Dependent Administration in Fort Worth

Families rarely choose a dependent administration. They end up in one because the will didn’t name an independent executor, the heirs couldn’t agree on one person to serve, or someone objected to the person who applied. The difference is court approval. In a dependent administration, the administrator needs a Tarrant County probate judge’s approval for most important steps. That makes it slower, but it also stops an administrator from selling the house or paying friends without anyone else knowing.

Independent and dependent administration compared

Issue	Independent administration	Dependent administration
Selling real estate	The executor can generally sell without going back to court.	The administrator applies for an order of sale, files a sworn report after the sale, and the court acts on that report.
Paying creditors	The executor decides which bills to pay and when.	Claims are sorted into classes set by statute, and the order of the classes controls who gets paid if there isn’t enough money.
What heirs can see	You often learn what happened afterward.	Major steps are filed as applications and orders that you can read, object to, and be heard on.
Time and cost	Faster and cheaper when everyone trusts the executor.	Slower and more expensive, because each step needs its own filing and often a hearing.
Best suited for	A family that gets along and an undisputed will.	An estate where nobody trusts anybody, or where the main asset is real estate someone wants to sell cheaply.

Tex. Est. Code §§ 355.102, 356.251, 356.252, 356.551, 356.552.

How families end up here

• There is no will, so nobody was named to serve without court supervision, and the heirs can’t agree to request independent administration.
• There is a will, but the person it names is the one the family believes took money, and someone objects to the appointment.
• An independent administration went badly, and an interested person asks the court for an accounting, supervision, or a new representative.

If you are the one asking for supervision, understand the trade-off. You get to see each transaction before it closes, and you pay for that with time and legal fees. It is usually worth it when the estate holds real estate, a business interest, or anything else that could be moved without notice.

Objecting to a sale

In a dependent administration, the judge has to approve a sale of estate property. If the administrator wants to sell your mother’s house to a cousin for a price nobody can justify, you can object in Probate Court No. 1 or No. 2 before the sale is approved. If you have an appraisal or a better offer, that is when to present it.

Claim classes decide who gets paid

Claims against an estate are sorted into eight classes under Estates Code Section 355.102, and that order controls what happens when there isn’t enough money for everyone. Heirs and beneficiaries are paid after the claims, so a dispute about how a claim is classified is really a dispute about your share.

Cases that sit idle can be dismissed

Supervision only helps if the case keeps moving. Under the Tarrant County probate courts’ local rules, each court can set for dismissal any pending matter that has been on file for at least a year. A supervised estate that nobody pushes forward can be dismissed while the house sits empty and the taxes add up.

Tarrant County probate courts’ local rules, Rule 1.11.

Work we don’t take

We handle contested estates and dependent administrations. We don’t handle uncontested administrations, muniments of title or small estate affidavits. A firm that does high-volume probate work will handle those better, and you shouldn’t pay litigation rates for them.