On day ninety-three, Carol Nguyen opened her laptop and typed the same search she had been avoiding for two weeks: "can I remove an executor for missing the inventory deadline in Texas."
Her mother had passed in March 2025, leaving a modest estate in Allen — a paid-off house, two bank accounts, a car, and a few investment accounts. Her older brother David had been named independent executor in the will. The relationship was strained, and the months since her mother's death had not improved it. David had qualified as executor in early April. By late June — day ninety-one after qualification — he had not filed a single document with the probate court. No inventory. No appraisement. Nothing.
Carol spent an afternoon reading probate articles. Most of them said the same thing: Texas law requires the inventory to be filed within ninety days. If the executor misses the deadline, beneficiaries can petition for removal. The message was clear and reassuring. She had a right. She had a remedy. The statute was on her side.
She called a probate attorney the next morning. The attorney walked through the law carefully, and Carol's sense of reassurance began to shift.
"The missed deadline is a real problem," the attorney told her. "But the removal ground that covers inventory failure — it belongs to the court, not to you. The articles you read glossed over a critical distinction."
The Deadline Is Real. Who Can Use It for Removal Is Not What You Think.
Texas Estates Code § 309.051(a) requires an independent executor to file an inventory and appraisement "before the 91st day after the date the personal representative qualifies." That is the governing deadline. Miss it, and the executor is in technical violation of the statute.
When the deadline passes without compliance, the removal authority that corresponds to it is in § 404.0035(a)(2). Here is the key phrase that most online summaries omit: the court on its own motion — or on the motion of an interested person asking the court to exercise its own authority — may remove an executor after providing thirty days written notice when the executor has failed to return the inventory within ninety-one days.
That phrase — "on its own motion" — is the distinction that changed Carol's strategy. Under subsection (a) of § 404.0035, the court is the actor. An interested person such as a beneficiary cannot independently invoke the 91-day inventory ground as a standalone basis for a removal petition in the way the articles she read implied. A beneficiary can alert the court to the delinquency and ask it to act. But the authority and the discretion belong to the judge, not to the petitioner.
This is not a technicality without consequence. Understanding which party controls a removal ground determines your litigation posture, your costs, and how much leverage you actually hold in a dispute with a delinquent executor.
What Beneficiaries Can Actually Use: § 404.0035(b)
The statute's subsection (b) — distinct from the court-initiated (a) — is where an interested person's direct removal remedy lives. Under § 404.0035(b), a beneficiary or other interested person may move for removal of an independent executor after personal service of citation for any of the following grounds:
- Failure to make a required accounting. An executor who refuses to account for estate assets — whether through formal reporting or in response to a beneficiary's requests — can be removed on this ground through a motion filed by an interested person.
- Gross misconduct or gross mismanagement. This is deliberately a high bar. An executor who has made poor decisions, communicated poorly, or moved slowly does not meet the standard. Courts require affirmative evidence of culpable conduct — misapplication of estate funds, self-dealing at the estate's expense, or willful disregard of fiduciary obligations.
- Incapacity or conviction. An executor who becomes legally incapacitated or is imprisoned can be removed on a beneficiary's motion.
- Material conflict of interest. A conflict that arose after appointment and that materially compromises the executor's ability to serve the estate objectively is a removable condition under subsection (b).
Notice what is not on that list: simply missing the inventory deadline. The missed deadline is a problem. But it is not, by itself, one of the § 404.0035(b) grounds a beneficiary can assert in a direct removal petition.
This is what the online summaries of Texas removal law frequently collapse. They note that missing the inventory deadline is a removal ground. They are correct — it is, under subsection (a). They imply that beneficiaries can use it. That is the slip.
The Narrow Grounds for Removal Without Notice: § 404.003
A second removal statute, § 404.003, allows the court to remove an executor without the notice period that subsection (a) and (b) both require. But the grounds are narrow and specific:
- The executor's whereabouts are unknown, the executor is evading service, or the executor is an out-of-state resident without a Texas-designated agent — making service of process impossible.
- Sufficient grounds appear to support a belief that the executor has misapplied or embezzled, or is about to misapply or embezzle, all or part of the property in the executor's care.
Neither of these is "the executor is slow with paperwork." An executor who has missed the inventory deadline but is otherwise reachable and not actively diverting estate assets does not meet the § 404.003 standard. That statute is designed for emergency situations — a fiduciary who has gone dark or who appears to be converting estate assets — not for garden-variety delinquency.
The Option Many Executors Don't Know About: The Inventory Affidavit
Before any discussion of removal, it is worth understanding that the Texas Estates Code provides an alternative to the full inventory that many executors and their families are unaware of.
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Under § 309.056, an independent executor may, in certain circumstances, file an affidavit in lieu of the full inventory and appraisement. The affidavit route is available when all debts except those secured by real estate, taxes, and administration expenses have been paid at the time the filing is due, and when all qualifying beneficiaries have received a detailed inventory directly from the executor. In that case, the executor files a short sworn statement with the court rather than a full, court-filed inventory.
A late executor who did not know about the § 309.056 option, or who misunderstood the deadline mechanics, may be in a situation where the solution is expedited compliance rather than litigation. An executor who files the inventory — or the affidavit in lieu — after the ninety-day window has passed is still in a stronger position than one who never files at all, and the court has discretion to accept late compliance in weighing whether removal is warranted.
The court can also grant an extension of the deadline under § 309.051(c) for good cause shown. A tardy executor who has a legitimate reason — illness, a contested asset requiring an appraisal, incomplete account records from financial institutions — may be able to get additional time on a timely motion to the court.
What Carol Actually Did — and What Actually Worked
Carol's attorney walked through the structure carefully. David, her brother, had missed the ninety-day inventory deadline by more than three weeks. He had not communicated with the attorney or with Carol about the status of the estate. He had, however, paid the mortgage on his own home from an account that Carol believed held estate funds — and she had bank statements that raised serious questions.
That last fact changed the analysis substantially.
The missed inventory deadline alone would have required a motion to the court asking the judge to exercise its own removal authority under § 404.0035(a)(2) — an indirect path that gave the judge discretion and David time to cure. But the potential misapplication of estate funds was a different matter. If the estate funds Carol had identified had in fact been diverted to pay David's personal obligations, that potentially supported both a § 404.0035(b) motion for removal — gross mismanagement or misconduct — and, if the pattern was clear enough, a § 404.003 emergency removal without the notice period.
Carol's attorney sent a formal demand to David documenting the specific transactions, requesting an accounting, and stating that a removal petition would follow if the estate account was not reconciled and the inventory was not filed within two weeks. David filed the inventory within eleven days, with an explanation for the account transfers that Carol found unsatisfying but that her attorney said would be difficult to litigate on the evidence available.
The estate moved forward. It was not the clean resolution Carol had hoped for when she first searched for "executor missed inventory deadline." But it moved.
The Three-Track Framework for Delinquent Executors
For families navigating a situation similar to Carol's, the practical framework looks like this:
Track 1: Ask the court to act under § 404.0035(a). File a motion documenting the missed 91-day deadline and asking the judge to issue the thirty-day notice to show cause. This is appropriate when the delinquency is clear and the goal is compliance, not necessarily removal. The court has discretion to give the executor time to file before ordering removal.
Track 2: Move for removal under § 404.0035(b) if other grounds exist. If the missed inventory is accompanied by failure to account, evidence of misapplication, gross mismanagement, a conflict of interest, or incapacity, a beneficiary has direct standing to file a removal petition. These grounds require a higher evidentiary showing than the calendar lapse alone, but they are grounds the interested person controls — not the court.
Track 3: Emergency removal under § 404.003 if misappropriation is occurring. If there is credible evidence that the executor has diverted estate assets or is about to, § 404.003 allows removal without the notice period. This is an emergency remedy and requires specific factual support — not just a belief that something is wrong.
The track that applies to your situation depends entirely on the facts. A slow executor who has not touched the estate assets is in a different legal position from one who is paying personal bills from the estate account. And both are different from an executor who has gone unreachable. The statute is structured to match the remedy to the severity of the conduct.
Why the Distinction Between (a) and (b) Matters Practically
In North Texas estates — in Collin County, Denton County, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area — co-executors, sibling disputes, and blended families are common sources of probate conflict. The independent administration framework that Texas uses gives the executor significant latitude without court supervision, which serves estates well when the executor is diligent and honest, and creates serious problems when the executor is not.
Understanding that the 91-day inventory ground is a court-motion ground — not a beneficiary-petition ground — matters for settlement negotiations. An executor who knows a beneficiary cannot directly invoke § 404.0035(a)(2) may interpret that as having more freedom to delay. An executor who understands the full picture — that persistent delinquency creates grounds for the court to act, and that surrounding conduct may independently support a § 404.0035(b) motion — has a more accurate picture of their legal exposure.
Families and beneficiaries benefit from the same clarity. A family that understands the actual structure of Texas removal law can evaluate a situation more realistically and decide whether the right move is to demand compliance, request accounting, ask the court to act, or file a removal petition based on conduct that meets the statutory threshold.
Get a Free Probate Case Review
If a Texas estate you are involved in has an executor who missed the ninety-day inventory deadline, or who has failed to account for estate assets or communicate with beneficiaries, WG Law offers a free probate case review to help you understand what the law actually requires and what your options are. This is not a full consultation — it is a focused review of your situation so you know whether you have a path forward and what it looks like.
Attorneys Therese Gutierrez and Philip Burgess handle probate matters throughout Collin County and the greater DFW area, including estates in McKinney, Allen, Plano, Frisco, and Southlake.
Call 214-250-4407 or request your free probate case review online to speak with our team.
For related reading, see our overview of WG Law's Probate practice, our guide to what probate costs in Texas, and our resource on probate litigation when estates are contested.
This article is general legal information, not legal advice for your specific situation. Executor removal and estate administration questions depend on the specific facts of the estate, the conduct of the executor, and applicable Texas law as interpreted by the presiding court. The statutes referenced — Tex. Estates Code §§ 309.051, 309.056, 404.003, and 404.0035 — are stated as of the date of publication. Consult a licensed Texas probate attorney before taking any legal action in an estate matter.