An executor is supposed to protect the estate. But an executor is also a person with her own property, her own bank accounts, and her own land. What happens when those two roles collide — when the person administering the estate sells something she personally owns, and the sale hurts the estate she is supposed to be protecting?
That is not a hypothetical. It happens when an executor and the estate own the same piece of land together as co-tenants. She sells her share to an outsider. The share she sold was never estate property, so the buyer says the probate court has no business hearing a claim against him. Is he right? Or can a Texas probate court reach the third party who bought the land?
The San Antonio Court of Appeals answered that question in Estate of Friend, No. 04-24-00445-CV (Tex. App.—San Antonio Oct. 22, 2025). The court had to decide whether a claim under the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act — brought against the buyers, not just the executor — belonged in the probate proceeding at all. The trial court said no and threw the buyers out of the case. The appellate court disagreed and put them back in.
Facts & Procedural History
Joanne Cooksey Friend had two daughters. Her will left her entire estate to one of them, Suzanne Friend Johnston, and made no provision at all for the other, Sarah Friend Neutze. Before she died, Joanne also signed four gift deeds conveying hundreds of acres to Johnston.
After Joanne’s death, the will was admitted to probate in the constitutional county court for Uvalde County — Uvalde has no statutory probate court, so probate matters are filed in the county court. Johnston was appointed executor.
Neutze contested. She argued the will and all four gift deeds were void as the product of undue influence, alleging Johnston had isolated their mother as her mental state declined and fed her false stories about Neutze. Johnston asked for a statutory probate judge to hear the whole proceeding, and the county court obliged, assigning a former statutory probate judge to hear all matters “with all rights, powers and privileges held by the regular judge of the court assigned and the attendant jurisdiction of a Statutory Probate Court.” That detail matters — it meant the assigned judge sat with the full jurisdiction of a statutory probate court, not just the narrower jurisdiction of a constitutional county court.
The jury sided with Neutze and found undue influence. The court set aside the will and three of the four gift deeds. Johnston appealed and lost. Because the will was void, Joanne died intestate — meaning both daughters were now heirs. On December 1, 2023, Johnston was removed as executor.
That is the background. The fight that produced this appeal involved a different piece of land.
Separate from the acreage covered by the voided gift deeds, there was a valuable sixty-seven-acre riverfront tract in Real County. Three parties owned undivided interests in it as tenants in common: Johnston, Neutze, and the estate. Johnston’s 28/67 interest came to her through a series of transfers from her mother between 2004 and 2007. Neutze never challenged those transfers. Johnston’s share of that tract was, on paper, hers.
In December 2021 — two years before she was removed, and while she was still the estate’s personal representative — Johnston sold her undivided interest in the Real County tract to Wayne and Betty Boyce. She also promised to convey to the Boyces any property she might later inherit from the estate, which would include part of the estate’s own undivided interest in the same tract.
Neutze filed a claim under the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (“TUFTA”), Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §§ 24.001–.013, in the estate administration proceeding. She named Johnston as the transferor and the Boyces as the transferees. Her allegations: the Boyces knew about the litigation between the sisters from prior business dealings with Johnston; they knew or should have known Johnston claimed to be executor and held her interest in co-tenancy with the estate; the transfer would devalue the estate’s interest and expose it to partition; Johnston did not receive reasonably equivalent value; and the sale left Johnston without enough assets to pay what she owed the estate and Neutze for her conduct as personal representative. Neutze asked the court to enjoin further transfers, void the general warranty deed to the Boyces, and impose a constructive trust on the Boyces’ interest.
The Boyces filed a plea to the jurisdiction. Their argument was simple: the interest they bought was never an estate asset, so a probate court cannot hear a claim against them over it. The trial court agreed, granted the plea, and severed the claims against the Boyces into a separate cause — which made the ruling final and appealable. Neutze appealed.
So the question for the appellate court was narrow but important: does a Texas probate court have jurisdiction over a fraudulent transfer claim against third parties who bought property the estate never owned?
How Far Does a Texas Probate Court’s Jurisdiction Reach?
To understand why this was a close call, you have to start with how the Texas Estates Code hands out probate jurisdiction. Probate courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. They cannot hear whatever walks in the door. The Estates Code sorts what they can hear into two buckets.
The first bucket is “probate proceedings.” Section 31.001 lists eight categories, and the one that matters here is subsection (6): “the settling of a personal representative’s account of an estate and any other matter related to the settlement, partition, or distribution of an estate.” That last phrase is deliberately broad. It is the catch-all.
The second bucket is “matters related to a probate proceeding,” listed in Section 31.002. In a county with no statutory probate court, that includes an action against a personal representative or former personal representative arising out of her performance of the duties of a personal representative, an action against her surety, a claim brought by a personal representative on behalf of an estate, an action brought against a personal representative in her representative capacity, an action for trial of title to real property that is estate property, and an action for trial of the right of property that is estate property.
A court sitting with the full authority of a statutory probate court gets more. Under Section 31.002(b) and (c), it can also interpret and administer testamentary and inter vivos trusts and take on any cause of action in which a personal representative of an estate pending in that court is a party in her representative capacity. And Section 32.001(b) adds that a probate court “may exercise pendent and ancillary jurisdiction as necessary to promote judicial efficiency and economy.”
In practice, courts applying Section 31.001 have boiled the test down to one question: is “the controlling issue in the suit … settlement, partition, or distribution of an estate”? That framing comes from the Texas Supreme Court’s decision in In re SWEPI, L.P., 85 S.W.3d 800, 805 (Tex. 2002), and the San Antonio court applied it in Johnson v. Johnson, No. 04-19-00500-CV, 2020 WL 214762 (Tex. App.—San Antonio Jan. 15, 2020, no pet.), where it found no probate jurisdiction because the tort claim at issue had nothing to do with administering the estate.
The practical lesson from that line of cases is that it is not enough for a lawsuit to touch an estate or name an estate party. A claim that brushes up against estate property on the edges stays out. The claim has to be about what happens to the estate. Compare In re Graham, 971 S.W.2d 56 (Tex. 1998), where probate jurisdiction existed over a divorce proceeding involving child support to be paid out of the estate because it directly affected how the estate would be assembled and distributed, with In re Campbell, 2025 WL 2247544 (Tex. App.—Eastland Aug. 7, 2025, no pet. h.), where a third party’s adverse possession claim to formerly estate-owned property fell outside probate jurisdiction because it had nothing to do with the prior administration.
What Does a TUFTA Claim Actually Require?
The other half of the puzzle is what a fraudulent transfer claim looks like. TUFTA lets a creditor undo a transfer the debtor made to keep assets away from the creditor. To void a transfer as actually fraudulent, the claimant has to show she is a creditor with a claim against the debtor, that her claim arose before or within a reasonable time after the transfer, and that the debtor made the transfer “with actual intent to hinder, delay, or defraud” the creditor. Tex. Bus. & Com. Code § 24.005(a)(1); Estate of Ewers, 695 S.W.3d 603, 643 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] 2024, no pet.).
Actual intent is rarely admitted, so Section 24.005(b) gives courts eleven factors to infer it. Several of them fit what Neutze alleged: whether the transfer was concealed, whether the debtor had been sued or threatened with suit before the transfer, and whether the value the debtor received was reasonably equivalent to the value of what she transferred.
The buyer is not without protection. Section 24.009(a) says a transfer is not voidable against a person who took in good faith and for a reasonably equivalent value. That is the transferee’s defense, and it is the reason the transferee has to be in the case — someone has to litigate whether he was a good faith purchaser.
And that is the structural point that drove the result in Friend. Proving TUFTA liability is, as the Dallas court put it in Wiemer v. Wiemer, No. 05-17-00370-CV, 2018 WL 3829268, at *3 (Tex. App.—Dallas Aug. 13, 2018, no pet.), a two-step process: first a finding that the debtor made an actual or constructive fraudulent transfer, then recovery for that transfer, or its value, from the transferees. Step two runs against the buyer. Section 24.008(a) confirms it — the remedies a creditor can get include avoidance of the transfer and an injunction against further disposition by the debtor or a transferee.
Which means the transferee is not an optional defendant. He is a necessary party. The Dallas court held exactly that in In re Glast, Phillips & Murray, P.C., No. 05-20-00557-CV, 2020 WL 6696371, at *5 (Tex. App.—Dallas Nov. 12, 2020, no pet.): where a claimant seeks to enjoin the transferee from further disposing of transferred assets, the transferee is a necessary party and severing the claim against him was an abuse of discretion. Without the Boyces in the case, Neutze could not get the deed voided or a constructive trust imposed. There was no relief available to her.
How the Court Ruled
The court started by rejecting the frame the Boyces wanted. It refused to look at the allegations against the Boyces in isolation. There were not two TUFTA claims — one against Johnston and one against the Boyces. There was one claim with a transferor and a transferee in it. To decide whether the court had jurisdiction over the piece aimed at the Boyces, it had to ask whether the TUFTA claim in its entirety fit the statutory scheme.
Looked at whole, it fit. Neutze alleged Johnston sold her interest to insulate herself from the damage claims still pending against her in the probate proceeding for her conduct as personal representative. She alleged the sale was concealed, that Johnston did not receive reasonably equivalent value, and that the sale devalued the estate’s own undivided interest and exposed it to partition by an outsider — against her mother’s expressed wish that “the ranch remain in the family.” Because a plea to the jurisdiction attacking the pleadings requires the court to take the plaintiff’s factual allegations as true, the court accepted all of that for purposes of the appeal.
The relief Neutze asked for pointed the same direction. Voiding the deed and imposing a constructive trust would put the estate back where it was before the sale so the sisters could actually divide the estate. The alternative outcome was partition of the tract. Either way, the estate’s interest in that land still has to be divided among the heirs, and the TUFTA claim determines how. That is settlement, partition, and distribution of an estate — the language of Section 31.001(6).
The Boyces leaned on Estate of Rushing, 644 S.W.3d 383 (Tex. App.—Tyler 2022, pet. denied), where a court found no probate jurisdiction. The court distinguished it in a sentence. Rushing was a fight over life insurance proceeds and whether an ex-wife could collect as beneficiary — a nontestamentary transfer of a nonprobate asset that had nothing to do with administering an estate. Nothing like a co-tenancy interest in estate land sold by the estate’s own executor.
Then the court got to the heart of it. Yes, Johnston held her 28/67 interest independently. But she held it while owing fiduciary duties to her co-tenants because she was the estate’s personal representative — and the estate was one of those co-tenants. A personal representative owes the estate and its heirs duties of good faith, fair dealing, and full disclosure. Harrison v. Reiner, 607 S.W.3d 450, 462 (Tex. App.—Houston [14th Dist.] 2020, pet. denied). And Texas law recognizes that a special relationship between cotenants can change the duties they owe each other regarding the land. Scott v. Struggs, 836 S.W.2d 278, 282 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 1992, writ denied).
The court went further and questioned the premise the Boyces were standing on. The idea that tenants in common hold fully independent title is already something of a legal fiction, because each cotenant owns an undivided share on paper but retains the right to possess, use, and enjoy the whole tract. Add fiduciary duties on top of that, and the interests become even more intertwined. So while Johnston transferred only her own share, the court would not ignore the direct effect that transfer had on the value and character of the estate’s asset.
The court was careful about what it was not saying. It did not hold that an executor can never sell property she personally owns. The holding is about jurisdiction only: Neutze pleaded facts showing her TUFTA claim affects the estate enough that the controlling issue is the settlement, partition, or distribution of the estate. Probate jurisdiction existed as a “probate proceeding” under Section 31.001(6), and the court did not need to reach the other jurisdictional grounds the parties argued.
The severance fell with the plea. Because there is one TUFTA claim and not two, splitting off the portion aimed at the Boyces divided a single cause of action — and “[s]everance of a single cause of action into two parts is never proper.” Sealy Emergency Room, L.L.C. v. Free Standing Emergency Room Managers of Am., L.L.C., 685 S.W.3d 816, 822 (Tex. 2024). It was independently improper because both halves turned on the same facts and issues. The court reversed both orders and sent the case back.
The Takeaway
An executor does not get to treat her personal dealings as off-limits to the probate court just because the asset she sold was never in the estate. When she owns land alongside the estate, sells her share while administration is open, and the sale is alleged to have been made to dodge liability for her conduct as executor, the probate court can hear the fraudulent transfer claim — and it can hear it against the buyers, too.
For heirs, the practical point is how you plead it. The Boyces’ argument was not frivolous; the interest they bought really was never estate property. What kept the claim in probate court was that Neutze pleaded the connection to the estate directly — the devaluation of the estate’s share, the exposure to partition, the concealment, and the link between the sale and the damage claims pending against the executor. Plead the effect on the estate, not just the wrongdoing, and ask for relief that restores the estate’s position.
For buyers, the warning is obvious. If you are buying a co-tenancy interest from someone serving as executor of an estate that owns another share of the same land, and you know there is litigation going on, you may find yourself a necessary party in a probate court you never expected to see. The good faith and reasonably equivalent value defense under Section 24.009(a) is real, but it is a defense you have to litigate — not a reason you get dismissed at the front door.
And for everyone: you cannot split the transferee off from the transferor and send them to different courts. If probate jurisdiction reaches the fraudulent transfer, it reaches the people who received it.
Our West Texas Probate Attorneys provide a full range of probate services to our clients, including helping with fraudulent transfer claims and disputes over a personal representative’s handling of estate property. Affordable rates, fixed fees, and payment plans are available. We provide step-by-step instructions, guidance, checklists, and more for completing the probate process. We have years of combined experience that we can use to support and guide you with probate and estate matters. Call us today for a FREE consultation.
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The content of this website is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. The information presented may not apply to your situation and should not be acted upon without consulting a qualified probate attorney. We encourage you to seek the advice of a competent attorney with any legal questions you may have.