§ 19.005.Order

The decision and the document it produces.

On hearing the application, if the court is satisfied from the evidence of the previous existence and content of the record and of its loss, destruction, or removal, the court shall enter on its minutes an order containing its findings and a description of the record and its contents.

Three findings, and all are required: the record existed, what it said, and that it is gone. Proving the first and third without the second produces nothing — an order that a deed once existed but does not say what it conveyed would replace nothing.

The order must contain the contents, not merely refer to them. That is what allows the order to stand in the record's place, and it is why the section requires a description of the record and its contents.

Entry on the court's minutes puts the order into the court's own permanent record, which is itself a public record less likely to go missing than the original.

Subsection (b): a certified copy of the order may be recorded in the proper county — the step that puts the reconstructed record back into the chain of title where a title examiner will find it.