The Estates Code

The Probate Code has been around for more than five decades. However, on January 1, 2014, it was repealed and replaced with the Texas Estates Code.

The enactment of the Estates Code is not intended to make any substantive changes in the law. Rather, the purpose the statutory revision according to Sec. 323.007(a) of the Texas Government Code is “to clarify and simplify the statutes and to make them more accessible, understandable and usable.”

The new Estates Code:

1. Rearranges the statutes in a more logical order;
2. Employs a format and numbering system designed to facilitate citation of the law and accommodate future expansion of the law;
3. Eliminates repealed, duplicative, unconstitutional, expired, executed and other ineffective provisions; and
4. Restates the law in modern American English to the greatest extent possible.

Professor Gerry Beyer has the new Estates Code on his website, which you can see by following the link.