§ 16.067.Claim Incurred Prior to Arrival in This State

Three rules for the claim that followed someone to Texas.

Subsection (a) imports the other jurisdiction’s limitations law. A person may not bring an action against someone who has moved to Texas if the claim is barred by the law of limitations of the state or country from which the person came.

So moving to Texas does not revive a stale claim. The debtor arrives with whatever protection they already had.

Subsection (b) does the same for insolvency. No action to recover money lies against someone who moved here and was released from payment by the bankruptcy or insolvency laws of the place they came from. A discharge elsewhere is honoured here.

Subsection (c) runs the other way and protects the newcomer. A demand incurred before the person arrived is not barred by limitations until the person has lived in this state for 12 months.

That is a grace period in the debtor’s favour rather than the creditor’s: it prevents a claim already near its Texas expiry from running out while the newcomer is still unpacking. And the subsection says expressly that it does not affect the operation of the first two, so a claim barred where the debtor came from stays barred.

Read together the three subsections take the same position throughout: a move across a state line neither revives a dead claim nor extinguishes a live one. What the debtor had before, they keep.

Note the neighbouring provision on absence from the state, which addresses the mirror-image situation of a defendant who left rather than arrived.