Arlington Living Trust: Tarrant County Probate Court and Deed Recording

By Rozsa Gyene, California estate planning attorney, State Bar of California #208356. Published September 28, 2026. Last reviewed September 28, 2026.

Which county this page covers

Arlington's page, like Fort Worth's, is about Tarrant County. Fort Worth, where the courthouse is, has its own page describing the same courts and clerk in more detail. An Arlington address in a different county would be served by that county's probate court and clerk; whether the city extends into another county is not stated here, because no official page stating it could be opened when this page was written.

What the Arlington Subcourthouse handles

The Tarrant County Clerk's page lists nine locations across the county. For Arlington it gives the Arlington Subcourthouse, 700 E. Abram Street, Arlington, TX 76101, with Vital Records in Suite 101 (817-884-1550) and Passports in Suite 300 (817-548-3963). Neither probate nor real estate recording is listed there. The clerk's divisions for those, Probate Courts and Real Estate Records, operate from the courthouse in Fort Worth.

Probate: the Tarrant County courts

Tarrant County's probate courts are statutory probate courts with judges elected countywide, and under Texas Estates Code Section 32.005 such a court has exclusive jurisdiction of every probate proceeding in the county. The County Clerk maintains the cases for probated estates, guardianships, mental health cases and wills.

The Probate Courts page describes probate as the proceeding by which a will is proved valid or invalid and the assets are gathered, applied to debts, taxes and expenses, and distributed to the beneficiaries. The general Texas steps are in the Texas probate process guide.

Recording a trust deed

The clerk's Real Estate Records page gives the recording fee as $20 for the first page and $4 for each additional page, and the main office as the Records Filing Office, Room B20, Tarrant County Courthouse, 100 W. Weatherford St., Fort Worth, Texas 76196. The page also offers a property fraud alert service and an online search of official records, which is where an Arlington owner can confirm that a trust deed was recorded. Payment methods and mailing instructions were not on that page and are not quoted here.

Why it matters for a living trust

A trust does not avoid the county; it changes when you visit. The deed transferring an Arlington home to the trustee is recorded once, in Fort Worth, while the owner is alive. After that, the home is trust property and the successor trustee acts under the trust without opening a case in the probate courts. Property left outside the trust, and any estate with only a will, goes through those courts.