 41 runs 41.001 through 41.008 plus 41.0021, 41.0022, 41.0051 and 41.021 through 41.024; chapter 42 runs 42.001 through 42.005 plus 42.0021. Reading the section list of both chapters – the two chapters that carry the homestead and personal-property exemptions, and where an opt-out would sit – no provision bars or restricts 11 U.S.C. 522(d). Texas has exemption provisions outside those chapters, such as Insurance Code 1108.051 and Government Code 811.005, but they add protection rather than withdrawing the federal election. Our Hawaii page sets out how this kind of check is run.
Is Property Code 41.008 the Texas opt-out?
No, and it is worth being precise because it is the only Texas provision that mentions federal law at all. Section 41.008 is captioned Conflict with Federal Law and reads: to the extent of any conflict between this subchapter and any federal law that imposes an upper limit on the amount, including the monetary amount or acreage amount, of homestead property a person may exempt from seizure, this subchapter prevails to the extent allowed under federal law. That is a savings clause asserting the Texas homestead against a federal cap – the opposite posture from an opt-out, which surrenders a federal option. It was added by Acts 1999, 76th Leg., ch. 1510, Sec. 4.
What makes a Texas homestead urban rather than rural?
Services, not a map. Under Property Code 41.002(c) a homestead counts as urban only if, at the time the designation is made, two things are true of the property. It has to sit inside municipal limits, or inside a municipality’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, or inside a platted subdivision. And it has to be served by police protection, by fire protection whether paid or volunteer, and by three or more of five named utilities furnished by a municipality or under contract to one: electric, natural gas, sewer, storm sewer, water. So the test has a location limb and a counting limb, and police and fire are both required before the count of three even begins. The consequence is large: 10 acres if urban, against 200 acres for a family or 100 for a single adult if rural.
Does the Texas homestead have a dollar limit?
No figure appears anywhere in Property Code 41.001 or 41.002. The absence is the rule. Subsection 41.001(a) puts a homestead, and burial lots with it, beyond seizure for creditors’ claims save for encumbrances properly fixed on the homestead, and 41.002 then sizes the homestead purely by acreage and use. What does limit a recent arrival is federal, not Texan: 11 U.S.C. 522(p) caps homestead interest acquired within 1,215 days of filing, and our Florida page develops that cap and its rollover carve-out.
What can still be fixed against a Texas homestead?
Property Code 41.001(b) permits encumbrances for seven things, and it is a closed list: purchase money; taxes on the property; work and material used in constructing improvements if contracted for in writing as provided by Section 53.254(a), (b) and (c); an owelty of partition imposed by court order or written agreement, including a debt of one spouse in favour of the other from a divorce award of a family homestead; the refinance of a lien against a homestead, including a federal tax lien for the tax debt of both spouses or of the owner; a home-equity extension of credit meeting Article XVI, Section 50(a)(6) of the Texas Constitution; and a reverse mortgage meeting Section 50(k) through (p). Subsection (c) adds that sale proceeds are not subject to seizure for a creditor’s claim for six months after the sale.
Are there Texas requests you decline, and what do you actually produce?
Yes to the first. If a person appears to have left because of abuse, is protected by a Texas protective order, or has deliberately broken contact for safety reasons, we do not take the work, and a creditor matter does not change that. What we produce otherwise is a dated, sourced record from Texas county clerk and appraisal district files, recorded instruments, title and corporate filings and other lawful sources, with each item attributed and the gaps marked; a first read on a workable request typically comes back within 24 hours. We confirm a permissible purpose before searching and we never pretext or use a false identity. Nothing in the file is a consumer report and this desk is not a consumer reporting agency, so it cannot lawfully carry a decision about someone’s job, credit, insurance cover or housing.
Settle the Texas Inputs Before the Argument Starts
Where the domicile was for 730 days, whether the parcel meets the services test in Tex. Prop. Code 41.002(c), what is fixed against it under 41.001(b), when a sale started the six-month clock in 41.001(c), and what the titles show against the 42.001 ceiling – every one of those is a question of record rather than a question of opinion. Tell us the matter and the permissible purpose behind it and we will document it from Texas county sources with each item attributed; a first read typically comes back within 24 hours. The statutory analysis stays with your counsel, the trustee and the court. Contact us to get started.
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