Georgetown Probate Attorney for Sun City and Williamson County Families

Settling a parent's estate is hard anywhere. In Georgetown it often comes with extra layers: a house in Sun City, accounts at three banks, a trust drafted in another state, and children who live a plane ride away. A Georgetown probate attorney can sort those layers into a clear plan and handle the court filings in Williamson County. Michalk, Beatty & Alcozer, L.P. has handled Central Texas estates for over twenty years, and Attorney Jay R. Beatty personally handles our probate work. This page covers what Georgetown families ask us most: where to file, how second marriages change who inherits, and which Texas tools skip probate. For regional context, see our Central Texas probate practice.

Georgetown has grown fast, and its estates have changed with it. Sun City Texas, the large 55-and-older community here, draws retirees who arrive with wills, trusts, and beneficiary forms from somewhere else. Their adult children often handle the estate long-distance. We wrote this page with those families in mind.

How a Georgetown Probate Attorney Helps Williamson County Families

You don't have to live in Georgetown to settle an estate here. We take your calls, send plain-English updates, and handle the in-person filings ourselves. You show up only for the hearing, and we tell you the date weeks ahead so you can book a flight.

Letters testamentary are the court's proof that you can act for the estate, and they unlock every bank account and title transfer. We prepare the application, run the notices, build the inventory, and close the estate. Before any of that, we spend the first meeting reading deeds, beneficiary forms, and account titles. Those pages decide what the court has to touch and what it never sees.

Georgetown Filings Go Through the Williamson County Justice Center

Under Estates Code § 33.001, probate belongs in the county where the person lived at death. For a Georgetown resident, that means Williamson County. The County Clerk's probate team works from the Williamson County Justice Center at 405 Martin Luther King Street, 2nd Floor, Georgetown, TX 78626, not from the historic courthouse on the downtown square. Four county courts at law share the probate docket.

Williamson County takes probate filings electronically. Its probate instructions call for the original will to reach the clerk within three business days after the electronic filing, and the court holds hearings in person. Witnesses who live out of state can sometimes testify by written deposition (Estates Code § 51.203), which spares them a trip. Our Georgetown probate attorney handles the e-filing, delivers the original will, and checks the assigned court's current instructions before every hearing, because each court sets its own preferences.

Second Marriages, Stepchildren, and Who Inherits in Texas

Many Sun City couples marry later in life, and each spouse brings children. That mix creates the most painful probate fights we see, and the Estates Code decides the outcome when there's no will.

Start with community property, which is nearly everything a couple acquired during the marriage. If every child of the deceased spouse is also a child of the survivor, the survivor takes it all. If even one child belongs only to the deceased spouse, that spouse's half of the community estate passes to the children, and the survivor keeps only the survivor's own half (§ 201.003).

Separate property follows a different rule. That's anything owned before the marriage, plus gifts and inheritances. The surviving spouse takes one-third of the personal property and a life estate in one-third of the land. The children share the rest (§ 201.002).

Here is how it plays out. Dad dies without a will. He and his second wife bought their Georgetown house after they married. His two children from his first marriage aren't her children. Half of that house is now his, and it passes to his children, so two adult kids and a stepmother suddenly co-own the home. A will, drafted well, can say something different. Stepchildren, by the way, have no inheritance rights without one.

Texas Tools That Move a Home Without Probate

A Georgetown home doesn't have to go through probate if the owner planned ahead. Texas offers four tools, and each has traps.

A transfer on death deed names who gets the real estate at the owner's death. The deed has to be recorded in the county deed records before the owner dies, or it does nothing (Estates Code § 114.055). The owner can revoke it any time, a new deed or a divorce can cancel it, and the beneficiary must outlive the owner by 120 hours. Creditors can still reach the property if the estate falls short (§ 114.106). We find unrecorded deeds in desk drawers more often than you'd think.

Joint ownership with right of survivorship passes the house to the surviving owner, but only if a written agreement says so. Payable-on-death bank accounts and beneficiary forms on retirement accounts and life insurance pass cash the same way. A revocable trust can hold everything under one roof, as long as the owner actually moved the assets into it.

These tools can clash with a will. The deed or the beneficiary form wins over the will for that asset. We line all of them up in your first meeting so nothing surprises the family at the closing table.

Trusts From Other States and Why the Deed Matters

A trust controls only what it owns. A retiree who moved to Sun City with a living trust from another state often bought the Georgetown house in a personal name and never retitled it. The trust sits in a file cabinet. The house sits outside it.

When that owner dies, the house goes through probate anyway. A pour-over will can move it into the trust afterward, but the court still has to admit that will first. Retitling the house into the trust while the owner is alive avoids all of it. If your parent's trust and deed don't match, bring both to us before you list the house for sale. A mismatched trust is fixable, but the fix gets harder every month the estate sits open.