James E. Brill is a solo practitioner from Houston whose practice emphasizes probate, estate planning, and real estate. He has served as editor, project director, and principal author of the Texas Probate System since 1971.n
You’ve led the development of Texas Probate System, which Forms Builder is based on, for many years. Tell us how these materials have evolved.
The first edition of Texas Probate System was published just in time for the 1972 State Bar Convention. It covered independent administrations and muniment of title proceedings. Two years later it was expanded to cover small estates, temporary and regular dependent administrations, administrations with will annexed, and proceedings to determination heirship. Although I had been sole author of Texas Probate System, I collaborated with several other lawyers to prepare this expanded version.
Over the years, Texas Probate System has been revised and updated at least five times. During this period, one edition was written by me with the help of my legal assistant Linda Woodall Bennett. In the remainder of the updates, Sue Mills, a member of the TexasBarBooks publications staff, provided research and writing assistance and carefully and gently edited my drafts. One recent development was the introduction of an electronic version available in WordPerfect, as well as in Word.
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