Probate used to be handled by County Court at Law No. 2 along with everything else on that docket. In 2022 Judge Claudia Laird showed commissioners that probate filings had risen from about 1,000 a year in 2014 to 1,700. Guardianships went from roughly 400 to 900 over the same years. The Legislature created Montgomery County Probate Court No. 1, effective October 1, 2023, and the County Clerk serves as its clerk. A simple independent administration with cooperative heirs is still a matter of months. An heirship with relatives in three states takes longer.

Mortgage foreclosure in Texas is non-judicial, and Montgomery County follows the state calendar. A homestead owner gets a notice giving at least 20 days to cure. After that, the notice of sale has to be posted at the courthouse, filed with the County Clerk and mailed at least 21 days before the first Tuesday sale. Sales run between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the courthouse or another spot in Conroe the Commissioners Court designates, and the notice itself says exactly where. There is no redemption after a mortgage sale. If a seller tells us the sale date is three weeks out, that date is real.

Tax foreclosure runs on its own track. The county's delinquent accounts are handled by Linebarger, Goggan, Blair and Sampson; Perdue, Brandon, Fielder, Collins and Mott; and Ray, Wood and Bonilla. The constables now hold the sales online through RealAuction, first Tuesday at 10 a.m. A bidder needs a certificate from the Tax Office confirming they owe no county taxes. If you buy a homestead that way, the owner can redeem it for two years, paying a 25% premium in the first year and 50% in the second. Buying from the owner before the sale is cleaner.

Condition here depends on water before anything else. In Harvey, Lake Conroe took in about 130,000 cubic feet per second at its peak and released 79,100. The river authority points out that the release was still about 40% below inflow, and that Spring Creek got more than 29 inches of rain on its own. Downstream, plenty of homes flooded for the first time. When we talk to an owner near the West Fork or Spring Creek, we ask how many times the house has taken water and whether it was rebuilt to current elevation.

Rural parcels raise a different set of questions. Outside the city lines in Magnolia, Willis, Splendora and the east county, a lot of homes sit on septic. A buyer's inspector will want the permit history, and an aerobic system needs a maintenance contract for as long as it runs. Owners who stopped paying for that contract years ago often don't know it is a problem. In The Woodlands, the Township enforces covenants, so the problem is more often deferred upkeep and a stack of violation letters.

A call we hear some version of more than you'd think: a woman in her sixties inherited her parents' house off the West Fork south of Conroe. It flooded in 2016 and again in Harvey. Her father turned down the buyout because he didn't want to leave, and the house has sat vacant since he passed. She lives in Austin. Nothing has been filed in the probate court yet, and her brother is a co-heir. Our note tells you all of that, plus her number and when she wants it done.