Inherited a West U House With Siblings: What Has to Happen First

Who owns the house the day after the owner dies?

On this page, West U means the City of West University Place; Southampton, Boulevard Oaks and Rice Village sit inside the City of Houston. Where an owner dies without a will, the Texas Estates Code decides who holds the house the following day, and it does so before anybody files anything. Chapter 201 sets the order in which the person's kindred take: the estate descends and passes to the person's children and the children's descendants; where no child or child's descendant survives, the estate passes in equal portions to the person's father and mother; where neither parent survives, it passes to the person's siblings and the siblings' descendants, and where none of that kindred survives it is divided into two moieties, one passing to the paternal kindred and one to the maternal kindred (Texas Estates Code, read September 2026).

A surviving spouse changes the shares rather than the number of owners. Where the person has one or more children or a descendant of a child, the surviving spouse takes one-third of the personal estate, two-thirds of the personal estate descends to the children and the descendants of a child, and the surviving spouse is entitled to a life estate in one-third of the person's land, with the remainder descending to the children and their descendants. Except as Section 201.002(d) provides, where there is no child and no descendant of a child, the surviving spouse is entitled to all of the personal estate and to one-half of the person's land without a remainder to any person, and one-half of the land passes and is inherited according to the rules of descent and distribution.

Community property has its own rule. The community estate of the deceased spouse passes to the surviving spouse where no child or other descendant of the deceased spouse survives, or where all of the surviving children and descendants of the deceased spouse are also children or descendants of the surviving spouse. Where the deceased spouse is survived by a child or other descendant who is not also a child or descendant of the surviving spouse, the deceased spouse's undivided one-half interest in the community estate passes to the deceased spouse's children or other descendants, and in every case the community estate passes charged with the debts against the community estate.

Those rules are what produce one house held by several people at once, each holding an undivided interest as a cotenant. Which shares actually arose on a particular death is a question for a lawyer who has read the will, the deed records and the file.

What document proves the co-owners are the owners?

Three routes are in ordinary use, and they run in ascending order of cost and of certainty: a recorded affidavit of heirship, a small estate affidavit approved by a judge, and a judgment declaring heirship from a court.

An affidavit of heirship is evidence, and it never transfers title. Under Chapter 203 a court shall receive, in a proceeding to declare heirship or a suit involving title to property, a statement of facts concerning family history, genealogy, marital status or the identity of a decedent's heirs as prima facie evidence of the facts contained in the statement where the statement sits in an affidavit or other instrument legally executed and acknowledged or sworn to before, and certified by, an officer authorized to take acknowledgments or oaths, and where that affidavit has been of record for five years or more in the deed records of a county in this state in which the property is located at the time the title suit is commenced, or in which the decedent was domiciled or had a fixed place of residence at death. Where there is an error in the statement, anyone interested in a proceeding in which it is offered in evidence may prove the true facts, and the affidavit does not affect the rights of an omitted heir or creditor of the decedent. Section 203.002 sets out a form for it.

A small estate affidavit is available only on the conditions Section 205.001 lists, and the distributees take the estate under it only to the extent the estate assets, excluding homestead and exempt property, exceed the estate's known liabilities, excluding any liabilities secured by homestead and exempt property. Those conditions are that the decedent died intestate, 30 days have elapsed since the date of the decedent's death, no petition for the appointment of a personal representative is pending or has been granted, the value of the estate assets on the date of the affidavit, excluding homestead and exempt property, does not exceed $75,000, the affidavit meets Section 205.002 and is filed with the clerk of the court that has jurisdiction and venue of the estate, the judge approves it, and the distributees comply with Section 205.004. That ceiling measures estate assets excluding homestead and exempt property, which is a different quantity from the value of the house.

Section 205.006 is the separate provision that reaches a homestead: where a decedent's homestead is the only real property in the decedent's estate, title to the homestead may be transferred under an affidavit meeting the chapter's requirements, recorded in the deed records of a county in which the homestead is located. A bona fide purchaser for value may rely on an affidavit recorded that way, an heir who was not disclosed in it may recover from an heir who receives consideration from a purchaser, and each person who executed the affidavit is liable for any damage or loss arising from a transfer made in reliance on it.

A judgment declaring heirship is the court proceeding under Chapter 202. A court may conduct one where a person dies intestate owning or entitled to property in this state and there has been no administration here, or where a will was probated or an administration held but property in this state was omitted or no final disposition of it has been made, and the proceeding may be brought at any time after the decedent's death. The application must state, among other things, the decedent's name and date and place of death, the names and physical addresses where service can be had of the heirs with each heir's relationship and whether each is an adult or a minor, that all children born to or adopted by the decedent have been listed, and that each of the decedent's marriages has been listed with the date of the marriage, the name of the spouse, the date and place of termination if the marriage was terminated, and other facts to show whether a spouse has had an interest in the decedent's property.

The court shall appoint an attorney ad litem to represent the interests of heirs whose names or locations are unknown, citation is served by a qualified delivery method on each distributee 12 years of age or older whose name and address are known or can be ascertained through the exercise of reasonable diligence and on the parent, managing conservator or guardian of each distributee younger than 12, and citation is served on unknown heirs by publication. The judgment must state the names of the heirs and the heirs' respective shares and interests in the decedent's property.

Which of the three fits a particular house is a question for a lawyer who has read the will, the deed records and the file.

Can one co-owner sell the house?

A cotenant holds an undivided interest, and Chapter 23 of the Texas Property Code lets a joint owner or claimant of real property compel a partition of the interest or the property among the joint owners under that chapter and the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure. The action is brought in a district court of a county in which any part of the property is located. Where commissioners are appointed and the court confirms their report, the decree gives a recipient of an interest a title equivalent to a conveyance of the interest by a warranty deed from the other parties in the action, and the commissioners' fees, with any surveyor's fee, are taxed and collected as costs of court in the same manner as the other costs in the action (Texas Property Code, read September 2026).

Selling the whole house out of an intestate estate without a court order runs through Chapter 401. All of the distributees may agree on the advisability of having an independent administration and collectively designate a qualified person, firm or corporation to serve as independent administrator, in the application or in one or more documents consenting to it, and the probate court shall enter an order granting independent administration and appointing that person unless the court finds that it would not be in the best interest of the estate to do so. All distributees are served with citation and notice of the application unless a distributee waives the issuance or service of citation or enters an appearance, and where a life estate is created by the will or by law, the life tenants are considered to be the distributees.

Once the order appointing an independent executor is entered and the inventory, appraisement and list of claims has been filed and approved, or an affidavit in lieu of it has been filed, further action of any nature may not be had in the probate court except where the title specifically and explicitly provides for some action in the court. Unless the title specifically provides otherwise, any action a personal representative subject to court supervision may take with or without a court order may be taken by an independent executor without a court order, and an independent administrator has the same power of sale for the same purposes as a personal representative has in a supervised administration, without the requirement of court approval, and the procedural requirements applicable to a supervised administration do not apply (Texas Estates Code, read September 2026).

The precondition catches people. The court may not appoint an independent administrator to serve in an intestate administration unless and until the parties seeking appointment of the independent administrator have been determined, through a proceeding to declare heirship under Chapter 202, to constitute all of the decedent's heirs. The heirship proceeding comes first, and the agreement of every distributee is what the rest of the chapter is built on.

What happens if the co-owners do not agree?

Chapter 23A of the Texas Property Code may be cited as the Uniform Partition of Heirs' Property Act, and it sits inside the general partition action. Heirs' property means real property held in tenancy in common that satisfies all of three requirements as of the filing of a partition action: there is no agreement in a record binding all the cotenants that governs the partition of the property; one or more of the cotenants acquired title from a relative, whether living or deceased; and either 20 percent or more of the interests are held by cotenants who are relatives, or 20 percent or more of the interests are held by an individual who acquired title from a relative, or 20 percent or more of the cotenants are relatives (Texas Property Code, read September 2026).

In an action to partition real property under Chapter 23, the court shall determine whether the property is heirs' property. Where the court determines that the property is heirs' property, the property must be partitioned under Chapter 23A unless all of the cotenants otherwise agree in a record. That determination sets the order of everything that follows.

Except as Subsections (b) and (c) of Section 23A.006 provide, the court then determines the fair market value of the property by ordering an appraisal. Subsection (b) is the one the cotenants control: where all cotenants have agreed to the value of the property or to another method of valuation, the court shall adopt that value or the value produced by the agreed method. On an ordered appraisal the court appoints a disinterested real estate appraiser to determine the fair market value of the property assuming sole ownership of the fee simple estate, and the appraiser files a sworn or verified appraisal with the court. The court then sends notice to each party with a known address stating the appraised fair market value, that the appraisal is available at the clerk's office, and that a party may file an objection stating the grounds for it, not later than the 30th day after the date notice is sent.

Where any cotenant requested partition by sale, the court sends notice to the parties after the determination of value that any cotenant except one that requested partition by sale may buy all the interests of the cotenants that did. Not later than the 45th day after the date that notice is sent, such a cotenant may give notice to the court that it elects to buy those interests. The purchase price for each of the interests of a cotenant that requested partition by sale is the value of the entire parcel determined under Section 23A.006 multiplied by that cotenant's fractional ownership of the entire parcel.

Where more than one cotenant elects to buy, the court allocates the right to buy among the electing cotenants based on each electing cotenant's existing fractional ownership of the entire parcel divided by the total existing fractional ownership of all cotenants electing to buy, and sends notice of that fact and of the price to be paid by each. The court then sets a date, not earlier than the 60th day after the date notice was sent, by which an electing cotenant must pay the cotenant's apportioned price into the court, and a cotenant that paid may elect to purchase all of the remaining interest by paying the entire price into the court not later than the 20th day after the court's later notice.

Where all the interests of all cotenants that requested partition by sale are not purchased in that buyout, or where after the buyout a cotenant remains that has requested partition in kind, the court shall order partition in kind unless, after consideration of the factors listed in Section 23A.009, it finds that partition in kind will result in substantial prejudice to the cotenants as a group. When it considers whether to order partition in kind, the court shall approve a request by two or more parties to have their individual interests aggregated. Partition in kind is the division of heirs' property into physically distinct and separately titled parcels, and the court may require one or more cotenants to pay one or more other cotenants amounts so that the payments, taken together with the value of the in-kind distributions, will make the partition in kind just and proportionate in value to the fractional interests held.

A sale follows only after all of that. Where the court orders a sale of heirs' property, the sale must be an open-market sale unless the court finds that a sale by sealed bids or at an auction would be more economically advantageous and in the best interest of the cotenants as a group. Unless other law governing the partition of real property requires it earlier, a broker appointed to offer heirs' property for open-market sale files a report with the court not later than the seventh day after the date an offer is received to purchase the property for at least the value determined under Section 23A.006 or 23A.010. Commissioners appointed under Rule 761 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure must, in addition to that rule's own requirements and disqualifications, be impartial and may not be a party to or a participant in the action.

What does the tax side look like?

Basis decides how much of a sale is taxable. The basis of property inherited from a decedent is generally the fair market value of the property at the date of the individual's death, or the FMV on the alternate valuation date where the personal representative for the estate chooses to use alternate valuation (IRS Publication 551, read September 2026). One class of property is carved out of that rule: appreciated property received from a decedent, where the recipient or the recipient's spouse originally gave that property to the decedent within 1 year before the decedent's death, takes the decedent's adjusted basis in the property immediately before death rather than its fair market value.

Where an estate is required to file a federal estate tax return, the estate beneficiaries generally receive a Schedule A (Form 8971) from the executor of the estate reporting the estate tax value of property distributed to them, and certain beneficiaries are required to use that value as the initial basis in the property received. Section 1014(f) requires that the basis of certain property acquired from a decedent be consistent with the value of the property as finally determined for estate tax purposes. Where no Schedule A arrives, basis in the property can be determined using the appraised value at the date of death for state inheritance or transmission tax purposes.

Texas is one of the community property states named in IRS Publications 551 and 555. When either spouse dies, the total value of the community property, even the part belonging to the surviving spouse, generally becomes the basis of the entire property, where at least half the value of the community property interest is includible in the decedent's gross estate, whether or not the estate must file a return. The worked example starts with community property carrying a basis of $80,000 and a fair market value of $100,000 at one spouse's death: the survivor's half takes a basis of $50,000, and the basis of the other half to the decedent's heirs is also $50,000 (IRS Publication 555, read September 2026).

The appraisal district treats an inherited home separately from an ordinary one. Property owners receiving a partial homestead exemption on heirship property can now apply for a 100 percent homestead exemption even when the home has co-owners, under a Texas law enacted in 2019 that made it easier for heir property owners to qualify by creating more accessible application requirements (Harris Central Appraisal District, read September 2026).

Section 11.13(h) of the Texas Tax Code is the statutory half: an heir property owner who qualifies heir property as the owner's residence homestead is considered the sole recipient of any exemption granted for that residence homestead, joint, community or successive owners may not each receive the same exemption for the same residence homestead in the same year, and a person may not receive an exemption for more than one residence homestead in the same year. A residence homestead is owned by one or more individuals, directly or through a beneficial interest in a qualifying trust, designed or adapted for human residence, used as a residence, and occupied as the principal residence of an owner or of an owner's surviving spouse who has a life estate in the property.

Two mechanics bite while an estate is unresolved. The regular residential homestead exemption application is filed between January 1 and April 30, early applications are not accepted, and the cap applies to a homestead beginning in the second year an exemption is held, holding appraised value to the lesser of this year's market value or last year's appraised value plus 10 percent plus the value added by any new improvements made during the preceding year.

In the first quarter of each year the district develops a list of all properties with a prior year homestead exemption which, during that same year, were sold to a new owner, cancels the old exemption as of January 1 of the new year, and mails the new owner an exemption application form. A qualifying homeowner receives at least a $140,000 homestead exemption on the value of the home for school district taxes. The numbers that matter to a particular estate belong to a CPA who has the estate's records.

What has to be settled about the property itself before anyone agrees a number?

Three facts about a West U property are matters of record rather than opinion, and they come before any figure. Whether the building site was established with its present boundaries before 24 October 1987, because that decides its minimum dimensions and therefore what may replace the house. The site's actual width, depth and area, read from the plat. And a survey of the large trees standing on it, because once a permit for development or pre-development activity is in effect every large tree on the site is protected, and the building official may not issue that permit until the urban forester has approved the survey.

A cotenant buyout is priced off an appraisal made assuming sole ownership of the fee simple estate, and that is exactly the kind of number that moves when the site facts are established rather than assumed. No public record contains a land price, so those three facts are what an argument about value is actually made of.

Paige Martin of Real Broker, LLC works probate and estate sales, court-ordered sales, sales made by a trust, and inherited property with several heirs in West U.

What can this page not tell you?

Who the heirs are is what Chapters 202 and 203 exist to establish, and it turns on the facts of one family's history, sworn to and then either recorded or tried.

Whether a particular co-owned house is heirs' property is a determination Section 23A.003(a) leaves to the court on the record in front of it.

How long any of this takes in Harris County is another matter, and the lawyer handling the file is the one to ask: this page carries no figure for the time from filing to judgment.

What the house or the site is worth has two separate answers. A partition appraisal, where the court orders one, is produced by an appraiser the court appoints, and a market valuation of an address is a different exercise with different evidence behind it.

Basis and the tax on a sale live in the estate's records, and the arithmetic belongs to a CPA.

Whether to sell, to buy each other out or to divide is a decision among the owners, taken with a lawyer who has read the will, the deed records and the file.