Barton v. Buchanan, 03-02-00596-CV.
| Decision Date | 14 August 2003 |
| Docket Number | NO. 03-02-00596-CV.,NO. 03-02-00632-CV.,03-02-00596-CV.,03-02-00632-CV. |
| Parties | Robert Barton, Appellant v. Bettie Buchanan, Appellee. & Bettie Buchanan, Walter L. Jefferson, Barbara Lane Jefferson, and Julia Lane Goodwin, Appellants, v. Robert Barton, Appellee. |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Before Chief Justice Law, Justices B. A. Smith and Puryear.
This cause involves cousins who dispute the location of the property line between tracts of land they inherited from their respective parents. Following a long and tortured procedural history, the trial court sitting as a probate court rendered judgment on the jury's verdict, establishing the property line. The only issue on appeal is whether the trial court had jurisdiction over the cause. We hold that it did and affirm the trial court's judgment.
Two brothers, W.A. Barton and Johnnie Barton, owned an approximately 2000-acre tract of land in Bastrop County and farmed the land as an undivided joint enterprise. Prior to their ownership, the tract had been divided approximately in half by a fence. By the time W.A. and Johnnie took possession, the two tracts had been merged into common ownership and each brother held an undivided interest in the whole tract. In 1960, W.A. and Johnnie executed a partition deed and again divided the land in half; W.A. took the northern portion, known historically as the Warren Place, and Johnnie took the southern portion, known as the Barton Place. The 1960 partition deed divides the land by a metes and bounds description. In 1987, W.A. died, and his estate, including the Warren Place, passed to Robert Barton and his siblings. In 1988, Johnnie died, and his estate passed to his daughter, Bettie Buchanan, and to the estate of Helen Waugh Barton, his late wife; assets belonging to Helen's estate were divided between Buchanan and her half-sisters Julia Lane Goodwin and Barbara Lane Jefferson (collectively, "Buchanan"). In 1989, Barton commissioned Dale Olson to conduct a survey to locate the property line dividing the Warren Place from the Barton Place. Buchanan and others had always assumed that the properties were divided along a strip once marked by a road, but Olson's survey showed that the boundary was actually several hundred feet south of that assumed line. This diminished the Barton Place by some ninety-two acres. In 1989, Barton built a fence along the new property line defined by the Olson survey, claiming the ninety-two acres Buchanan had understood belonged to Johnnie's estate. In 1990, while the estates of W.A., Johnnie, and Helen were pending in the statutory county court sitting in probate, Buchanan, as independent administratrix of Johnnie's estate, filed in the same court a trespass-to-try-title suit against Barton as an individual and as co-independent administrator of W.A.'s estate, claiming the disputed ninety-two acres belonged to Johnnie's and Helen's estates, not W.A.'s estate (our cause number 03-02-00632-CV, trial court cause number 90-1497-CCL).1
In 1996, Buchanan's suit was dismissed for want of prosecution, and in 1998 she filed a petition for bill of review, seeking to reinstate her trespass-to-try-title suit (our cause number 03-02-00596-CV, trial court cause number 98-4923).2 In 2001, the county court granted the bill of review and reinstated Buchanan's suit; in 2002, the title dispute was submitted to a jury. After the jury returned a verdict in
favor of Barton, Buchanan filed a motion to dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction, which the trial court overruled. Buchanan appeals from the judgment entered in the trespass-to-try-title suit, arguing that the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the reinstated trespass-to-try-title suit because the probate estates had closed. Barton brings an appeal in the bill-of-review suit, arguing that if the trial court lacked jurisdiction to define the boundaries of the two tracts, it erred in granting the bill of review and reinstating the trespass-to-try-title suit.3
Whether a trial court has subject matter jurisdiction is a question of law that we review de novo. Herring v. Welborn, 27 S.W.3d 132, 136 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2000, pet. denied). Generally, district courts have exclusive jurisdiction to determine title to real property. See Tex. Const. art. 5, § 8; Tex. Gov't Code Ann. § 26.043 (West 1988); Falcon v. Ensignia, 976 S.W.2d 336, 338 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi 1998, no pet.). However, a county court at law sitting in probate has jurisdiction to hear "all matters incident to an estate" already pending before the court. Tex. Prob. Code Ann. § 5(f) (West 2003); see Bailey v. Cherokee County Appraisal Dist., 862 S.W.2d 581, 585 (Tex. 1993); Goodman v. Summit at West Rim, Ltd., 952 S.W.2d 930, 933 (Tex. App.—Austin 1997, no pet.). Matters incident to an estate are "generally all matters relating to the settlement, partition, and distribution" of the estate, including claims by or against the estate and actions to try title to land incident to the estate. Tex. Prob. Code Ann. § 5A(a) (West 2003); see Bailey, 862 S.W.2d at 585. Therefore, a statutory county court sitting in probate would have jurisdiction over a suit regarding title to real property only if it was incident to an estate being probated in the county court. Goodman, 952 S.W.2d at 933.
Although courts generally do not lose subject matter jurisdiction once it attaches, a probate court is a specialized court that can lose jurisdiction over matters incident to an estate if it loses jurisdiction over the probate matters. Id. (citing In re Estate of Hanau, 806 S.W.2d 900, 904 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi 1991, writ denied)). In other words, once an estate closes, incident claims are pendent or ancillary to nothing, and the probate court loses jurisdiction. Id.; see also Schuld v. Dembrinski, 12 S.W.3d 485, 487 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2000, no pet.) ("the pendency of a probate proceeding is a requisite for a court's exercise of jurisdiction over matters related to it"); Garza v. Rodriguez, 18 S.W.3d 694, 698 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2000, no pet.) ("before a matter can be regarded as incident to an estate . . . a probate proceeding must actually be pending").
This is an unusual situation in which the plaintiff fought strenuously to have her cause reinstated, seeking to invalidate a boundary between properties incident to three estates, then lost on the merits, and now seeks a declaration that the statutory county court lacked jurisdiction to decide the dispute. The record does not reflect that Buchanan filed a formal plea to the jurisdiction or motion to dismiss until after the jury returned its adverse verdict.4 To the contrary, her amended petition, filed after the reinstatement, stated, "This cause of action involves a controversy as to the location of a boundary line between two tracts of land . . . located in Bastrop County, Texas, fixing venue for this action in Bastrop County and jurisdiction in this Honorable Court." (Emphasis added.)
Buchanan moved to dismiss only after the jury returned its verdict that the Olson survey properly located the dividing line between the Warren Place, belonging to W.A.'s estate, and the Barton Place, belonging to Johnnie's and Helen's estates. She attached (1) a 1993 document from the administrator of Helen's estate reciting that the estate's administration was "substantially complete," (2) a 2001 tax form indicating that all assets of Johnnie's estate had been distributed, and (3) her affidavit, in which she states, "From the records of the probate proceedings in the Estate of W.A. Barton, Deceased, it is apparent that all matters in the probate proceedings of Estate of W.A. Barton, Deceased concluded several years ago." Thus, she argues, all three estates were closed and the probate court lacked
jurisdiction over her suit to try title.
The independent administration of a decedent's estate may be formally closed by the administrator's filing of a final account verified by affidavit. Tex. Prob. Code Ann. § 151 (West 2003); Texas Commerce Bank-Rio Grande Valley, N.A. v. Correa, 28 S.W.3d 723, 727-28 (Tex. App.—Corpus Christi 2000, pet. denied); Hanau, 806 S.W.2d at 903. A distributee of the estate may also file an application to close the administration. Tex. Prob. Code Ann. § 152 (West 2003). However, an affidavit or application for closure is not required to close an independent administration; an independent administration is considered closed when all property has been distributed and debts have been paid as fully as the assets allowed. Correa, 28 S.W.3d at 728; Hanau, 806 S.W.2d at 903. But see Ford v. Roberts, 478 S.W.2d 129, 132 (Tex. Civ. App.—Dallas 1972, writ ref'd n.r.e.) (quoting Bradford v. Bradford, 377 S.W.2d 747, 749 (Tex. Civ. App.—Texarkana 1964, writ ref'd n.r.e.)) (independent administration is not closed "until the independent executor, or someone interested in the estate, filed the necessary pleadings and asks the county court to declare the administration closed").
Barton responds, and we agree, that the record does not establish that the probate court affirmatively lacked jurisdiction. This title dispute dates back to 1990, when all three estates were open and this suit to determine title was properly within the probate jurisdiction of the court as a matter incident to those estates. See Seay v. Hall, 677 S.W.2d 19, 23 (Tex. 1984) (). From 1990, when Buchanan initiated this lawsuit, until the present there has been an ongoing dispute as to which brother's estate held title to the ninety-two acres. Despite...
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