When their mother passed, the Garza siblings — Elena, Marco, and Sofia — sat down at the same kitchen table where they’d eaten a thousand dinners and tried to figure out what came next.
Their mother had left a will and named Elena as executor. Elena had never done anything like this before. She was organized and capable, but she was also grieving, and the process in front of her felt enormous.
What I told Elena when she came to see me is what I tell every new executor: this is manageable, and you don’t have to figure it out alone.
In Texas, most estates go through what’s called independent administration — a process designed to give the executor room to work without needing court approval at every step. Elena could pay bills, manage the property, and communicate with beneficiaries without filing a motion every time she made a decision.
The court involvement was mostly at the beginning — filing the application, attending a brief hearing, getting appointed — and then Elena had the authority she needed to move forward.
From start to finish, it took about eight months. Some of that was waiting on financial institutions to process paperwork. Some was coordinating between three siblings in three different cities. A small piece of it was the court’s schedule.
Eight months sounds long when you’re in the middle of it. But Elena stayed organized, asked questions when she needed to, and kept her siblings informed along the way. By the end, the three of them sat at that kitchen table again — this time to sign the final paperwork.
‘Mom would have been relieved,’ Sofia said.
That’s usually the goal.