Executor of estate duties in Texas

People accept the role of executor as a family honor and then discover it is closer to a part-time job with legal exposure. In broad strokes you will:

• Qualify. Take the oath and obtain letters testamentary — the certified document banks, title companies, and transfer agents actually want to see. Order several certified copies at once.
• Secure the estate. Change locks if needed, maintain insurance on real property and vehicles, safeguard valuables, redirect mail, and stop recurring payments. Do this in the first week.
• Open an estate account. Get an EIN for the estate and open a dedicated bank account. Never run estate money through your personal account.
• Give the notices. On the statutory schedule below.
• Inventory the assets. Or file the affidavit in lieu if you qualify.
• Pay debts and taxes. In the correct order of priority. Final personal income tax return, and estate returns if applicable.
• Distribute. Only after debts are handled. Get signed receipts from every beneficiary.
• Keep records of everything. Every receipt, every disbursement, every decision. You may be asked to account for it years later.

The 121-day notice is an underused tool. Section 308.054 lets you affirmatively notify an unsecured creditor and start a 121-day clock. If they do not present the claim in that window, it is barred. In an estate with uncertain old debts, using this notice deliberately can bring finality far sooner.

Independent administration reduces court supervision. It does not reduce your duties.

• Loyalty. Act in the interest of the estate and its beneficiaries, not your own. No self-dealing. Buying an estate asset from yourself — even at a fair price — is the classic breach.
• Care. Manage the estate with the prudence a reasonable person would use with their own affairs. Insure the house. Do not let a vacant property deteriorate.
• Impartiality. Treat beneficiaries even-handedly, including the ones you like least.
• Segregation. Keep estate funds strictly separate from your own. Commingling is indefensible and it is what auditors and opposing lawyers look for first.
• Disclosure and accounting. Beneficiaries are entitled to information about the estate. Stonewalling a beneficiary is the fastest way to end up back in court.

1. Distributing before creditors are handled. Two of the three most common causes are a will that was drafted without independent executor language, and a family that could have agreed but did not have anyone helping them get there. Both are solvable — the first before death, the second at the front end of the case.

2. Paying claims out of priority. In a tight estate, paying a general unsecured creditor ahead of a higher-priority claim can leave you covering the difference.

3. Self-dealing. Selling estate property to yourself, a relative, or your business without full disclosure and, where appropriate, court approval.

4. Failing to secure or insure property. A vacant house that burns without coverage is a loss to the estate and it lands on the person who was supposed to be managing it.

5. Missing tax filings. The final personal return and, where applicable, estate income and estate tax returns. Penalties are an estate expense; ignoring them can become personal.

6. No records. If you cannot show where the money went, the presumption will not favor you. Keep the receipts from day one.

Texas sets a priority scheme for claims against an estate — broadly funeral expenses and expenses of last illness, then administration expenses, then secured claims to the extent of their security, then certain taxes and other preferred categories, then general unsecured claims.

In a comfortably solvent estate this rarely creates a problem: everyone gets paid. In an estate where assets are tight, the order is the entire question, and getting it wrong is a personal liability event.

When the estate might be insolvent, slow down. This is one of the situations where a dependent administration is genuinely the safer choice, because paying under a court order protects the representative in a way that independent judgment does not.

Texas provides for a statutory commission on certain sums the representative actually receives in cash and pays out in cash, subject to statutory limits and to the court’s authority to adjust it where the standard commission would be unreasonably low or high. A will can provide different compensation, and where it does, the will generally controls.

Many family executors waive the commission. Two reasons: it is ordinary taxable income to you, while an inheritance generally is not, and taking a fee from an estate you are also inheriting from sometimes creates friction with siblings that is not worth the money. It is a judgment call worth making deliberately rather than by default.