23-0067·Petition For Review
- Due process requires clear and convincing evidence to support a protective order that prohibits all contact between a parent and her children for more than two years under Family Code § 85.025(a-1), because such an order profoundly interferes with a parent's fundamental right to the care, custody, and control of her children in a way similar to termination.
- The trial court must also consider the child's best interest in deciding whether to ban all parental contact for longer than two years; because the court of appeals applied a preponderance standard, the Court remanded for a new hearing.
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23-0463·Petition For Review
- A spouse's death while her appeal from a divorce decree is pending does not moot the appeal where whether the marriage ended by decree or by death substantially affects her property rights, here her claim under the deceased's will.
- Whatever authority the Estates Code gives a guardian to seek a divorce for a ward, it at least requires findings by the guardianship court and the divorce court that pursuing and granting the divorce serves the ward's best interests and well-being; because neither court made them and the ward has died, the Court vacated the decree and dismissed.
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23-0507·Petition For Review
- Legally sufficient evidence supported a spousal-maintenance award under Family Code § 8.051 to a wife caring for a medically fragile child, even though she did not itemize her expenses: courts need not require exacting numerical detail and may credit qualitative evidence that a spouse cannot pay basic living expenses.
- In divorces with children, a court may count child support as property available to meet the spouse's minimum reasonable needs only if it also considers the child-related expenses she will bear, avoiding double-counting on either side of the ledger.
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23-0965·Petition For Review
- Endangerment under Family Code § 161.001(b)(1)(E) does not require that a parent's conduct directly harm the child; a pattern of behavior presenting a substantial risk of harm suffices, consistent with In re R.R.A., and a father's escalating criminal history, repeated incarceration and minimal effort to be part of his child's life were legally sufficient evidence of endangerment.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals' rendition of judgment for the father and remanded for it to address factual sufficiency of the endangerment finding and the best-interest finding, which the Court declined to reach.
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24-0053·Petition For Review
- A divorce court had jurisdiction to enforce its decree and award damages for a spouse's breach, but erred by reallocating 100% of the marital-home sale proceeds to the aggrieved spouse without evidence of the property damages caused by the breach.
- The line between enforcement and modification depends on the relief granted; redividing the property is prohibited.
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24-0149·Mandamus
- A trial court may order alternative security to supersede a money judgment under Rule of Appellate Procedure 24.1(a)(4) even for a judgment debtor whose net worth is $10 million or more; Rule 24.2(e), which requires alternative security for debtors under that threshold, is not the exclusive source of the authority, so the court of appeals erred in holding alternative security categorically unavailable.
- The Court found no abuse of discretion in the trial court's $147 million net-worth finding, which rested on crediting one side's valuation experts, and noted that tendering the very property whose valuation drove a $25 million bond generally will be adequate alternative security absent a particular need.
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24-0267·Petition For Review
- An order directing the clerk to "remove this cause from the Court's docket" and notifying the parties "this cause is hereby dismissed" is not a final judgment where it lacks other indicia of finality and does not dispose of pending counter-claims and sanctions motions, so the trial court kept plenary power to enter a sanctions order.
- The Court dismissed the appeal from the sanctions order for want of a final judgment, reversed the court of appeals' judgment vacating that order, and remanded to the trial court.
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24-0307·Petition For Review
- The evidence was legally insufficient to support terminating a mother's parental rights: she had shown greater awareness of the danger the father posed and a willingness to protect the children, so the Court rendered judgment for her.
- The evidence was sufficient to terminate the father's rights, and the Court affirmed as to him; three Justices dissented in part as to the mother.
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24-0315·Petition For Review
- A trial court abused its discretion by admitting a former family-court judge's expert testimony that the parties were informally married, because the informal-marriage elements are within ordinary jurors' understanding, so the testimony did not help the jury under Rule of Evidence 702, and it improperly opined on a legal presumption and said how she would rule as judge.
- The error was harmful because the testimony was crucial to the only contested issue on conflicting evidence, was not cumulative, was deliberately offered and was emphasized, so the Court reversed and remanded for a new trial; it did not hold that former judges may never testify as experts.
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24-0385·Petition For Review
- The Court vacated three temporary injunctions barring DFPS from investigating reports of gender-transition care for minors, because the families' claims were moot (investigations closed or no minor children remained), the advocacy group's claim fell with its members', and the psychologist's alleged injuries were speculative.
- It reversed the court of appeals and vacated the trial court's orders for lack of jurisdiction in a per curiam opinion without argument.
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24-0840·Petition For Review
- In a parental-termination case, a court may not terminate parental rights when someone speaking for the Department of Family and Protective Services, including its designated representative, has unequivocally said the Department is not seeking termination and the Department never repudiated that statement, even if its live pleading still requested termination.
- The Court rendered judgment appointing the mother parent non-conservator, the relief the designated representative said the Department sought, and remanded for the trial court to render a judgment consistent with that decision.
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24-0881·Petition For Review
- The Court affirmed termination of the mother's rights, finding legally sufficient evidence that her punishment of her eldest child was abusive, but reversed as to the father because the record lacked similar evidence of endangerment by him.
- Both parents' challenges to the trial court's jurisdiction failed because they raised statutory requirements, not subject-matter jurisdiction, and were not preserved.
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24-0910·Petition For Review
- In a divorce case, husband's unrebutted, clear-and-convincing evidence, including expert tracing of two premarital investment accounts, established they were his separate property, and the court of appeals had no lawful basis to reject it a second time.
- The Court reversed and rendered judgment for the husband in a per curiam opinion without argument.
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24-0919·Other
- A wife who was unaware that alternative service had been posted on her parents' door and never received the citation satisfied the first Craddock element, because not receiving the citation and being unaware of its service is an excuse that, if true and uncontroverted, negates intentional or consciously indifferent failure to answer, even if she knew a divorce suit was pending.
- She also set up a meritorious defense and showed a new trial would not cause undue delay or injury, so she was entitled to a new trial in the default divorce; alternative service proves how and when service was made but is no evidence of when the defendant received actual notice.
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24-0939·Petition For Review
- A Pakistani ex parte talaq divorce obtained through five days' publication in a small local newspaper, with no other effort to reach the wife, does not satisfy due process and cannot be recognized by a Texas court under principles of comity.
- The Court reversed the court of appeals and remanded for further proceedings on the wife's claim to a share of more than $100 million in community assets.
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25-0008·Petition For Review
- A trial court that intends to extend the automatic dismissal date in a parental-termination case but does not do so in writing or on the record before the date passes loses jurisdiction; the case is dismissed by operation of law.
- The Court vacated the judgments terminating the mother's rights in part and dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction over Justice Lehrmann's dissent.
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25-0098·Other
- A divorce-case mandamus over whether the attorney-client privilege and work-product protection shield communications between Michael Conner Searcy's assistant and his lawyers was set for argument February 11, 2026, but the Court abated the case and canceled argument on February 3 under Rule 7.2(b); it lifted the abatement and reinstated the case on April 17.
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25-0161·Petition For Review
- In a divorce with joint managing conservators, a parent awarded the exclusive right to designate the children's primary residence cannot be given less possession time than the other parent, because "primary residence" does not mean a home where the child lives less time than elsewhere.
- The Court remanded the possession order, and the child support, parental-rights, and appellate-fee rulings tied to it, but otherwise affirmed.
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25-0307·Mandamus
- The Court denied mandamus to grandparents who are nonparent joint managing conservators of their orphaned granddaughter and challenged temporary orders limiting their visitation to what the child agrees to, and Justice Young, joined by Justices Lehrmann and Busby, concurred in the denial.
- The concurrence found the grandparents' argument plausible that the order is an insurmountable hurdle because they have no way to contact the child, but denied relief because the final trial was set for September 23, 2025, and urged courts to review such conditions speedily in future cases.
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25-0474·Petition For Review
- Justice Young (joined by Justices Sullivan and Hawkins) concurred in denying a mother's petition for review because her appointed counsel's petition both argued ineffective assistance and stated that appellate counsel saw no non-frivolous issues, an Anders-style concession that the State seized on and counsel never answered.
- He noted counsel ignored the Court's February 27, 2026 order to clarify whether he was proceeding under Anders, and said counsel's conduct raises the possibility of professional discipline, though the loss of the mother's parental rights should "haunt" him more.
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25-0588·Petition For Review
- A parent whose lawyer's ineffective assistance caused an untimely notice of appeal from a parental-termination judgment may pursue an out-of-time appeal, the Court held in a per curiam opinion.
- The court of appeals must abate the appeal and remand for a hearing on whether counsel was ineffective; three Justices dissented, arguing an untimely notice can never confer appellate jurisdiction.
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25-0688·Petition For Review
- Justice Young (joined by Justices Devine and Sullivan) wrote that when the government treats termination as a "slam dunk" and fails to build a strong trial record, appellate courts cannot verify that termination was justified, as happened here: a 70-page transcript and thin exhibits led a fractured San Antonio court to reverse.
- He took no view on how the court of appeals should have decided the case, but urged the Department to present the evidence it has, including facts in its removal affidavit that were never put on at trial.
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25-0787·Petition For Review
- A court-ordered service plan doesn't "specifically establish" required actions—as former Paragraph (O) demanded—when it just requires a parent to "follow through with all recommendations" a provider makes later, or to "utilize learned skills" without ever identifying what those skills are.
- A parent's failure to get evaluated at one particular named clinic, when she completed equivalent evaluations elsewhere, is too trivial to support termination absent proof the specific provider actually mattered.
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25-0939·Petition For Review
- Whether Family Code section 151.001(a)(7), which gives a parent "the right to represent the child in legal action," allows a non-lawyer parent to file and prosecute a personal-injury suit on behalf of a minor child pro se, or whether doing so is the unauthorized practice of law under Government Code section 81.102.
- Whether Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 44 (next friend) authorizes a non-lawyer parent to appear pro se for the child, and whether the trial court properly struck the pleadings and dismissed the suit under Rule 12.
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25-0941·Petition For Review
- Justice Sullivan (joined by Justice Young) concurred in denying review but reminded trial courts that the 90-day deadline to finish a parental-termination trial, though not jurisdictional, is a duly enacted law they must follow.
- He criticized a Harris County court for starting trial with about three minutes of Zoom testimony to "check the box" and then stretching a four-hour, three-witness trial across five months without the written extension the statute allows.
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25-1072·Petition For Review
- Justice Lehrmann concurred in the denial of review of a retaliation suit by a charter-school employee fired after reporting her boss to CPS, giving no view on whether she was a "professional" under Family Code § 261.110, the question the court of appeals decided against her.
- She wrote separately to urge the Legislature to extend the retaliation protection to everyone required to report child abuse, not just "professionals," and left open whether the common-law Sabine Pilot exception could protect an employee fired for reporting abuse by her own supervisor.
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25-1123·Petition For Review
- After a parent's rights are terminated, may he still challenge on appeal the trial court's separate decision not to place the children with relatives vetted by the Department, or does he lose standing as a former parent once the termination is affirmed?
- Is the evidence legally sufficient to support the finding that terminating the mother's rights is in the children's best interest where she completed parts of a service plan and offered genetic explanations for the children's condition?
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26-0030·Mandamus
- A trial court clearly abused its discretion by sua sponte removing the public defender's office as a parent's chosen counsel in a parental-termination case; Article 26.044 does not bar the office from representing her there.
- Because the office acted as chosen counsel, not court-appointed counsel, the court lacked authority to remove it; the Court conditionally granted mandamus without argument.
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26-0077·Petition For Review
- Justice Sullivan (joined by Justice Young) concurred in the denial but said courts of appeals should stop relying on pre-2021 cases holding that denying a 180-day extension of the automatic-dismissal date is discretionary, because the Legislature has since made the extraordinary-circumstances finding mandatory when a parent made a good-faith effort and the goal is reunification.
- On these facts the mother was not entitled to a mandatory extension because DFPS's goal was adoption, and she probably did not make a good-faith effort: she waited about ten months after removal to start services.
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26-0316·Petition For Review
- Justice Sullivan (joined by Justice Young) wrote in five parental-termination denials, including this one, that in every case the trial court failed to make and separately describe the "reasonable efforts" findings Section 161.001(f) and (g) now require, yet no parent preserved the error.
- He reminded family courts to pay careful attention to statutes that tell them how to do their jobs and said a preserved error would likely require reversal or, at least, a remand for an amended order.
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