The Texas Eviction Process in Tarrant County (2026), Precinct by Precinct

The statute sets the clock. The county sets the room. Most of what goes wrong in a Texas eviction happens in the gap between the two.

As of September 2026, filing an eviction in any Tarrant County justice court costs $54, plus $90 for the constable to serve the citation, $144 for one tenant (Tarrant County Justice Court eviction pages, Precincts 1 through 8, read September 13, 2026). That number is the same at all eight courthouses. Almost nothing else is. Which building takes your case, whether you can walk a paper petition to the counter, what time the window closes, and how the constable runs the writ all depend on which precinct the house sits in. A rental in Saginaw and a rental in Arlington run under the same Property Code and through two different offices with two different sets of habits.

This is the 2026 version of the process, with the Texas rules that changed on January 1 and the county detail underneath them. It is general information from a property manager, not legal advice, and the day counts here are for a case with no bankruptcy and no appeal. The moment either shows up, the calendar belongs to an attorney.

How does the Texas eviction process work in 2026?

Six steps, in order, and the order is the whole thing.

1. Written notice to vacate. At least three days, unless the written lease sets a shorter or longer period (Texas Property Code Sec. 24.005(a)). Since January 1, 2026, the statute lists four ways to deliver it: mail, including first class, certified, or a delivery service; delivery inside the premises in a conspicuous place; hand delivery to any tenant 16 or older; or email and other electronic means, but only if the parties agreed to that in writing (Sec. 24.005(f-3), added by S.B. 38). If your lease has no electronic notice clause, a text message is not automatically notice under the safe-harbor delivery methods, but Sec. 24.005(f-4) says the delivery-method list does not apply if the tenant actually received the notice, so a text you can prove the tenant received still counts. Keep proof of whichever method you used; the judge will ask to see it.

2. File in the right justice court. The petition goes to the Justice of the Peace precinct where the property sits, not the one closest to you and not the one downtown because it is downtown. Tarrant County has eight. The table below is the map.

3. Service and the trial setting. The constable serves the citation. Every citation sets a trial date 10 to 21 days after the petition was filed (Tex. R. Civ. P. 510.8(b)(10)). S.B. 38 also added summary disposition for cases with no real factual dispute (Sec. 24.005106 for forcible entry and detainer; in a tenant case a separate motion under Tex. R. Civ. P. 510.10(b)) and barred counterclaims in eviction suits (Sec. 24.004(c)); we covered both in the lease violations post. The eviction itself decides possession. We can join a claim for unpaid rent up to $20,000 in the same suit (Property Code Sec. 24.0051; Tex. R. Civ. P. 510.6(e)).

4. Judgment, then five days. A tenant may appeal by filing a bond, a cash deposit, or a Statement of Inability to Afford Payment of Court Costs with the justice court within five days after the judgment is signed (Rule 510.19(a)). Signed, not heard. If the judge rules from the bench on a Thursday and signs on Friday, the five days run from Friday. Get the signed date from the clerk and write it down.

5. The writ of possession. It cannot issue before the sixth day after the judgment is signed or the day after the appeal deadline, whichever is later, and it cannot issue more than 60 days after signing without a good cause extension to 90 (Tex. R. Civ. P. 510.18(g)(1)). Issuing it is "a ministerial act not subject to review or delay" (Sec. 24.0061(b-1)). The clerk does not get to sit on it, and neither do you: miss the 60 days and you are refiling.

6. The constable's clock. The officer must serve the writ within five business days of issue (Sec. 24.0061(b-1)), posts a written warning of at least 8.5 by 11 inches on the front door with an execution date and time at least 24 hours out (Sec. 24.0061(d)), then returns to deliver possession. Property left behind is the officer's call, not the landlord's: the writ authorizes a bonded warehouseman at no cost to the landlord (Sec. 24.0061(e)). You do not carry a tenant's belongings to the curb. You stand there with a locksmith and a camera and let the officer run it.

Which Tarrant County JP precinct do I file in?

The address decides. The county's precinct lookup map at gisit.tarrantcounty.com/caid resolves any parcel, and it is worth the two minutes even when you are sure, because precinct lines do not follow city limits. Fort Worth alone is split across several. The county publishes served-city lists for only two of the eight constable precincts: Precinct 4 includes some or all of Lake Worth, Azle, Haslet, Saginaw, Blue Mound, Westworth Village, Westover Hills, Sansom Park, River Oaks, White Settlement and Fort Worth, and Precinct 6 covers "Southwest Fort Worth, Benbrook, Edgecliff Village and Crowley" (Tarrant County Constable Precinct 4 and Precinct 6 pages, read September 13, 2026). Everything in 76179 that we manage files in Precinct 4. For the rest, the map is the source.

All rows from the Tarrant County Justice Court precinct pages and their eviction subpages, read September 13, 2026. Hours and window times change; the phone number in the row is the check.

The room is the same. The desk is not.

Read the fourth column again. That is the part the statute cannot tell you.

An LLC that owns one rental in Colleyville is "a business" to Precinct 3, which means the petition goes through eFileTexas or it does not get filed. Precinct 4 will take paper and will make sure you know it would rather not. Precinct 8 closes its filing window at 2:45 in the afternoon, so a petition that leaves your office at 3 waits a day. Precinct 7 will not reset a hearing you ask about the morning of. None of that is in Chapter 24. All of it decides whether your notice-to-vacate day count turns into a hearing date or into a week you did not plan for.

Your constable's office may publish its own writ procedures on the county site. Read them before you request the writ, and call the constable's civil desk the same day the writ issues to ask how they schedule. In our experience the officers are precise about the 24 hour posting and about what happens to property, and they expect the landlord to be on site with a locksmith and nothing else. That is the job: keys, photos, dated video of every room, a utilities check, and the owner notified the same afternoon.

What does an eviction cost in Tarrant County in 2026?

Court and constable only, one tenant, on the county's 2026 fee schedules effective January 1, 2026:

Sources: the eight Justice Court eviction pages (filing and citation, read September 13, 2026), the 2026 Tarrant County Sheriff and Constable fee schedule (writ and certified mail lines), and the Precinct 1 Justice Court fee schedule effective January 1, 2026 (the $5 writ line, read September 6, 2026). The bigger numbers are not on any schedule: the rent that stops the day the notice goes out, the make-ready after the officer hands you the keys, and counsel if the case is contested. On the doors we manage, a straightforward eviction in 76179 has run roughly $1,500 to $3,000 out of pocket before lost rent (All Panther managed-portfolio estimate, September 2026). That is one operator's count, not a market figure.

How long does an eviction take in Tarrant County?

Take a judgment for possession signed on a Thursday, no appeal, no bankruptcy.

So a signed judgment to a changed lock is one to two weeks in a clean case. Add the front end, at least three days of notice, a few days for service, a trial 10 to 21 days after filing, and our own count from the first notice to the constable at the door lands at about four to six weeks. Every one of those days is a day of rent you are not collecting, which is why the front end is where a case is won: a notice delivered by a method the statute lists, with proof, filed at the right courthouse, in the format that courthouse takes.

An appeal breaks the table. The case moves to county court and the timeline is measured in months, not days. A bankruptcy filing stops the JP case cold under the automatic stay, and even after a bankruptcy judge lifts it, the paper has to reach the JP clerk before the JP court's own deadline or the eviction dismisses for want of prosecution and you start over from the notice. We learned that one the hard way this year. The deadline was ours to carry, not the lawyer's.

The dates are the landlord's, not the lawyer's

Counsel files. The property manager holds the calendar. Three checks we now run on every case, no exceptions:

The signed date. Call the clerk the day of the hearing and ask when the judgment was signed. Every count above runs from that date.

The appeal check. The morning after the five days close, call the same clerk and ask whether anything was filed. Then look the case up on the county's public records portal (the "Case Lookup" link on the JP pages, which runs on Tyler Odyssey). The phone call is the authoritative answer; the portal is the receipt.

The federal check, if it applies. A tenant in bankruptcy has a docket that does not talk to the JP court. Before the writ request, read it. A motion filed there changes the sequence here.

Where we stand

We do not give legal advice and we do not want to. What we do is run the calendar so an owner in Fort Worth, Saginaw, or anywhere in Tarrant County never finds out on a Friday that a deadline passed on Tuesday. Most of the doors we run are in 76179 and the towns around it, which means most of our evictions file in Precinct 4, and we know that counter by name. That precinct takes in some or all of Saginaw, Haslet, Lake Worth, and Azle, the same corridor our Saginaw and Haslet property management pages cover. The statute is the same at every one of the eight courthouses. The room is not, and knowing the room is most of the work.

If you are self-managing a rental and a notice to vacate is on your desk, the two things to do today are cheap: put the address into the county precinct map, and call that precinct's clerk to ask how they want the petition filed. Everything after that has a day count attached, and the count starts when you file.

Andrew Chavis · Century 21 Alliance Properties · License #0845090 · IABS Notice · Consumer Protection Notice. This article is general information from a property manager and is not legal advice. It is not written by an attorney, it does not create an attorney-client relationship, and nothing here is a recommendation to file, not file, or take any step in a specific case; consult a Texas attorney about your own situation. Statute and rule citations are to the Texas Property Code, Chapter 24, and Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 510 as amended for eviction suits filed on or after January 1, 2026 (Supreme Court of Texas Misc. Docket Nos. 25-9096 and 25-9105, styled preliminary approval orders with a comment period through February 1, 2026). County courthouse addresses, hours, filing windows, eFile policies, and fees are from Tarrant County's Justice Court and Constable pages and the county's 2026 fee schedules, read on the dates cited in the text; the county changes them without notice, and the precinct clerk is the current answer. The four-to-six-week duration and the $1,500 to $3,000 cost range are our own operating estimates, not published statistics. Deemed reliable but not guaranteed. View sources and disclaimers.