Fort Worth 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

This page covers Tarrant County. A Fort Worth address in a neighboring county is served by that county's probate court and county clerk, not by the offices below; this page does not name those counties because no official page stating which counties the city extends into could be opened when it was written. Arlington, also in Tarrant County, has its own page with the same courts and clerk.

The Tarrant County probate courts

Tarrant County's Probate Courts page describes them as statutory probate courts presided over by judges elected countywide. Under Texas Estates Code Section 32.005, a statutory probate court has exclusive jurisdiction of all probate proceedings in its county. The page's own definition: probate is a court proceeding by which a will is proved valid or invalid, and the term covers all proceedings for administering an estate, the process by which assets are gathered, applied to pay debts, taxes and expenses, and distributed to the beneficiaries named in the will. The courts also establish guardianships, hear trust matters and civil mental health commitments, and hear lawsuits incident to an estate.

The County Clerk's probate division

The County Clerk maintains the cases for probated estates, guardianships, mental health cases and wills, and processes court ordered delayed birth and death certificates. The clerk's main office is at the Tarrant County Courthouse, 100 W. Weatherford St, Suite 130, Fort Worth, TX 76196, 817-884-1195, Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Probate filing fees were not shown on the pages read for this article and are not quoted here; the clerk's probate division can confirm them.

Recording a deed in Tarrant County

The County Clerk's Real Estate Records division records deeds and other real property documents. Its page states the recording fee, $20 for the first page and $4 for each additional page, and a $10 fee for a Notice of Trustee Sale, and gives the main office as the Records Filing Office, Room B20, Tarrant County Courthouse, 100 W. Weatherford St., Fort Worth, Texas 76196. The page links to the clerk's eRecording information, fee schedules, copies of official public records, a property fraud alert sign up, and an online official records search.

Payment methods, mailing instructions and identification rules were not on the page read for this article; the clerk's Records Intake FAQ linked from that page covers them.

What this means for a Fort Worth homeowner

A Fort Worth home titled in the owner's own name is administered after death by Probate Court No. 1 or No. 2 through the steps in the Texas probate process guide: application, posted citation, hearing, oath, notices and inventory. A home deeded to the trustee of a living trust is outside that process and passes under the trust's terms. The trust deed is recorded once, in Room B20, while the owner is alive.