California and Texas: What the Court Filing Data Shows
The California Judicial Council’s 2025 Court Statistics Report puts statewide "estate and trust" probate filings at 41,985 for fiscal year 2024-25, a category covering the court cases opened to administer a deceased person’s assets. That figure is up 30 percent over the prior decade, a rising caseload that tracks with an aging homeowner population working through more estate transitions.
Texas tells a similar story from a different angle. The state’s Office of Court Administration reports that almost 90 percent of new probate and guardianship-court cases filed in fiscal year 2023 were "estate cases," meaning proceedings specifically for handling or transferring property because someone died. Both states point the same direction: probate-court activity is a growing, not shrinking, share of the caseload.
The Number State Courts Do Not Publish
What neither report states, and what no state court system publishes, is the share of probated estates that actually include real property as opposed to only cash, vehicles, or other personal property. Court statistical reports count case types and outcomes, not the asset composition inside each case, so there is no clean, citable "X% of probate estates include a house" figure to report here.
What can be said honestly is qualitative rather than numeric: real property is commonly the largest single asset in an estate when one exists, and it is typically the slowest to settle, because it usually has to be appraised, maintained, and either sold or transferred through a process that runs on the court’s timeline, not the heirs’. That is the reason probate filing volume, even without a property-inclusion percentage attached, is still a useful signal, and it is exactly the kind of open-ended lead VA Horizon’s calling team is trained to qualify: a trained VA works the call, an in-house SDR confirms real interest, and together they establish whether an estate actually includes real property before that seller is ever passed to you as a qualified lead.
The Numbers
California’s court system logged 41,985 statewide "estate and trust" probate filings in fiscal year 2024-25, up 30 percent over the prior decade.
Almost 90 percent of new probate and guardianship-court cases filed in Texas in fiscal year 2023 were "estate cases," proceedings for handling or transferring property after a death.
Texas Office of Court Administration, Annual Statistical Report FY 2023
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- California Judicial Council, 2025 Court Statistics Report
- Texas Office of Court Administration, Annual Statistical Report FY 2023