Not legal advice. This is one non-lawyer's account of a Texas justice-court eviction, published to explain the public procedure. It is not a substitute for a licensed attorney, it may be out of date, and following it guarantees nothing. Verify every deadline against the current statute and your own court's rules.
Williamson County Eviction Guide A pro se landlord's walkthrough · Texas justice court

What a Texas eviction actually looks like, step by step

I am not a lawyer. I am a small landlord who took one nonpayment case through a Williamson County justice court without an attorney, start to finish, and wrote down every step while it was still fresh. This is that record, with everything identifying removed.

Why this site exists

When I started, I could find two kinds of information: law-firm pages that stop right before anything useful, and the raw statutes. Almost nothing described the sequence — what happens, in what order, how long each part takes, what it costs, and which small mistakes quietly cost you weeks. This is the page I wanted and could not find.

The whole thing took 33 days

Notice on the door to keys in my hand. That is fast, and it only happened because nothing went wrong: the tenant never answered, never appeared, and never appealed. Treat 33 days as a floor, not an expectation. A contested case, a failed service attempt, or one reset adds weeks.

  1. Day 0Notice to vacate delivered Mailed first class, with a second copy posted at the property the same day. The mailing is the delivery that counts — see the door-posting trap.
  2. Day 1Notice period expired My lease allowed a shorter notice period than the statutory default. Read your lease before you assume three days.
  3. Day 4Eviction petition e-filed Filed through the state e-filing portal to the justice court for the precinct the property sits in.
  4. Day 8Clerk accepted the filing Submitting is not filing. A clerk reviews it, and it can come back for correction. Mine took four days to clear.
  5. Day 9Citation served by the constable You may not serve it yourself. Ever.
  6. Day 12Court issued the notice of hearing Read it closely — mine set out courtroom rules that changed what I packed.
  7. Day 21Exhibit packet sent to the court and the tenant Same PDF to both, with the send receipt kept as proof.
  8. Day 24Trial — default judgment She did not appear. A no-show is not an automatic win; see what a default actually requires.
  9. Day 29Appeal window closed Five days. Nothing you do during this window can speed anything up. Wait it out.
  10. Day 30Writ of possession requested Filed the first morning it was legally possible.
  11. Day 31Writ issued and posted The constable posts a warning at the property before executing.
  12. Day 33Lockout executed, locks changed Constable on site, my labour crew carried everything out, locksmith followed. Done by mid-morning.
The part nobody warns you about

Roughly two-thirds of the calendar above is waiting, and the waiting is not optional. There is a minimum gap between filing and trial, a mandatory appeal window after judgment, and a mandatory delay before a writ can issue. You cannot buy your way past any of them. Everything you can actually control happens in a handful of hours: writing the notice, assembling the exhibits, and showing up prepared.

Where to start

The process, end to end

All seven phases in order, with what each one requires and what the court is actually looking for.

Deadline calculator

Enter your dates, get every downstream deadline: notice expiry, trial window, appeal cutoff, earliest writ date.

Court day

What to bring, what to say, the four facts you must prove, and how to handle the common defences.

Writ & lockout

The last mile, where the money and the legal risk both spike. You supply the labour, not the constable.

What it costs

Filing, service, writ, crew, locksmith — and the honest odds of ever collecting the money half of your judgment.

Mistakes to avoid

The five that cost people weeks, including the notice-delivery rule that changed in 2026 and the judgment wording to check before you leave.

If you are the one being evicted

This site is written from the landlord's side, because that is the side I lived. But a one-sided guide is a worse guide, and you deserve to know the same deadlines I was counting. Start here instead — it covers what actually stops an eviction, the deadlines that matter most on your side, and free legal aid that can represent you. Do not take procedural advice from your landlord's website; get your own.

Four honest caveats

  1. One case is not a pattern. Mine was uncontested nonpayment. If your tenant hires counsel, raises a repair defence, or files a jury demand, your case will not look like mine.
  2. Justice courts differ. Even between precincts in the same county, clerks want things in different formats. Call your clerk and ask. They answer, and they are usually generous with procedure questions — just never legal ones.
  3. Texas eviction law changed on 1 January 2026. A great deal of what is written online about notice delivery is now simply wrong. See the door-posting trap.
  4. Winning possession is not winning money. I got a judgment for unpaid rent. I have collected none of it, and I probably never will. Why that is normal.

Every rule cited on this site links to the primary source. If you find something out of date or wrong, please open an issue — corrections are the most useful contribution anyone can make here.