איבדתם אדם יקר — ומוניתם לנאמן.

First, a word about pace

Texas sets fewer dated clocks for a trustee than most people expect. There is no notice of acceptance, no notice that the trust has become irrevocable and no Notice of Trust to file; the Trust Code's own dated clock runs only when a beneficiary makes a written demand for an accounting, and it gives the trustee until the 90th day to deliver it (Prop. Code §113.151). The dated clocks that do run in the first months belong to the related estate — the personal representative's notices and inventory when a probate is opened (Est. Code chapters 308 and 309) — and to the federal tax calendar.

So the pace of the first ninety days is set by the work: finding and reading the instrument, securing what the trust holds, reviewing the assets within a reasonable time (§117.006), and building the record an accounting will later need (§113.152). Nothing in the Trust Code rewards haste, and the duty of good-faith administration (§113.051) rewards a record that shows each step.

Days 1 to 30: find, read, secure

The first month is for the documents and the property. The trust instrument with every amendment and restatement; any certification of trust (§114.086); the deeds, account statements, beneficiary designations and insurance policies; the settlor's will, which the person holding it delivers to the clerk of the court with jurisdiction on notice of the death (Est. Code §252.201). Deciding whether to accept comes first: a written acceptance is conclusive, and acting as trustee is presumptive evidence of acceptance (§112.009).

Securing the property is the general duty in its plainest form (§113.051): confirming insurance, securing the house and vehicles, forwarding the mail, keeping protective payments current. Within a reasonable time after accepting or receiving the assets, the trustee reviews them and decides what to keep and what to dispose of under the prudent investor rule (§117.006; §§117.003–117.004). Several certified copies of the death certificate come early; banks, insurers, the appraisal district and any court each want one.

• Title decides the path: trust-titled property is the trustee's to administer; property in the decedent's own name passes by will or intestacy through the estate; joint property and beneficiary-designated accounts pass by their own terms.
• Marital character matters in Texas: property acquired during marriage other than separate property is community property (Fam. Code §3.002), and separate property is what §3.001 describes — the classification shapes what the trust holds and what passes at death.
• A homestead is protected from forced sale by most creditors (Tex. Const. art. XVI, §50) and may not be partitioned while the surviving spouse elects to use or occupy it (art. XVI, §52).
• Mineral interests are common Texas trust assets; receipts from oil, gas and other natural resources are allocated between income and principal under §116.174.

Days 30 to 60: the beneficiaries and the estate

Texas requires no opening notice, but the duty to keep the beneficiaries reasonably informed about the administration is the common law's, and the statute keeps the trust's terms from limiting it for a beneficiary of an irrevocable trust who is 25 or older (§111.0035(c)). A short written account of who the trustee is, what the trust holds and what comes next is the ordinary way to meet it — and it starts the record that a later accounting demand will draw on.

When a probate estate is administered beside the trust, the second month is the personal representative's: notice to the beneficiaries the statute names within 60 days after a will is admitted, with the affidavit or certificate of that notice within 90 days (Est. Code §§308.002, 308.004); notice to creditors by publication within one month after letters and to secured creditors within two months (§§308.051, 308.053); the inventory, appraisement and list of claims before the 91st day after qualification (§309.051). Those are the representative's clocks, not the trustee's — the trust's file records them beside its own and concludes nothing about the estate.

Days 60 to 90: money, debts, taxes

The trust's own account and its own tax identification number come as soon as the trust is irrevocable: a revocable trust used the settlor's Social Security number, and that stops at death. Claims against the decedent run through the estate when one is administered (Estates Code chapter 308); Texas gives the trustee no duty like the one some states impose to pay the estate's expenses from the trust, so the file records the estate's claims and leaves the conclusions to the representative and to counsel.

A written demand for an accounting may arrive at any point; the statement is due on or before the 90th day after the trustee receives it, and not more than once every 12 months unless a court orders otherwise (§113.151). The federal calendar is unchanged: the settlor's final return, the trust's Form 1041 with a Schedule K-1 to each beneficiary who received distributable income, and Form 706 nine months after death where the gross estate exceeds the filing threshold or portability is elected. Texas has no estate or inheritance tax (Tex. Const. art. VIII, §26).

מועדי הנאמן בטקסס: מה קובעים החוקים

נבדק מול חוקי טקסס בתאריך 2026-10-04. מידע כללי, לא ייעוץ משפטי; הנוסח הרשמי קובע.

The estate beside the trust: who does what

Most Texas families with a trust also have an estate, however small, and the two run on different rules with different actors. The estate's usual path is an independent administration (Estates Code chapters 401 through 405): an independent executor acts without the court's supervision of each step, and an interested person may demand an accounting of the estate only after fifteen months have passed since the letters, with sixty days to answer (§404.001). Where no administration is needed — no unpaid debts other than those secured by real estate — a will may be probated as a muniment of title alone (Estates Code chapter 257), and the order itself transfers title without appointing anyone.

The clocks on that side are the estate's: the person holding the will delivers it to the clerk of the court with jurisdiction on notice of the death (§252.201); a will generally must be offered for probate within four years after death (§256.003); the statutory probate court, where one sits, has jurisdiction of actions involving inter vivos and testamentary trusts as well (§32.006). Estates Code notices travel by the qualified delivery method the Code defines (§22.0295), and a personal representative recovers necessary expenses, including reasonable attorney's fees, on proof (§352.051). None of this is the trustee's to decide; all of it belongs in the trust's file as the facts the trust's own administration depends on.

The record you keep from day one

Every later question is answered from the record: the date the trusteeship began, the assets on hand at that date, each receipt and disbursement with its payee, each known liability, and the other items a statement of accounts must show (§113.152). Kept from the first week, the accounting is a report; reconstructed a year later, it is a project.

The record is also the trustee's answer to the duties that have no day-count. The review of the assets within a reasonable time (§117.006) is shown by a dated note of what was reviewed and what was decided; the duty to keep the beneficiaries reasonably informed (§111.0035(c)) by the dated copies of what was sent; a discretionary distribution (§113.029) by the instrument's words and the reasons beside them.

• The date and manner of the acceptance (§112.009), and the certification of trust prepared from it (§114.086).
• The assets on hand when the trusteeship began, by title and by marital character (Fam. Code §§3.001–3.002).
• The review of each asset and the decision to keep or dispose of it (§117.006).
• Each written demand for an accounting, the day it was received and the day the statement went out (§113.151).
• The estate's events — letters, notices, the inventory, claims — as facts recorded, never as conclusions.

What waits for later

Distributions wait. After a terminating event the trustee may keep exercising its powers for the reasonable period needed to wind up and distribute (§112.052), and a trustee who distributes before the debts, the taxes and the reserve are known answers to the beneficiaries for any shortfall (§114.001). Discretionary decisions wait for the instrument's words, read in good faith (§113.029). A beneficiary's release binds only with the full information the statute requires (§114.005).

The structural choices wait too. A trustee with full discretion may later distribute principal to a second trust (§112.072), divide the trust or combine it with another (§112.057), or terminate a trust whose value no longer justifies its administration (§112.059) — each after the notice its section requires, thirty days before a decanting or a division (§§112.074, 112.057). Those are powers for a settled administration, not for the first ninety days, and each is the kind of decision many trustees bring to a licensed Texas attorney of their choosing before giving the notice.

When a licensed Texas attorney is the right next call

TrusteeClear organizes the record; it does not give legal advice and it does not decide any of these questions for you. Many trustees bring the record to a licensed Texas attorney of their choosing when the general rules run out: whether an estate needs to be opened and in what form, how community and separate property divide, a homestead a surviving spouse occupies, a demand for an accounting the trustee cannot answer in full, or a dispute among beneficiaries.