Remote Probate Across the Houston Area
Online Probate in Harris County
Don't fight Houston traffic. Don't fight airports.
You can settle a Harris County estate almost entirely from home, with a licensed Texas probate attorney doing the filing and the court appearances. Remote consultations, secure document handling, and electronic court filing, on a flat fee you agree to before we begin.
The catch with "online probate"
Convenient online. Still a real attorney.
Search results for online probate are full of do-it-yourself form websites promising you will not need a lawyer. In Texas, that is not how formal probate works. A licensed attorney has to represent the executor to file and appear in the probate court, and the courts require electronic filing that those form sites cannot do for you.
Our approach gives you what people are actually looking for when they search for online probate: the convenience of handling it remotely, with an experienced probate attorney doing the parts the law reserves for a lawyer. You stay home. We handle the court.
"Online probate does not mean no lawyer. It means you handle your part from home while we handle the court. In Texas, the filing and the hearings still run through a licensed attorney, and that is the exact part we take off your plate."
Kyle Robbins, Esq., Texas Bar No. 24105719
How online probate works with our firm
Because probate is nearly all we do, and because we file in Harris County's five probate courts every week, we can run most uncontested cases with very little demand on your time. Here is what the remote process looks like.
Remote consultation
We assess your situation by phone or video. You tell us what happened and who is involved, and we tell you which type of probate the estate needs and what it costs. No office visit required, and the consultation is free.
Secure document handling
You send us the will, the death certificate, and a list of the assets. We handle the documents securely and tell you exactly what is missing, so you are never guessing about what the court will want.
We e-file with the court
Texas courts require electronic filing, and that is our job, not yours. We file directly into the Harris County probate courts and appear at any hearing on your behalf where the court allows it, so in most uncontested cases you never set foot downtown.
Flat fee, confirmed up front
For uncontested matters you get a flat fee agreed before any work begins, not an open-ended hourly meter. You know the full cost of your probate before we start.
Who online probate is a good fit for
Remote probate works best for uncontested estates and for the people who most need to avoid repeated courthouse trips: executors who live out of state, adult children handling a parent's estate around a job and a family, and anyone who simply does not want to spend their week driving downtown. If the estate is contested, we can still start remotely, but a dispute may require more hands-on work and is handled differently. You can see how the numbers break down on our flat-fee probate pricing page.
Not sure which type of probate the estate needs, or whether it qualifies for a simpler option like a muniment of title? That is exactly what the free consultation is for. Tell us what happened and we will point you to the right path.
If there was no will, the remote path is different but it still works
Almost everything written about out-of-state probate assumes you were named executor in a will. Plenty of the families who call us were not. When someone dies without a will, the court has to establish who the heirs are before anyone can be put in charge, which means a determination of heirship under Chapter 202 of the Texas Estates Code, usually filed alongside an application for letters of administration. See intestate succession for how Texas decides who inherits.
Two things are worth knowing before you book the consultation, because neither one is obvious and both come up on nearly every out-of-state heirship call.
The court appoints an attorney ad litem. Under Section 202.009, a judge must appoint an attorney to represent any unknown or missing heirs, and in Harris County that is standard rather than a sign of trouble. That attorney's fee is paid from the estate, and they will want the family history documented, so gathering birth, marriage, and death records early is the single most useful thing you can do from out of state.
Living out of state does not disqualify you, but it adds one filing. Under Section 304.003 a nonresident cannot serve as administrator until they appoint a Texas resident agent to accept service of process for the estate. It is a routine designation, we handle it as part of the application, and the firm can serve as that agent.
The remote mechanics are the same either way. The consultation, the document exchange, and the filings happen from wherever you are, and we appear for you where the court permits. An heirship case has more moving parts than probating a will, so it is worth getting the first filing right instead of discovering a gap a year in.
Your Attorney
Kyle Robbins, Esq.
Texas Probate Attorney · State Bar No. 24105719
Online probate only works when a licensed attorney is actually doing the filing. Kyle Robbins is 100% dedicated to probate in Harris County, nothing else, and files in the county's five probate courts every week. He has guided hundreds of Houston families, many of them out of state, through the process remotely, from simple muniment-of-title filings to complex contested estates.
- University of Texas School of Law
- State Bar of Texas
- Justia Lawyer
- Avvo 10.0 Rating
Available for remote consultations across Texas, at no charge.