The Collection Purgatory

A case out of the Ninth District Court of Appeals, Wilcox v. Marriott, states that abstracts of judgment filed before the 1/1/2000 change in the homestead exemption (raising the exemption from one acre to ten acres) do create a lien on property greater than one acre, but executions would have to issue before 1/1/2000 in order to seize the property. So, in essense, the creditor has a valid lien on that land greater than one acre, but it can't do anything with it unless they served a writ prior to 1/1/2000. Thanks to Lisa Fancher of Fritz, Byrne, Head & Harrison for the submission.

Texas Local Rules

Another decent site for practitioners that collect in various counties in Texas. TexasLocalRules.com is a great site to find some of the local rules in one place.

Texas Appraisal District Web Site

It always has been a pain to Google certain categories of web sites. It's good to see a site that eliminates some of this pain for repetitive searching of appraisal districts. Check out TexasCAD.com ...One place, easy launch site for Texas Appraisal District search sites. We liked it so much, we placed an advertisement. Check it out.

Texas Exemptions and Life Insurance

New case out of the Fifth Circuit states that whole life insurance policy proceeds, if the policy is surrendered for cash prior to death, are not exempt under Texas law. See case here. Basically, exemption for insurance proceeds are only for the beneficiary. In this case, the owner of the policy is not the "beneficiary" of the policy, he is the "owner" of the policy, and the cash in is paid to him not as "insured", which would be exempt, or as "beneficiary", which would also be exempt, but as "owner".

Texas Process Servers

Process Servers in Texas no longer have to be authorized court by court, county by county. Now a process server may apply to the Supreme Court of Texas Process Server Review Board for authority to serve process throughout Texas. This is not exactly "news", since it has been effective since 2005, but many involved in collection litigation may not be aware.