§ 17.032.Citation by Publication

A 2019 provision, effective June 2020, addressing the cost of publishing legal notices.

Notwithstanding any statute or rule requiring publication both on the public information website maintained under Section 72.034 of the Government Code and in a newspaper of general circulation, a person may publish only on the website in three situations.

First, the person files a statement of inability to afford payment of court costs under the rules. Second, the total cost of the required publication exceeds the greater of $200 each week or the amount the supreme court sets. Third, the county does not have any newspaper published, printed, or generally circulated in it.

Subsection (b) keeps the figure current: the supreme court shall adjust for inflation the maximum publication cost in the second route.

The three routes address three distinct problems — a litigant who cannot pay, a notice whose cost is disproportionate to the case, and a county with no newspaper to publish in. Rural Texas counties without a local paper are not hypothetical, and before this provision the requirement could be impossible to satisfy.

Publication is the service of last resort, used where a defendant is unknown or cannot be located — the unknown heirs and unknown landowners of Subchapter A among them.