Updated September 7, 2026. Quick answer: Texas does not use the death-based or publication-triggered rule most states use. Deadline (only if the personal representative elects to mail individual notice): 121 days after the creditor receives that notice.
What is the creditor-claim deadline in Texas?
| Deadline (only if the personal representative elects to mail individual notice) | 121 days after the creditor receives that notice |
“A claim may be presented to a personal representative of an estate at any time before the estate is closed if suit on the claim has not been barred by the general statutes of limitation. … If a personal representative gives a notice permitted by Section 308.054 to an unsecured creditor for money and the creditor’s claim is not presented before the 121st day after the date of receipt of the notice, the claim is barred.”
What makes Texas different
Texas has no non-claim statute in the traditional sense; a creditor may present a claim at any time before the estate closes, subject only to the ordinary (non-probate) statutes of limitations; the one hard, day-counted bar arises only if the personal representative elects to mail individualized notice, which then bars that one creditor’s claim after 121 days.
Does this deadline apply the same way if the estate never opens probate?
These deadlines are creatures of the probate process itself; they run once an estate is opened (by publication, mailing, appointment, or the grant of letters, depending on Texas’s own rule above). A creditor of a decedent whose estate never enters probate at all is not cut off by this particular statute, though the underlying debt’s own ordinary statute of limitations still applies.
Sources
| Statute | Tex. Estates Code §§ 355.001, 355.060, 308.054 |
| Texas courts (general reference) | Texas judicial branch |
| Confidence | High |
Every statute quoted on this page was read directly from the state’s own legislature/code site this session, or, where that site blocked automated access, from a reputable legal-citation mirror quoting the same official text with its official citation (disclosed below). General information, not legal advice; the exact deadline in a given estate can turn on facts (whether a personal representative was appointed, whether notice was ever published or mailed) that only your own probate court file can confirm.