The Fort Bend County probate court admitted several wills to probate and issued letters appointing independent executors or admitting wills as muniments of title in a morning docket of uncontested matters. The court also routinely waived bonds and appraisers where the applicants qualified to serve without bond.

The court admitted the will of Horace Edsel Morrow and appointed his spouse, Beatrice Heitman, as independent executrix to serve without bond; appraisers were waived. “The court will admit the will to probate and appoint Miss Heitman as independent executrix to serve without bond,” the judge said after taking judicial notice of the document and hearing Heitman’s testimony.

In a separate matter, the will of Dan R. Owen Jr. was admitted and Rebecca Thompson Owen was appointed independent executrix to serve without bond and with appraisers waived. The court took judicial notice of the self-proving affidavit attached to the will and the witness testimony supporting its execution.

The court admitted the will of Karen Lynn Cone Gilbert as muniment of title and appointed her father, Leslie Allen Cone, as independent executor to serve without bond after testimony that the originally named executor had predeceased the decedent. The court noted that administration was required because of outstanding debts; the appointment was limited to issuing letters testamentary.

Testimony also supported admission of wills and appointment or issuance of letters in the matters of Ryan Terry (appointment of his mother, Rhonda Terry, as independent executrix), Deborah Carol Heard (appointment of Dow/Dal Hurd III as independent executor to serve without bond; hearing record contains inconsistent spellings of the witness’s name), Yasmin Kasan’s petition to probate the will of Anwar Shamsuddin Kasam as an instrument for title, and the will of John Steven Sudela Sr., which the court admitted as a muniment of title. In each uncontested matter the court asked questions about domicile, dates of death and the absence of revocation; when those matters were established the court admitted each instrument and issued appropriate letters or muniments of title.

The court repeatedly relied on judicial notice for documents on file and on witness testimony establishing four prerequisites commonly reviewed in probate hearings: that the decedent left the instrument as a last will, that it had not been revoked, that no subsequent marriage/divorce or birth/adoption altered intestacy questions, and that no state agency or charitable institution was named as a beneficiary. Where the will was self-proved or accompanied by a self-proving affidavit, the judge accepted it without additional formal proof.

Most petitions were uncontested and the judge closed each matter with the statutory orders requested: admission to probate, appointment of the nominated independent executor or admission as muniment of title, waiver of bond where applicable, and waiver of appraisers where requested. Several hearings experienced poor audio quality on Zoom that required the court to slow questioning or confirm answers on the record; in at least one matter the court noted inconsistent spelling of a witness’s name in the transcript.