An executor or a trustee is holding property that belongs to someone else. The question in these cases is not whether a decision turned out badly. It is whether the fiduciary put themselves, or a favored person, ahead of the people they answer to.
Fifteen months after letters first issue, any interested person can demand an accounting from an independent executor, and the answer has to be a sworn written exhibit covering the property that came in, what happened to it, the debts paid, what is still owed, and what remains. Most fiduciary claims are either proved or abandoned on the strength of that document.
Tex. Est. Code § 404.001.
On the trust side the mechanism is different. A beneficiary makes a written demand for a statement of accounts covering every transaction since the last accounting or since the trust was created. If the trustee has not delivered it by the ninetieth day after receiving the demand, any beneficiary can sue to compel delivery to all beneficiaries.
Tex. Prop. Code § 113.151.
A statutory probate court has jurisdiction concurrent with the district court over an action by or against a trustee, an action involving an inter vivos, testamentary, or charitable trust, an action against an agent or former agent under a power of attorney arising out of the agent’s performance, and an action to determine the validity of a power of attorney. El Paso County has two of those courts.
The practical effect matters. A family fight that runs through a will, a trust, and a power of attorney can be heard by one judge who already knows the facts, instead of being split between the probate court and a district court on different schedules.
Tex. Est. Code § 32.007; Tex. Gov’t Code § 25.0731(b).
In a large share of these matters the damage was done while the decedent was alive, by a child or a caregiver holding a power of attorney: accounts retitled, real property deeded, beneficiary designations changed in the last months. Those claims belong in the same proceeding as the estate, and they are frequently worth more than anything left to fight over in the will.
Getting a fiduciary removed changes who is in charge. Getting the money back is a surcharge claim against the fiduciary personally, and sometimes against the people who received the property. They are pleaded and proved differently, and bringing only the first one can leave a successor with an empty estate and no funded claim.
See also: removing an executor or administrator and trust litigation.
These claims get harder with time, not easier. Records are discarded, the people who witnessed the transactions move on, and the property sold to an outside buyer becomes much harder to reach. If an accounting demand has gone unanswered, that is the point to get advice, not after the estate closes.
Bring whatever accounting you have been given, the dates letters were issued, and a short description of the transaction that concerns you. That is enough for a first read on whether there is a claim.
The first conversation is short and free.