| name | tx-family-law |
| description | Use for any Texas family-law / domestic-relations matter: divorce, annulment, community-property division, conservatorship (custody) and possession (visitation), child support, spousal maintenance, modification, and interstate jurisdiction. Triggers: "file for divorce in Texas", "Texas divorce grounds", "insupportability divorce Texas", "60-day waiting period divorce Texas", "community property Texas", "just and right division Texas", "Texas child support cap", "joint managing conservator Texas", "Standard Possession Order Texas", "Holley factors", "Texas spousal maintenance", "common-law marriage Texas", "SAPCR Texas", "UCCJEA Texas custody jurisdiction", "Texas protective order". Covers divorce grounds (Ch. 6), the 60-day waiting period (§ 6.702), community property (§ 3.003) and "just and right" division (Ch. 7), conservatorship & possession (Ch. 153), child support (Ch. 154), maintenance (Ch. 8), informal marriage (§ 2.401), SAPCR, UCCJEA (Ch. 152) / UIFSA (Ch. 159), and Title 4 protective orders.
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| version | 0.1.0 |
Texas Family Law
NOT LEGAL ADVICE. This subject-matter bundle describes a substantive framework for Texas
domestic-relations matters, not legal advice and not strategic advice for any specific case.
Family-law cases carry long-term consequences for property, children, and finances; strongly
consider consulting a licensed Texas family-law attorney even on an "agreed" divorce. Outcomes
are fact-specific; the choice of claims, defenses, and the parenting / support positions belongs
to the litigant (and any counsel the litigant retains). Verify every rule, threshold, waiting
period, dollar figure, net-resources cap, and citation against current law before filing.
This bundle supplies the substantive law of Texas family practice. The venue mechanics — the
District Court (and any designated family district court) where Texas family cases are heard, the
associate-judge system (Tex. Fam. Code Ch. 201), intake, e-filing through eFileTexas.gov, and the
caption / cover-sheet conventions — live in tx-family-court. Document format lives in
tx-statewide-format. Procedure is the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure (there is no separate
family-court trial court; family matters are heard in the District Courts).
Snapshot — Texas family-law principles
- No-fault and fault divorce. Texas recognizes insupportability as the no-fault ground —
Tex. Fam. Code § 6.001 — and a catalog of fault grounds at §§ 6.002–6.007.
- A 60-day waiting period must elapse after the petition is filed before the court may grant the
divorce — § 6.702 (with narrow family-violence exceptions — confirm in the corpus).
- Community-property state. Property possessed by either spouse during or on dissolution of the
marriage is presumed community property — § 3.003 — and the court divides the community
estate in a manner it deems "just and right" under Ch. 7.
- Conservatorship, not "custody" labels. Texas decides conservatorship (decision-making) and
possession and access (time with the child) under Ch. 153, with a rebuttable presumption
that the parents should be appointed joint managing conservators — § 153.131 — and a
statutory Standard Possession Order at § 153.252.
- Child support is a percentage-of-net-resources guideline model — Ch. 154 — with guideline
percentages that step up by the number of children before the court.
- Spousal maintenance is narrowly available — Ch. 8 — with statutory eligibility gates and
caps on amount and duration.
- Texas recognizes informal (common-law) marriage — § 2.401 — by agreement + cohabitation +
holding out, or by a registered declaration.
- Protective orders for family violence run under Title 4 (Ch. 81–88) — a separate track
whose findings can bear on conservatorship and possession.
Filing path — where a Texas family case goes
Texas family matters (divorce, annulment, and Suits Affecting the Parent-Child Relationship) are
filed in a District Court of the county of proper venue. Some populous counties designate
family district courts; many counties refer matters to associate judges under Ch. 201
whose recommendations become orders subject to de novo appeal to the referring court. The venue
mechanics, the associate-judge process, e-filing, and the caption conventions live in
tx-family-court. Parties are styled Petitioner and Respondent. The initiating pleading is
an Original Petition (e.g., Original Petition for Divorce); the responsive pleading is an
Original Answer (often a general denial under TRCP 92), and a respondent who wants affirmative
relief files a Counterpetition.
Divorce — grounds (Tex. Fam. Code §§ 6.001–6.007)
Texas lets a petitioner proceed on insupportability (no fault) or plead a fault ground.
- Insupportability — § 6.001. The no-fault ground: the marriage has become insupportable because
of discord or conflict of personalities that destroys the legitimate ends of the marriage and
prevents any reasonable expectation of reconciliation. Most Texas divorces proceed on this ground.
- Fault grounds — §§ 6.002–6.007. The enumerated fault grounds include cruelty (§ 6.002),
adultery (§ 6.003), conviction of a felony (§ 6.004), abandonment (§ 6.005), living
apart (§ 6.006) for the statutory period, and confinement in a mental hospital (§ 6.007).
Plead the specific ground and its supporting facts where a fault ground is used; fault can bear on
a disproportionate "just and right" property division and on maintenance. Confirm the current,
full enumeration in
../tx-law-references/references/tx-statutes-debt/.
- Annulment and void marriage. Texas also provides for annulment (e.g., underage, fraud,
duress, intoxication — Ch. 6, Subchapter B) and suits to declare a marriage void (bigamy,
consanguinity — Subchapter C). Identify whether the facts support annulment / void rather than
divorce.
Divorce — residency (§ 6.301) and the 60-day waiting period (§ 6.702)
- Residency — § 6.301. Before filing for divorce, a party (the petitioner or the respondent)
must have been a domiciliary of Texas for the preceding 6 months and a resident of the county
of filing for the preceding 90 days. Plead the residency allegation; confirm the current periods
against the corpus.
- The 60-day waiting period — § 6.702. The court may not grant a divorce before the 60th
day after the date the suit was filed (narrow exceptions exist, e.g., certain family-violence
situations — confirm in the corpus). The period is a floor on entry of the decree, not a bar
on filing. Calculate the count with
tx-deadlines.
Property distribution — community property (§ 3.003) and "just and right" division (Ch. 7)
Texas is a community-property state. The analysis is a characterization step followed by a
division step.
Step 1 — Characterize (separate vs. community)
- Community-property presumption — § 3.003. Property possessed by either spouse during or on
dissolution of marriage is presumed to be community property; a spouse claiming an asset is
separate must prove it by clear and convincing evidence.
- Separate property. Property a spouse owned before marriage, or acquired during marriage by
gift, devise, or descent, plus certain personal-injury recoveries (other than for lost
earning capacity), is separate. Separate property is confirmed to the owning spouse and is
not divided — the court divides only the community estate.
- Commingling and tracing. Separate property commingled with community funds so that it can
no longer be traced may lose its separate character; the spouse asserting a separate interest bears
the tracing burden (clear and convincing). Address tracing expressly.
- Reimbursement and economic contribution. Where the community estate funds improvements to,
or pays down debt on, a separate asset (or vice versa), a claim for reimbursement can arise
(Tex. Fam. Code Ch. 3, Subchapter E). Plead any reimbursement claim and identify the contributing
and benefited estates.
Step 2 — Divide the community ("just and right")
At divorce the court divides the community estate in a manner it deems "just and right,"
having due regard for the rights of each party and any children — Ch. 7 (§ 7.001). The division
need not be equal; the court may order a disproportionate division on factors such as fault
in the breakup, disparity of earning capacity, education, health, who has custody of the children,
and wasting of community assets. Separate property is confirmed to its owner; the court also
allocates community debts. Confirm the controlling articulation and any "just and right" factors
in ../tx-law-references/references/tx-statutes-debt/.
Conservatorship and possession (Tex. Fam. Code Ch. 153)
Texas frames child issues as conservatorship (rights and duties / decision-making) and
possession and access (the time-sharing schedule), all decided on the best interest of the
child.
Conservatorship — the joint-managing presumption (§ 153.131)
- Managing vs. possessory conservators. The court appoints managing conservator(s) (who hold
the bundle of parental rights and duties) and may appoint a possessory conservator.
- Joint-managing-conservator presumption — § 153.131. Unless rebutted, it is a rebuttable
presumption that appointing the parents as joint managing conservators is in the child's
best interest. The presumption is removed by a finding of a history of family violence
(§ 153.004), which also restricts conservatorship and possession. Joint managing conservatorship
does not mean equal possession — the possession schedule is set separately.
Possession and access — the Standard Possession Order (§ 153.252)
- Standard Possession Order (SPO) — § 153.252. For a child 3 and older, the SPO is the
statutory presumptive schedule (the familiar first/third/fifth-weekend, Thursday, alternating
holiday, and extended-summer framework, with an expanded SPO election affecting pickup/return
times). The SPO is presumed to be in the child's best interest and to provide reasonable
minimum possession; deviations require findings. Different rules apply for children under 3
(§ 153.254) and where distance between the parties is significant (§ 153.312 et seq.).
- Best interest — the Holley factors. Best interest is guided by the non-exclusive Holley
factors (Holley v. Adams, 544 S.W.2d 367 (Tex. 1976)) — the child's desires, the child's
present and future emotional and physical needs, any danger to the child, the parental abilities
of those seeking custody, available programs, the parties' plans for the child, the stability of
the proposed home, acts or omissions of a parent, and any excuse for them. (This is a stable
case cite.) In a contested case the court makes findings on the relevant factors.
Child support (Tex. Fam. Code Ch. 154) — percentage-of-net-resources guidelines
Texas child support uses a percentage-of-the-obligor's-net-resources guideline model
(distinct from an income-shares model): the guideline applies a percentage to the obligor's
monthly net resources that steps up by the number of children before the court.
- Net resources. Start from the obligor's gross resources (wages, self-employment income,
and the categories listed in § 154.062), then subtract the statutory deductions (income taxes
for a single person, Social Security / mandatory retirement, union dues, and the cost of the
child's health- and dental-insurance) to reach monthly net resources.
- The guideline percentages — § 154.125. A guideline percentage is applied to net resources,
increasing with the number of children before the court (with adjustments under §§ 154.128–154.129
when the obligor supports children in more than one household). State the model qualitatively; do
not rely on a remembered percentage table — confirm the current percentages against
../tx-law-references/references/tx-statutes-debt/.
- The cap on net resources — do NOT hard-code. The guideline percentages apply only up to a
statutory cap on monthly net resources (§ 154.125); above the cap, support requires proof of
the child's proven needs. The cap dollar figure is adjusted every six years by the Title
IV-D agency for inflation — point to the corpus and verify the current cap; never embed the
dollar amount as a load-bearing fact.
- Income withholding. Support is enforced primarily by an order / writ of withholding from
earnings (Ch. 158) — wage withholding for child support is an exception to the general
protections on wages. Medical and dental support are ordered alongside (§ 154.181 et seq.).
- Modification. A support order may be modified on a material and substantial change in
circumstances since the order, or if it has been 3 years since the order and the
guideline amount would differ from the current order by the statutory threshold (a percentage or
dollar threshold — confirm against the corpus) — § 156.401.
The guideline percentages, the net-resources cap, the multi-family adjustment, and the
deduction rules are amended periodically (and the cap is re-indexed every six years) — always
run the current Texas guidelines and figures rather than relying on stale numbers. See
../tx-law-references/references/tx-statutes-debt/ (Tex. Fam. Code Ch. 154) and tx-law-references
for the controlling numbers.
Spousal maintenance (Tex. Fam. Code Ch. 8)
Texas court-ordered spousal maintenance is narrowly available — Texas does not have liberal
"alimony." The spouse seeking maintenance must clear an eligibility gate (§ 8.051) and then the
court sets amount and duration subject to statutory caps.
- Eligibility — § 8.051. The spouse seeking maintenance must lack sufficient property
(including separate property awarded in the divorce) to provide for their minimum reasonable
needs, and fall into a qualifying category: (1) the other spouse was convicted of or received
deferred adjudication for family violence within the statutory window; (2) the marriage lasted
10 years or longer and the seeking spouse lacks the ability to earn sufficient income for
minimum reasonable needs; (3) the seeking spouse cannot earn sufficient income due to an
incapacitating physical or mental disability; or (4) the seeking spouse is the custodian of a
child of the marriage who requires substantial care due to a disability.
- Caps on amount and duration — §§ 8.054, 8.055 — do NOT hard-code. The duration of
maintenance is capped on a sliding scale tied to the length of the marriage (with exceptions
for disability), and the monthly amount is capped by statute at the lesser of a dollar
ceiling or a percentage of the obligor's average monthly gross income. The dollar ceiling and
the percentage are drift-prone — point to the corpus and verify the current figures; do not
embed them. The court weighs the § 8.052 factors (education, employment skills, duration of the
marriage, age, earning ability, contributions as homemaker, marital misconduct, etc.) in setting
amount and duration within the caps.
- Contractual alimony. Parties may agree to support beyond the statutory maintenance limits
by contract (often incorporated into the decree) — a separate animal from court-ordered
Ch. 8 maintenance.
Informal (common-law) marriage (Tex. Fam. Code § 2.401)
Texas recognizes informal (common-law) marriage. Under § 2.401, an informal marriage is
established either by (a) a signed, registered Declaration of Informal Marriage, or (b) proof
that the couple agreed to be married, and after the agreement lived together in Texas as
spouses, and represented to others (held out) that they were married. All three elements of the
proof route must be shown.
- Why it matters. An informal marriage is a valid marriage — it must be dissolved by
divorce, and it carries the same community-property and support consequences. Screen for it
whenever an unmarried couple separates after living together.
- The two-year presumption. If a proceeding to prove an informal marriage is not commenced
within two years after the parties separated and ceased living together, there is a rebuttable
presumption that the parties did not enter into an agreement to be married (§ 2.401(b)) —
pin the separation date.
- A party asserting an informal marriage must plead and prove its formation; a party denying it
contests the three elements (or invokes the two-year presumption).
Suit Affecting the Parent-Child Relationship (SAPCR)
A SAPCR is the Texas vehicle for establishing or modifying conservatorship, possession and
access, child support, and medical/dental support — whether brought standalone (e.g., by unmarried
parents, after a paternity finding under Ch. 160, or by a qualifying non-parent with standing under
§ 102.003) or as part of a divorce that involves children. The conservatorship (Ch. 153) and child
support (Ch. 154) rules above govern the merits of a SAPCR. Standing to file a SAPCR is itself a
threshold issue (§ 102.003) — confirm the petitioner's standing category.
Jurisdiction over children and interstate cases
- UCCJEA — Tex. Fam. Code Ch. 152. Governs subject-matter jurisdiction over child-custody
(conservatorship / possession) determinations. The child's home state generally controls.
Plead the UCCJEA jurisdictional allegations and the required information about the child's
residences for the prior period in the petition (the § 152.209 information statement).
- UIFSA — Tex. Fam. Code Ch. 159. Governs interstate child-support establishment,
modification, and enforcement, including registration of out-of-state orders and the
continuing, exclusive jurisdiction rules that decide which state may modify a support order.
Protective orders / family violence (Title 4, Ch. 81–88)
Civil protective orders for family violence are issued under Title 4 (Ch. 81–88) of the
Family Code — a separate procedural track from a divorce or SAPCR, though they are commonly
sought alongside one. A finding of family violence can remove the joint-managing-conservator
presumption (§ 153.131) and restrict conservatorship and possession (§ 153.004), so coordinate any
protective order with the parenting provisions across the cases. Temporary ex parte orders
(Ch. 83) are available on a showing of a clear and present danger; final protective orders follow a
hearing. The procedural mechanics live in tx-family-court; this skill addresses the substantive
overlay on conservatorship and possession.
Drafting checklist
Composition
- For format and the family-case caption:
tx-statewide-format
- For the District Court / family district court venue, the associate-judge process, mandatory
disclosures, e-filing, and the protection-order procedure:
tx-family-court
- For the county / clerk / court assignment:
tx-hcdc, tx-dcdc, tx-county-courts
- For drafting the petition / answer / counterpetition / motion:
tx-draft-motion
- For sworn affidavits / unsworn declarations (CPRC § 132.001) and financial information statements:
tx-draft-declaration
- For a proposed decree / order:
tx-draft-order, tx-submit-order
- For pro se conventions and self-represented intake:
tx-pro-se
- For the waiting period and other deadlines:
tx-deadlines
- For hearings and oral argument:
tx-hearings; for scheduling: tx-schedule-hearing
- For citation verification:
tx-fact-check
- For pre-filing quality control and packet assembly:
tx-quality-check, tx-file-packet
- For canonical Tex. Fam. Code text, the Texas child-support guidelines, and the TRCP:
tx-law-references
References
../tx-law-references/references/tx-statutes-debt/ and the Tex. Fam. Code corpus — divorce grounds
(§§ 6.001–6.007), residency (§ 6.301) and the 60-day waiting period (§ 6.702); community-property
presumption (§ 3.003) and "just and right" division (Ch. 7); conservatorship and possession
(Ch. 153 — §§ 153.004, 153.131, 153.252); child support (Ch. 154 — §§ 154.062, 154.125, 154.129;
modification § 156.401; withholding Ch. 158); spousal maintenance (Ch. 8 — §§ 8.051, 8.052,
8.054, 8.055); informal marriage (§ 2.401); SAPCR standing (§ 102.003); UCCJEA (Ch. 152) and
UIFSA (Ch. 159); protective orders (Title 4, Ch. 81–88)../tx-law-references/references/court-rules/ — the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure governing
family suits (no separate family-court trial court; procedure is the TRCP), including TRCP 47(c)
(statement of relief), 92 (general denial), and 99 (Monday-rule answer in District / County Court)- Self-help forms: TexasLawHelp.org carries the statewide guided family-law forms (divorce with
and without children, SAPCR, protective orders); the District / County Clerk and any Court
Assistance resources are detailed in
tx-family-court
