Executor Responsibilities
When someone makes a will, they typically name an executor — the person the law puts in charge of carrying out their wishes and handling the legal requirements of settling the estate. If you're now serving in that role, or thinking about naming someone to it, here's what the job actually involves under Texas law.
The estate is everything the deceased person owned, wherever it's located, plus anything they had a legal claim to at the time of death — a pending lawsuit, for example, or rent that hadn't yet come due. It also includes their debts, both the ones already owed and ones that hadn't yet come due, like an unpaid mortgage or bank loan. Sorting out all of it, in the right order, is the executor's job.
Beginning the Process
After the person making the will dies, the executor's first job is to locate the will and get it filed. Texas requires the original will to be filed with the probate court in the county where the decedent lived at the time of death, and most executors bring in a probate attorney at this stage to make sure the filing is done correctly.
Whether there's a valid will changes who's in charge of this process at all. If the will is admitted to probate, the executor it names is the one who qualifies to act. If there's no valid will, Texas's default distribution rules — Estates Code Chapter 201 — decide who inherits instead, treating community property and separate property differently and changing depending on whether the decedent left children. In that situation, the court appoints someone else, usually called an administrator, to handle the estate rather than honoring an executor the decedent never validly named. Our estate planning checklist walks through how a will avoids putting your family through that default process.
Notifying Heirs, Beneficiaries, and Creditors
Once the will is filed, the executor has to tell people. Beneficiaries named in the will are entitled to notice of the death and a copy of the will itself. Anyone who would have inherited under Texas's intestacy rules if there were no will — but who isn't named as a beneficiary — is generally entitled to notice that an estate has been opened and where the probate case is pending, even though they may not receive anything from it.
The executor also has to notify known creditors: banks, credit card companies, medical providers, anyone the decedent owed money to. Some notices go beyond private creditors — the Social Security Administration and any pension funds the decedent was drawing from need to be told as well, so payments stop instead of becoming an overpayment the estate has to sort out later.
Opening an Estate Bank Account
The probate court issues the executor paperwork — commonly called letters testamentary — that serves as proof of authority to act on the estate's behalf. One of the first things most executors do with it is open a dedicated bank account for the estate, separate from their own accounts and separate from any account the decedent held individually. Incoming cash goes there, and it's the account used to pay the estate's ongoing bills — utilities, a mortgage payment, homeowner's insurance — while the estate is pending.
Taking Inventory of the Estate
The executor has to identify everything the decedent owned as of the date of death, along with any pending claims the estate might have and any debts or liabilities it might owe. For anything valuable — real estate, vehicles, brokerage or retirement accounts, an interest in a business — that usually means getting a date-of-death valuation, which matters later for tax purposes and for making sure the eventual distribution is fair. This inventory gets compiled and filed with the court.
Not everything the decedent owned necessarily belongs in that inventory, though. Texas allows real property to pass outside probate entirely through a Transfer on Death Deed under Estates Code Chapter 114 — if the decedent recorded one, the property goes directly to the person named in the deed, the same way a payable-on-death bank account or a beneficiary-designated retirement account does, without becoming part of the estate the executor administers.
Protecting Estate Property
Until the estate is settled and ready to distribute, the executor has to keep its property safe — insured, maintained, and secure — including any real estate the decedent owned. That duty runs alongside a Texas-specific limit on what creditors can actually reach: under Property Code Sections 41.001 and 41.002, a homestead is exempt from seizure for most creditor claims, so an executor generally can't be forced to sell the family home just to pay an unsecured debt the way other estate property might have to be sold. The exemption has real boundaries — it doesn't reach a mortgage or a tax lien properly secured against the property — but it's a protection many other states don't extend as far.
Paying Debts, Claims, and Taxes
Texas law sets out the procedure for creditors to make a claim against the estate, and the executor decides which claims to accept and which to dispute; the probate court resolves any dispute the executor doesn't settle on its own. Not every asset is fair game for an unsecured claim, either — Property Code Section 42.001 exempts a family's personal property up to $100,000 in aggregate fair market value (or $50,000 for a single adult) from seizure altogether, covering things like home furnishings, a vehicle, and tools of a trade, so those specific items generally pass to the family regardless of what the estate owes.
The executor also has to file the decedent's final income tax return and any federal or state estate tax return the estate owes. Tax obligations get paid before anyone else — creditors and beneficiaries both wait until the estate's tax bill is settled.
Distributing the Estate
Once claims and taxes are resolved and every other legal requirement is met, the executor distributes what's left according to the will's instructions. Each beneficiary signs a receipt for what they receive, and that receipt gets filed with the court. If beneficiaries disagree about how something should be distributed, the probate court decides.
Choosing — and Compensating — an Executor
Most people name a spouse, an adult child, or another close family member as executor. Without one of those available, a trusted friend is the next common choice, and if no individual fits, a bank or trust company can serve as a professional, corporate executor instead. Texas law disqualifies certain people from serving — your attorney can confirm whether that applies to anyone you're weighing — so it's worth asking before you name someone rather than after.
Whoever takes the job is allowed to get help: with court approval, an executor can hire an attorney, accountant, appraiser, or real estate agent, and those professionals are paid out of the estate rather than out of the executor's own pocket. Texas also entitles an executor to compensation for the work itself, set by statute as a percentage-based commission unless the will specifies something different or the person serving agrees to waive it.
The best time to sort any of this out is before it's needed. Tell the person you're naming that you've chosen them, make sure they're willing to take it on, and name a backup in case your first choice can't serve when the time comes — administering an estate is time-consuming and occasionally contentious, and it goes better when the executor isn't finding out about the job for the first time at the funeral.