Helping my dad with this because English is his second language and the court stuff has been a lot. He owns one rental unit. I’ve been making the phone calls and reading the statutes and I’m hitting a wall...
Tenant signed a lease in March, $1,500 a month due on the first. She paid March. Skipped April entirely. Paid $1,500 in May. That’s it. One month’s rent since March.
My dad filed an eviction earlier in the summer and it got dismissed because she made a payment after the notice went out. He didn’t appeal, which in hindsight was a mistake since she still owed for a prior month at the time.
Second time around we were careful. Sent the notice to vacate certified mail, she never picked it up from the post office. So we sent it again by Priority Mail with tracking, confirmed delivered, gave a specific deadline instead of a “three days from receipt” thing. She didn’t pay and didn’t leave.
Filed in September. The constable couldn’t serve her in person so we had to get an order for alternative service. Bench trial late September and my dad won, possession plus $6,000 in back rent.
Per the first hearing, the judgment has a line on it that says, under Property Code 24.0053(a), that her monthly rental amount during an appeal is $1,500. Appeal bond also set at $1,500. Five days later she filed a Statement of Inability to Afford Payment of an Appeal Bond, so the appeal went through without her posting anything. She has not paid a dollar into any court registry since.
From what I read, 24.0054(a) says a writ of possession should issue immediately and without a hearing when a tenant appeals and then doesn’t pay rent into the registry. But there’s a second condition, which is that the justice court has to have given her a written notice under 24.0053(a-1) telling her the amount and the deadline.
I called the JP court about this. The clerk told me they don’t require registry payments at all, so they never gave her that notice. I asked again in writing and they confirmed it and sent me a policy memo citing a 2022 order from one of the county courts at law that declared 24.0053, 24.0054 and Rule 510.9 facially unconstitutional, the reasoning being that if you remove a tenant while their appeal is pending the appeal becomes meaningless.
So we’re in this spot where the judgment itself says she owes $1,500 a month into the registry, she’s paid nothing, and the court that was supposed to tell her about it never did, which apparently kills our ability to get a writ.
As of today the case was transferred to a different county court at law. Trial should be within 21 days. She’s at $9,000 owed right now and it goes to $10,500 on November 1.
Has anyone dealt with this JP court policy recently? That 2022 order was against the old versions of those statutes, and SB 38 rewrote all of them effective January 2026. It also added 24.0043 which says only the legislature can modify Chapter 24 procedures. I don’t know if that order is still good law against the rewritten statutes but it seems like a real question.
Has anyone actually gotten a county court to issue a writ under 24.0054(a) in a case where the JP court never gave the notice? A county clerk mentioned that landlords have been filing these, but I don’t know if any of them worked.
Also, can an LLC be represented at a county court eviction appeal by a non-attorney owner under 24.011(b)? The unit is in an apartment building. I’ve read that section a few times and I’m still not sure if it covers us.
And if anyone has a Dallas area landlord/tenant attorney they’d recommend, I’d really appreciate it. We’re willing to pay for a consult, I just don’t know who’s good at this specific thing.
Thank you in advance!