Courts do not remove executors for being difficult. Texas sets out specific grounds, and the first job in any removal case is matching what the executor actually did to one of them.
Those are the grounds, and the executor has to be cited by personal service to answer at a set time and place before the court can act.
Most Texas wills create an independent administration, which means the executor operates with almost no court supervision: no court order before a sale, no annual account filed with the judge, no running oversight. That design is why removal is the main lever a beneficiary has.
A court-supervised administration works differently, and the removal grounds there are broader. A dependent representative can be removed for misapplying, embezzling, or removing estate property from the state, or being about to; for failing to return a required account; for disobeying a proper court order; for gross misconduct or mismanagement; and for becoming incapacitated or otherwise incapable.
Tex. Est. Code § 404.0035(b) (independent executors); Tex. Est. Code § 361.052(a) (court-supervised representatives).
Fifteen months after the clerk first issues letters, any interested person may demand an accounting from the independent executor. The response has to be a written exhibit, sworn and signed, setting out the estate property that came into the executor’s hands, what was done with it, the debts paid, the debts and expenses still owing, and what is left.
The demand does two jobs at once. It produces the record you need to evaluate a claim, and if the executor ignores it, the failure to account is itself a removal ground. An executor who has been mishandling the estate often cannot answer the demand without exposing the problem.
Tex. Est. Code § 404.001.
Two years after letters first issue, an interested person can petition the court for an accounting and distribution. After notice and a hearing, the court can order the estate distributed unless it finds a continued necessity for administration. This is the remedy for the executor who sits on a house for four years, pays themselves along the way, and always has a reason the estate cannot close.
Tex. Est. Code § 405.001.
Removing a fiduciary replaces the person holding the keys. It does not, by itself, put the money back. Getting the money back is a separate claim against the former executor and, where the facts support it, against whoever received the property. Plan both from the beginning, because a removal won on its own can leave a successor administrator inheriting an empty estate and a claim nobody funded.
See also: breach of fiduciary duty claims.
El Paso County has two statutory probate courts, and in a county with statutory probate courts they have exclusive jurisdiction over probate proceedings whether or not anyone is contesting. A removal application is filed in the same court that issued the letters, under the same cause number as the estate.
Tex. Gov’t Code § 25.0731(b); Tex. Est. Code §§ 32.001(d), 32.005.
Bring the date letters were issued, any accounting you have received, and what you know about where the estate property went. That is usually enough for us to tell you whether a removal application is worth filing.
The first conversation is short and free.