Selling a Memorial Villages Home During a Divorce: The Decree, Both Signatures, the Proceeds

What paper governs the sale, and what do you read in it?

The sale of a house during a divorce in Texas may be governed by a decree of divorce or annulment, by an order the court renders while the suit is pending, or by a written agreement between the spouses. Texas Family Code Section 7.006, read October 2026, lets the spouses in a suit for divorce or annulment enter into a written agreement concerning the division of the property. The chapter titles it an agreement incident to divorce or annulment.

Three terms are the ones to find in whichever document governs: who is to sell the house, by when, and how the net proceeds are divided. The decree, or the agreement the court approved, is what provides for the division. Where one of those terms is missing or unclear, put the question to your family-law attorney before a contract is signed.

Section 7.006 carries its own conditions. The agreement may be revised or repudiated before rendition of the divorce or annulment unless it is binding under another rule of law. If the court finds its terms just and right, those terms are binding on the court. If it finds they are not, the court may request a revised agreement or set the case for a contested hearing. An approved agreement may be set forth in full in the final decree or incorporated by reference, and an agreement incorporated by reference is not required to be filed with the court or the court clerk.

Read the same document for one more term: who pays the property taxes while the spouses still own the house. Each of the six Memorial Villages adopts its own city tax rate, with the school district and Harris County alongside, so the bill depends on which city the house sits in. Where the decree or agreement does not say who carries it, that is a question for your attorney.

Whose signatures does a deed to the house take?

Where the house is a homestead, Texas Family Code Section 5.001, read October 2026, answers the signature question in a single sentence. Whether the homestead is the separate property of either spouse or community property, neither spouse may sell, convey or encumber it without the joinder of the other spouse. The same sentence ends with its exception: except as provided in this chapter or by other rules of law. Those exceptions sit elsewhere in Chapter 5 and in other law, and whether one reaches a particular house is a question for your attorney.

The rule is written about spouses and a homestead. A Memorial Villages address does not settle whether a house is a homestead, and that question belongs to the attorney as well.

Two documents show the rest of the answer. Schedule A, item 3 of the Texas Department of Insurance's Form T-7 is where a title commitment states in whose names record title appears to be vested. The Harris County Clerk's Real Property Department requires that the appropriate person sign a document and that the signature be notarized, and a deed is among its own examples. Who the appropriate person is on a particular sale is a question for the title company and your attorney, who read that schedule beside the decree or order.

What can a court do while one signature is missing?

While a suit for dissolution of a marriage is pending, Texas Family Code Chapter 6, read October 2026, lets the court act on the motion of a party or on its own motion. Both of the sections that bear on the house say the court may act, and neither says it will. After the suit is filed, Section 6.501 lets the court grant a temporary restraining order without notice to the adverse party. Among the orders that section lists is one prohibiting one or both parties from selling, transferring, mortgaging, encumbering or in any other manner alienating property of the parties or either party, except as specifically authorized by the court. That prohibition covers real property and separate or community property, and it is item (11) of a longer list.

Section 6.502 lets the court, after notice and hearing, render an appropriate order. That includes a temporary injunction and an order appointing a receiver for the preservation and protection of the property of the parties. Those are the statute's words for the receiver's purpose, and they speak of preservation and protection rather than of a sale.

Once a decree is signed, Chapter 9 holds the court's power over the property division. Under Section 9.001, a party affected by a decree of divorce or annulment providing for a division of property may request enforcement by filing a suit to enforce in the court that rendered the decree. Under Section 9.002, that court retains the power to enforce the property division. Except as provided by its own subchapter and by the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, Section 9.006 lets it render further orders to enforce the division, to assist in its implementation or to clarify the prior order, and an order of enforcement does not alter or affect the finality of the decree.

Section 9.007 sets the limit: a court may not amend, modify, alter, or change the division of property made or approved in the decree of divorce or annulment. The Texas State Law Library states the remedy plainly. Where a former spouse does not do what the final decree ordered, the guide names a suit to enforce the decree and points to Texas Family Code, Chapter 9, Subchapter A. Which of these a court would use on a particular house is a question for your family-law attorney.

Can the house be listed before there is a decree?

Before a decree, what governs is whatever the court has ordered in the pending suit and whatever the spouses have agreed in writing, so read both for the house. A temporary restraining order under Section 6.501 may contain the prohibition on selling property of the parties. Where it does, its own terms and any specific authorization from the court decide what a sale needs.

A written agreement made before rendition sits under Section 7.006, which lets it be revised or repudiated before rendition unless it is binding under another rule of law. Before a decree the owners are still spouses, the people Section 5.001 is written about. Where the house is a homestead, its joinder rule and its exception are therefore part of the question.

A contract signed while the suit is pending may need the court's authorization, both spouses' joinder, or both, and that is a question for your attorney.

How do the dates in the statutes run?

Each deadline in these statutes counts from an event, and the event is part of the rule. Under Texas Family Code Section 6.702, read October 2026, the court may not grant a divorce before the 60th day after the date the suit was filed, except as provided by Subsection (c).

Where a receiver is appointed under Section 6.502, two dates run from that appointment. Not later than the 30th day after the date a receiver is appointed, the receiver gives notice of the appointment to each lienholder of any property under the receiver's control. Not later than the seventh day after the date a receiver is appointed, the court issues written findings of fact and conclusions of law in support of the appointment.

After the decree, Section 9.007 keeps the trial court from rendering an order to assist in the implementation of or to clarify the property division before the 30th day after the date the final judgment is signed. A timely motion for new trial, or a motion to vacate, modify, correct or reform the decree, changes that date. The earliest date then becomes the 30th day after the date the order overruling the motion is signed or the motion is overruled by operation of law.

These dates govern when a court or a receiver acts. Any date for the sale itself comes from the decree, the agreement or a court order.

What do the Harris County Clerk and the title company ask for?

The six Memorial Villages are separate cities: Hunters Creek Village, Piney Point Village, Hedwig Village, Bunker Hill Village, Spring Valley Village and Hilshire Village. All six are in Harris County. Whichever village the house is in, its deed is recorded with the Harris County Clerk, whose Real Property Department records documents pertaining to real property in Harris County.

The court that rendered the decree may sit in another county. Texas Family Code Section 6.301 provides that a suit for divorce may not be maintained in this state unless, at the time it is filed, either the petitioner or the respondent has been a domiciliary of this state for the preceding six-month period and a resident of the county in which the suit is filed for the preceding 90-day period. According to the Texas State Law Library, copies of a decree come from the district court clerk's office in the county where the divorce was finalized. In Harris County, that office is the Harris County District Clerk.

The Harris County Clerk's filing rules, read October 2026, are specific. Its Real Property Department accepts only original documents or certified copies of court documents. No Xerox copies are accepted for filing, and all signatures must be original. A document from a Texas court must be a complete original court-issued certified copy, and a certified copy cannot be altered. A document must include legal descriptions when applicable, and a document of conveyance must indicate the grantee's address.

Texas Property Code Section 12.013 sets two conditions for recording a judgment. The judgment must come from a court of a kind the section lists, which includes a court expressly created or established under the constitution or laws of this state. It must also be attested under the signature and seal of the clerk of the court that rendered it.

The title company writes its own requirements. The Texas Department of Insurance's Form T-7, the Commitment for Title Insurance, carries a January 2014 effective date on its pages. It says the promise to insure is conditioned upon certain requirements being met, and that Schedule C of the Commitment lists these requirements that must be satisfied or the Company will refuse to cover them. Its first standing item is that documents creating the title or interest must be approved by the company and must be signed, notarized and filed for record. What a company asks for on a file governed by a decree is written on that file's own Schedule C, so ask the title company for Schedule C in writing.

Which questions belong to your attorney and to the title company?

Your family-law attorney answers the legal questions. These include whether the house is a homestead, whether an exception to Section 5.001 reaches it, whether an order in the suit restricts a sale, and whether a written agreement has become binding. They also include which orders under Chapter 6 or Chapter 9 a court might render on a particular house. Every question that begins "should I" belongs there.

The title company answers for its own file. That covers what Schedule C requires, whose signatures it needs on the deed, and how the decree and any agreement incorporated in it by reference are to be shown. Ask for those answers in writing, and read them beside the decree or agreement before the house is listed.

Two offices supply the documents themselves. Copies of the decree come from the district clerk of the county where it was finalized. The deed is recorded with the Harris County Clerk under that office's own filing rules.