Probate files move between courts all the time. A county court sends a case up to the district court because a fight looks like it is coming. Months or years later, the file gets sent back. Everybody keeps filing in whatever court currently has the paperwork, and nobody thinks twice about it.
That works fine for routine administration. It does not work when an heir shows up later and tries to undo the order that admitted the will to probate. A will contest and a statutory bill of review are both direct attacks on that order. And a direct attack has to be filed in the court that actually signed the order — not the court holding the file today. File in the wrong one and the court has no power to hear you at all.
The Texarkana Court of Appeals worked through exactly that problem in In re Peek, No. 06-25-00121-CV (Tex. App.—Texarkana May 14, 2026, orig. proceeding) (mem. op.). A daughter filed both a will contest and a probate bill of review in the county court. The probate order she wanted set aside had been signed by the district court. The question was whether the county court could hear her challenge — and the answer shaped whether her case existed at all.
Facts & Procedural History
Thomas Ray Peek died on October 8, 2021. He left two children: a son, Thomas Blane Peek, and a daughter, Belinda Presswood.
Six days after the death, on October 14, 2021, the son filed an application in the Red River County Court to probate his father’s 2017 will. That will gave him everything. Its operative language read: “I give, devise and bequeath all of my estate of whatsoever kind and wheresoever situated to my son, THOMAS B. PEEK, for him to distribute according to my wishes.”
The hearing was set for 11:00 a.m. on October 26, 2021. At 10:22 that morning — thirty-eight minutes before the hearing — Belinda filed a pro se motion for continuance. She said she had not received adequate notice of the hearing or even of her father’s death. She wrote that she “believe[d] [she is] a Beneficiary in [her] father’s Will and [she has] not received a copy,” and asked for time to decide whether she needed a lawyer.
The county court granted the continuance. Then, at 1:00 p.m. that same afternoon, the county court on its own motion transferred the whole matter to “a Court with General Probate Jurisdiction” — the 6th District Court of Red River County.
On February 14, 2022, the district court admitted the 2017 will to probate and appointed the son independent executor. The son then asked to move the case back down, telling the court that “no one appeared to contest the Application to Admit the [2017] Will to Probate.” The file returned to the county court on May 11, 2022.
Nothing happened for almost two years. Then, on January 23, 2024, Belinda asked the county court to assign a statutory probate judge, saying contested matters were coming. Two days later she filed her petition contesting the will. She argued the 2017 will was not executed with the formalities Texas law requires, was signed without testamentary intent, was signed when her father lacked testamentary capacity, and was the product of undue influence. She wanted the will thrown out and the February 2022 probate order “set aside as if it was never signed.”
On February 12, 2024, she added a probate bill of review, asking the county court to “find substantial error in this record and declare the Probate Order void, remove the Independent Executor, and cancel his Letters Testamentary.” Her theory ran through the 2021 transfer: the county court had no authority to send the case to the district court because no contest was on file at the time, so the district court never had jurisdiction, so the probate order was void.
The son answered with a plea to the jurisdiction and a Rule 91a motion to dismiss. His position was simple: both filings were direct attacks on an order the district court signed, so both belonged in the district court. The county court denied everything. The son took it up on mandamus.
One more fact matters. Belinda died while the case was pending. Her son, Joshua Presswood, qualified as independent administrator of her estate and stepped in as the real party in interest.
Where Does a Statutory Bill of Review Have to Be Filed?
To see why this case came out the way it did, you first have to understand what a bill of review is and what the statute actually says about it.
A bill of review is how you attack a judgment that has gone final — one that is too old to appeal and too old for a motion for new trial. Texas recognizes both an equitable version and a statutory one. In probate, the statutory version comes from Texas Estates Code section 55.251(a), which reads: “An interested person may, by a bill of review filed in the court in which the probate proceedings were held, have an order or judgment rendered by the court revised and corrected on a showing of error in the order or judgment, as applicable.”
Subsection (b) puts a hard clock on it: “A bill of review to revise and correct an order or judgment may not be filed more than two years after the date of the order or judgment, as applicable.”
So there are two limits. You have two years, and you have to file it in the right court. The second one sounds obvious until a probate file has bounced between two courthouses. Does “the court in which the probate proceedings were held” mean the court sitting on the file now, or the court that signed the order you are attacking?
The Texas Supreme Court answered that in Valdez v. Hollenbeck, 465 S.W.3d 217, 226 (Tex. 2015): “Because it is a direct attack, a bill of review must be filed in the court that rendered the original judgment, and only that court may exercise jurisdiction over the bill.” It is the court that rendered the judgment. Nothing else.
That brings up the other piece of the puzzle — the difference between a void judgment and a voidable one. It sounds like law school hairsplitting. It is not. It decides where you get to file.
A judgment is void “only when it is apparent that the court rendering the judgment had no jurisdiction of the parties, no jurisdiction of the subject matter, no jurisdiction to enter the judgment, or no capacity to act as a court.” Everything short of that — including a court doing something a statute told it not to do — makes the judgment merely voidable, correctable “through the ordinary appellate process or other proper proceedings.”
Here is why that matters in practice. Only a void judgment can be attacked collaterally, meaning sideways, in some other proceeding. A voidable judgment has to be attacked head-on, in the court that entered it, using one of the procedures the Legislature provided. So a challenger who can convince a court that the order is void gets flexibility. A challenger stuck with “voidable” gets one courthouse and one clock.
A will contest sits on the voidable side. Texas Estates Code section 256.204(a) gives an interested person two years to contest a probated will: “After a will is admitted to probate, an interested person may commence a suit to contest the validity thereof not later than the second anniversary of the date the will was admitted to probate, except that an interested person may commence a suit to cancel a will for forgery or other fraud not later than the second anniversary of the date the forgery or fraud was discovered.” A contest under that statute is one of several ways the Legislature lets an interested person directly attack a probate order — a statutory bill of review is another. Those procedures are what keep a probate order voidable and open to attack in the first place.
What the Court Decided
The court took Belinda’s filings one at a time, and neither survived.
Start with the piece aimed at the 2021 transfer order. The county court signed that order on October 26, 2021. Belinda filed her bill of review on February 12, 2024 — more than two years later. Section 55.251(b) closes the door at two years, so the court held that any part of her bill of review attacking the transfer order was untimely and should have been dismissed. The court never reached whether the transfer was proper. It did not have to.
That left the part aimed at the probate order itself. Belinda’s answer to the timing problem was that the probate order was void, not voidable, because the bad transfer stripped the district court of jurisdiction. Joshua pressed the same theory, adding that probate jurisdiction is in rem and that a probate administration is one continuous proceeding from start to finish — so with the file back in the county court, that was a fine place to file.
The court did not buy it. The transfer back “did not confer jurisdiction to the County Court to determine, via bill of review, whether a District Court’s probate order should be upheld.” The county court had not signed the probate order. That was the whole analysis. As the court put it, quoting the Houston First Court of Appeals in Smith v. Casey Lending, LLC, No. 01-22-00954-CV, 2026 WL 233133, at *17 (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] Jan. 29, 2026, no pet.): “The requirement that a bill of review be filed in the same court that rendered the judgment under attack is a matter of jurisdiction, not merely a matter of venue.”
That word choice does a lot of work. Venue problems get waived, agreed around, or cured by a transfer. Jurisdiction problems do not. The county court could hold the file, supervise the administration, and sign routine orders all day long, and it still had no power to revisit the district court’s probate order.
The will contest went the same direction, for the same reason. The court had said long ago that “[a] suit to set aside or cancel a will that has been probated is a direct attack upon the judgment admitting the will to probate.” Aston v. Lyons, 577 S.W.2d 516, 518 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 1979, no writ). The district court admitted the 2017 will. So the contest was a direct attack on a district court order, and it belonged in the district court. Denying the plea to the jurisdiction on the will contest was error too.
Getting mandamus relief was its own hurdle. Rulings on pleas to the jurisdiction are usually treated as ordinary trial rulings you fix on appeal, not by writ. Two things pushed this case past that. First, the Texas Supreme Court has held mandamus available when a trial court wrongly refuses a Rule 91a motion to dismiss. Second, and more to the point here, mandamus is the tool for sorting out one court stepping on another court’s jurisdiction. That is what was happening — the county court was actively interfering with the district court’s authority over its own probate order. Letting the case grind forward in a court with no power over it would have burned the family’s money and the court’s time on proceedings destined for reversal.
So the court conditionally granted the writ and directed the county court to withdraw its rulings and dismiss both the will contest and the bill of review for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
The Takeaway
Jurisdiction over a challenge to a probate order does not follow the file. It follows the court that signed the order. If you are going to attack an order admitting a will to probate — by contest, by bill of review, or otherwise — pull the order first and look at whose signature is on it. That is your courthouse, even if the case has since been moved somewhere else and even if the estate has been administered there for years.
Watch the two-year clocks, and know which order each one runs from. The clock on a bill of review runs from the date of the order you are attacking, not from the day you found out about it. Belinda lost her shot at the transfer order purely on timing — the court never had to decide whether the transfer was legal, because she was late. Her contest of the will ran under a separate two-year deadline in section 256.204, measured from the day the will was admitted.
And do not count on “the order is void” to rescue a filing in the wrong court. It is a narrow argument. A court acting contrary to a statute produces a voidable order, not a void one, and voidable means one court and one deadline. If you are an heir who thinks something went wrong in a probate, the time to get a lawyer looking at the file is when you first hear about it — not two years later, when the only question left is whether you filed on time and in the right place.
Our San Antonio Probate Attorneys provide a full range of probate services to our clients, including helping with will contests and bills of review challenging a probate order. 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 attorney consultation.
Disclaimer
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.
