§ 133.003.Restoration of Estate

The provision that makes the presumption survivable when it turns out to be wrong.

Subsection (a): if an estate is recovered on a presumption of death and it is later proved that the person is living, the estate shall be restored — with the rents and profits of the estate and legal interest for the time the person was deprived of it.

Restoration is not merely of the property but of its yield. Someone who returns after years away recovers what the estate produced in their absence, plus interest, which puts them as nearly as possible where they would have been.

Subsection (b) protects the person in the middle. Anyone who delivered the estate under proper order of a court of competent jurisdiction is not liable for it — so an executor, administrator or clerk who followed a court order is safe.

Without that, no one would be willing to distribute an estate on a presumption of death.

Subsection (c) is the significant limit, and it protects the market rather than the parties. Where the person who recovered the estate sold real property to a purchaser for value, the right of restoration extends to the purchase money received — and does not extend to recovery of the real property.

So a good faith buyer keeps the land, and the returning owner recovers what it sold for. That is the choice every recording system makes: title must be reliable, or no one can buy.

Note the asymmetry. The returning person recovers the price the seller received, which may be well below what the land was worth or is now worth, and the section supplies no adjustment for that.