Your state’s pack. New issues arrive periodically on Mondays. Bookmark it. I built this for the Texas T&E solo who knows the Texas Estates Code (not the UPC) cold but still loses an afternoon a week hunting the current homestead number, the STAR+PLUS (HHSC) waiver posture, whether the latest State Bar of Texas Professional Ethics Committee opinion changes how you scope an engagement, or whether a recent Texas Courts of Appeals decision just moved the law on capacity, undue influence, or a trustee’s duties. What’s below is what mattered in Texas lately — the week’s developments and the recent rulings from the bench.
For licensed attorneys. This pack is general legal information and professional commentary for practicing attorneys — it is not legal advice, does not apply to any specific matter, and creates no attorney-client relationship. Verify every authority against the cited primary source before relying on it with a client. Published by Mike Moss, a Utah-admitted attorney, as an AI-enablement information product; it is not an offer of legal services and is not a representation that the author is admitted to practice in your jurisdiction.
Three developments from the last seven days that I think actually matter to a Texas T&E solo. Each one has a read that lands on your practice specifically — and each one comes with the citation so you can verify the detail yourself before you use it with a client.
The 2025 session enacted a cluster of Estates Code amendments effective 9/1/2025: SB 1448 streamlines inter-county transfer of probate cases (original will e-filed), SB 1335 modernizes removal and discharge of personal representatives, and related bills clarify self-proving-affidavit and inventory rules.
These changes alter routine administration more than headline trust reform does. Update your probate-transfer and personal-representative removal/discharge procedures, and your self-proving-affidavit and inventory templates, to the post-9/1/2025 text — the inter-county transfer mechanics in particular change how you move a case.
Tex. SB 1448 (89th Leg., eff. 9/1/2025) · CAPITOL.TEXAS.GOV · SB 1448
This slot holds the week’s second Texas-specific development — a bill with a verifiable committee vote on the legislature’s site, a newly-issued ethics opinion, a state-bar section notice, or a Medicaid bulletin. The orchestrator populates it from primary sources, and the citation below carries the source URL so the reader can verify before using it with a client.
[Per-state why-it-matters paragraph lands here once the headline item is populated.]
[Primary-source citation with URL]
HB 149, signed 6/22/2025 and effective 1/1/2026, makes Texas the third state with a comprehensive AI law, using an intent-based liability framework with NIST-RMF safe harbors. It is a separate consumer-protection statute — distinct from the State Bar’s Opinion 705 (Feb. 2025) on competent, verified AI use.
Don’t conflate the two tracks. Opinion 705 governs your professional-conduct duty of competent, verified AI use; TRAIGA is statutory and adds prohibitions and disclosure duties for those deploying AI tools. A solo using AI-assisted drafting should map both — the ethics duty and the new statutory obligations — before relying on an AI workflow with clients.
Tex. HB 149 (89th Leg., eff. 1/1/2026) · CAPITOL.TEXAS.GOV · HB 149
Decisions that bind a Texas practitioner — Texas’s appellate courts and the federal courts covering Texas, including the U.S. Fifth Circuit — read for what actually changes how you draft, advise, and plan. Trusts and estates broadly, not Medicaid alone: wills and capacity, undue influence, fiduciary duty, trust construction, and estate recovery. One read, the holding, and the official cite.
A father’s will named his own father (Bill) as independent executor of his estate and trustee of testamentary trusts for his two young daughters. The granddaughters later sued Bill’s estate, through its co-executors, alleging he breached fiduciary duty and committed fraud by non-disclosure — he waited nine years to fund the trusts, underfunded them, and refused to share information. The trial court granted summary judgment for the co-executors on two grounds: the statute of limitations and the exculpatory clause in the father’s will. The First Court of Appeals affirmed, rejecting the beneficiaries’ arguments that the discovery rule and fraudulent concealment saved their claims and that the exculpatory clause was waived or overcome by willful misconduct or gross negligence.
For Texas fiduciaries and the beneficiaries who watch them, this decision gives real force to a will’s exculpatory clause: it can defeat a breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim against a trustee or executor unless the beneficiary raises a fact issue of willful misconduct or gross negligence. And the limitations clock is not indefinitely tolled — beneficiaries who suspect or are warned of mismanagement must investigate and sue, because the discovery rule and fraudulent-concealment doctrines will not rescue a claim brought too late. Draft exculpatory clauses deliberately, and counsel beneficiaries to act promptly on red flags.
Conover v. Conover, No. 01-24-00471-CV (Tex. App.—Houston [1st Dist.] Feb. 26, 2026) — Texas Court of Appeals memorandum opinion.
This slot holds the next significant trusts-and-estates or estate-recovery decision from Texas’s appellate courts or the federal courts covering Texas. The lane reads each opinion before it lands here, and reads-and-discards matters that aren’t trusts-and-estates — criminal, family, commercial/LLC fiduciary, tax, and cases where an estate or trust is only a party. When the trailing window has no further ruling, this row says so plainly rather than inventing one.
Nothing further to re-paper from the bench this period; controlling authority is otherwise unchanged.
This week in Texas for the T&E solo with Texas Medicaid (STAR+PLUS) clients: the developments from the State Bar of Texas (REPTL Section) and Texas HHSC that actually moved your practice this period — each one primary-source verified.
Bar and Medicaid changes land on different schedules and aren’t indexed by practice focus. Every item here was checked against its primary source, with the link, so you can verify before relying on it.