Dallas Commissioners Continue to Fail Dallas Probate Courts

A couple of years ago, we wrote about the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court’s failure to adequately fund the Dallas Probate Courts. We pointed out that some of these courts do not even have the ability to send a fax, make a long-distance phone call, or have a copier in the court offices when the Probate Courts in other counties have offices that are fully-equipped to function in the modern-era with copiers, fax machines, scanners, long-distance, etc.

Since that last blog post, not much has changed in Dallas County. The Commissioners’ Court continues to under-fund the Probate Courts. The most recent example of this problem came to light recently as we were working on a simple, uncontested guardianship where an adult son was trying to become his father’s guardian because of the father’s increasing alzheimer’s.

Under the Texas Government Code, every statutory Probate Court in the state is required, by law, to have a court investigator. The Court Investigator’s role is to go out and investigate each potential guardianship case and to make a recommendation to the Court as to whether it appears that there needs to be a guardianship created. The Court Investigator’s investigation and report is the very first step in a guardianship case, and until they have performed their duties, the case cannot proceed. Delaying the investigation often means delaying the ability to appoint someone to look out after the interests of an incapacitated elderly adult who cannot care for themselves any longer. The overwhelming majority of these cases deal with guardians for the elderly.

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Dallas Commissioners Continue to Fail Dallas Probate Courts