A family trust is supposed to make things simpler. A parent or grandparent sets one up so that when the time comes, the children receive what was left for them without a fight. But a trust is only as good as the people willing to administer it. When nobody steps forward to do that job, even a carefully drafted trust can sit frozen for years while the beneficiaries wait — and eventually turn on each other.
When that happens, a court can appoint a successor trustee to finish the job. But what powers does that new trustee get? And if a beneficiary thinks the court handed the trustee too much authority — or signed the order without giving him a chance to object — can he challenge it right away, or does he have to wait for a final judgment and an ordinary appeal?
That is the question in In re Bausch, No. 08-25-00326-CV (Tex. App.—El Paso June 26, 2026, orig. proceeding) (mem. op.). A beneficiary of a 1984 family trust asked the court of appeals for a writ of mandamus to wipe out an order expanding the successor trustee’s powers, arguing the trial court signed it without notice or a hearing. The court had to decide whether that complaint belonged in an emergency writ proceeding at all.
Facts & Procedural History
W.L. Garrison created the Garrison Family Trust in 1984. Its beneficiaries include Coby Todd Bausch and Lacy Paige Brooke. The trust was to terminate when the youngest beneficiary turned thirty-five, at which point the trustee had to wind up the trust and distribute its property to the beneficiaries “in the proportions to which each [is] entitled.” The trust never said what those proportions were.
Then the trust ran out of trustees. The original designated co-trustees died. The designated substitute did not accept the role, and neither did its successor in interest. With nobody serving, the trust’s assets went undistributed — the beneficiaries owned an interest in property that no one was managing.
On January 9, 2024, Lacy Paige Brooks and Stephen Lindemood filed a petition asking the 112th Judicial District Court of Pecos County to appoint a third-party successor trustee to wind up the trust. The court appointed Albert C. Elliott and gave him “all rights, powers, privileges, duties and authority conferred upon the Trustee of the Trust.”
That did not end the fight. After what the opinion describes as escalating frictions and threats between the parties, Brooks and Lindemood filed a motion asking the court to clarify exactly what powers the successor trustee held. The trial court granted the motion without holding a hearing and signed its “Order Granting Motion Clarifying Successor Trustee’s Powers” on March 12, 2025.
The clarifying order listed sixteen powers needed to wind up the trust. Some were routine: enter and inspect trust property, pay taxes, keep the property insured and in repair, determine and satisfy trust obligations, ascertain the proper distributees and their shares. Others were pointed at Bausch. The trustee could take control of the property so that all beneficiaries had equal access, make claims to collect reasonable rents Bausch owed for using trust property to the exclusion of other beneficiaries, and demand that Bausch account for all revenues — including leases on the 9A Ranch — whether he collected them personally or through an entity he owned.
Bausch moved to set aside and vacate the order, and asked for reconsideration, a stay, and a hearing. He argued the court had signed the order without giving him notice or a chance to be heard. Brooks and Lindemood responded. The trial court held a hearing on September 23, 2025, and denied the motion for reconsideration on October 29, 2025.
Bausch then went to the El Paso Court of Appeals seeking a writ of mandamus ordering the trial judge to vacate the clarifying order. He raised two issues: that the order was void for lack of notice and a hearing, and that the trial court abused its discretion by expanding the trustee’s powers beyond the scope of the trust.
Who Decides What a Successor Trustee Can Do?
To see why Bausch’s petition was an uphill climb, we first have to look at where trust disputes get resolved and how a stalled trust gets restarted.
Section 115.001(a) of the Texas Property Code gives a district court “original and exclusive jurisdiction over all proceedings by or against a trustee and all proceedings concerning trusts.” The statute then lists what that includes — construing a trust instrument, appointing or removing a trustee, determining “the powers, responsibilities, duties, and liability of a trustee,” ascertaining beneficiaries, requiring an accounting, and surcharging a trustee. Subsection (a-1) adds that the list is not exhaustive. One caveat worth knowing: under subsection (d), that exclusivity yields to jurisdiction conferred by law on a statutory probate court, a county court at law, and a handful of other courts. In counties with a statutory probate court, a trust dispute may land there instead.
What this means in practice is that a fight over what a successor trustee may do is not some side issue. It is the exact thing the Legislature assigned to these courts to decide. And a court that has authority to determine a trustee’s powers has authority to clarify them later when the parties start fighting about it.
That authority matters because a trust does not administer itself. When the named trustee dies, resigns, or never accepts the job, someone still has to manage the property and eventually hand it out. A bank named as trustee may merge or dissolve. Individual co-trustees may die before the trust terminates, with no one stepping in behind them — which is what happened here. Until a court appoints a successor, the property sits.
Appointing a successor does not answer every question about what that person may do. A trust written decades ago often says little about the mechanics of winding up, and this one did not even state the beneficiaries’ shares. When the instrument leaves gaps, the court fills them — and beneficiaries who no longer trust each other start fighting over who controls what, and when.
Why the Court Denied Mandamus
Mandamus is not a substitute for an appeal. It is an extraordinary remedy, granted only when the relator shows both a clear abuse of discretion by the trial court and that no adequate appellate remedy exists. In re Prudential Ins. Co. of Am., 148 S.W.3d 124, 135-36 (Tex. 2004). The burden is on the person asking for the writ. In re H.E.B. Grocery Co., 492 S.W.3d 300, 302 (Tex. 2016) (orig. proceeding) (per curiam). Bausch had to clear both hurdles. He cleared neither.
On the first, Bausch leaned on Union Carbide Corp. v. Moye, 798 S.W.2d 792, 793 (Tex. 1990), for the argument that the abuse-of-discretion standard is satisfied when a trial court effectively deprives a party of its fundamental due process right to notice. He said that is what happened when the court signed the clarifying order without a hearing.
The court disagreed, and the reason was timing. Yes, the trial court signed the order without a hearing. But Bausch then filed his motion for reconsideration, the other side responded, and the trial court held a hearing on September 23, 2025 before reconfirming its ruling. The court of appeals pointed to Martin v. Martin, Martin & Richards, Inc., 989 S.W.2d 357, 359 (Tex. 1998), where the Texas Supreme Court held that a trial court’s failure to give notice of a summary judgment submission date was harmless because the court considered the nonmovant’s response and reconfirmed its prior ruling. Same idea here. A hearing after the fact still gives a party the process it is owed, as long as the court actually engages with the argument before standing by its decision.
The second hurdle is where the petition really failed. Parties generally can challenge the powers granted to a trustee on ordinary appeal, and the court used Bausch’s own authority to prove it. Bausch cited Sorrel v. Sorrel, 1 S.W.3d 867, 871 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi–Edinburg 1999, no pet.), for the proposition that a trustee cannot partition trust property after the trust terminates. In Sorrel, as here, the parties disagreed about what powers the trustees kept after termination. The Corpus Christi court held that where the trust’s express terms specify that it terminates on a certain event and direct how the property is to be distributed, the trustees may not partition the property before distributing it, and may only convey it to the beneficiaries in the manner the instrument instructs.
That may matter a great deal later in this dispute, because the Garrison trust also terminates on a fixed event without stating the shares. But for the mandamus question, what counted was not the holding — it was the posture. Sorrel arrived by direct appeal from an order declaring the trust terminated, ratifying the trustees’ actions, and declaring ownership of the trust’s real estate. Bausch’s own case showed that this kind of dispute gets resolved on appeal.
Beyond that, Bausch did not even try to show he lacked an adequate appellate remedy. He cited no authority extending mandamus to a challenge over a trustee’s granted powers, and the court found none. As the court put it, quoting its own decision in In re Murillo, No. 08-24-00323-CV, 2024 WL 4512347, at *2 (Tex. App.—El Paso Oct. 17, 2024, orig. proceeding) (mem. op.): “The requirement that persons seeking mandamus relief establish the lack of an adequate remedy is a ‘fundamental tenet’ of mandamus practice.” That requirement is met when parties are in danger of permanently losing substantial rights. In re E. Texas Med. Ctr., No. 12-17-00183-CV, 2017 WL 4675511, at *2 (Tex. App.—Tyler Oct. 18, 2017, no pet.) (mem. op.). An order spelling out how a trustee manages a ranch while the trust is wound up is not that.
The court denied the petition and also denied Bausch’s December 5, 2025 motion to stay the underlying proceedings.
Read the sixteen powers again and the result makes sense. The trial court was not reciting boilerplate. It was writing operating rules for an active fight among people who no longer trusted each other to share access to a ranch — who could enter it, who could lease it, who had to account for the rent. District courts are built to manage that kind of ongoing friction and adjust as it develops, with review available on appeal once there is a final judgment. An appellate court that stepped in mid-stream every time a beneficiary disliked one of those adjustments would be running the trust itself.
The Takeaway
In re Bausch is a reminder that the path to mandamus in a Texas trust dispute is narrow. If you disagree with the scope of authority a court gives a successor trustee, the answer is almost always an ordinary appeal, not an emergency writ — even when the order was signed without a hearing. And if the order was signed without a hearing, move for reconsideration and get one: that protects your record, but it also means the due process complaint largely goes away once the court hears you out and sticks with its ruling. Save the writ for the rare case where waiting would cost you a substantial right permanently, and be ready to explain why.
There is a drafting lesson too. This trust terminated when the youngest beneficiary turned thirty-five but never said how much each beneficiary got, and it had no workable backup when the named trustees died. Those two gaps are what put the family in court for years over a ranch nobody could agree how to divide. Name successor trustees several deep, say what happens if none of them accept, and state the shares.
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