Family ranch disputes have a way of outlasting everyone’s patience. Someone dies, land is left behind, old grievances resurface, and the person holding the pen as trustee often turns out to be one of the beneficiaries with something to gain from delay. Years pass. Nothing gets sold. Nothing gets divided. The estate grinds to a halt while the lawyers bill.
Texas law has a tool for that. A court can appoint a receiver to step in and do what the trustee refuses to do — including selling trust property the person who created the trust expressly said to sell. But when does a court get to take that step? Does the beneficiary have to prove there is no other way? And can the trustee escape the receiver by attacking the jurisdiction of a different court that entered orders years earlier?
The court addressed these questions in Shelton v. Leuschner, No. 15-25-00072-CV (Tex. App.—Fifteenth Dist. Apr. 3, 2026, no pet. h.) (mem. op.). A mother’s trust said to sell part of the family ranch as soon as practicable after she died. Three and a half years later it still had not been sold. The trial court appointed a receiver, the trustee appealed, and the court of appeals had to decide whether that was an abuse of discretion.
Facts & Procedural History
Dorothy Spanos created the Dorothy Spanos Living Trust in 2017. She named herself trustee and moved much of her property into it, including a roughly 260-acre ranch in Crawford, Texas. Several years later — sixteen months before she died — she amended the trust and directed that the ranch be partitioned “[a]s soon as practicable after [her] death.”
The amendment split the ranch two ways. The piece everyone came to call the “Front 45” was “to be sold,” with the proceeds divided between Dorothy’s daughter Frances “Fran” Spanos Shelton, her other daughter Katherine “Kathy” Leuschner, and Dorothy’s grandchildren. The trust described the Front 45 as the “existing house; RV Shed; Hanger; and 39.322 acres including runway, front pasture, and pasture behind the home.” The rest of the acreage was to be distributed in kind — 60 acres to Fran, 60 to Kathy, 44 to Kathy’s son Robert, and 12 acres each to Kathy’s other two children and to Fran’s son and two stepchildren. The trust said how much each person got. It did not say where on the map their tracts would be.
Dorothy died in September 2021 and Fran became the sole trustee. Disputes started almost immediately. The trust was not ambiguous about the Front 45 — it was to be sold. But instead of selling it, Fran proposed pulling 12 acres out of the front pasture and giving that acreage to her son Nicholas.
That, plus other concerns about how Fran was handling the trust and Dorothy’s estate, prompted Kathy to file an application in the McLennan County Court at Law asking for a temporary administrator of the estate and a trust advisor for the trust. On March 8, 2022, that court appointed former district judge Robert Stem to both roles. The trust itself defined the trust advisor’s job: to “direct [the] Trustee in matters concerning the trust.” His powers were broad. He could settle disputes over how to read the trust, and he could remove the trustee “with or without cause.”
Stem looked at Fran’s proposed division and concluded it did not square with the trust’s clear terms. He put it in writing in an October 2022 letter: “There is no language in the Amended Trust that can justify sectioning out any acreage in the front pasture … all of that property is intended to be sold.” He proposed his own division, had a survey prepared, and directed Fran to hire a surveyor and get moving. The plan stalled over easements. The ranch has one entrance and one road running back to the rear tracts — where Kathy’s children’s land would sit — and Fran would not grant easements across the stretches of that road crossing her family’s tracts.
By letter dated May 3, 2023, Stem removed Fran as trustee. He did not spell out every reason, but he wrote that the trust “is in need of a truly neutral, detached and independent trustee.” He later explained that Fran was not that, because she was responsible for a multitude of breach-of-trust and breach-of-fiduciary-duty issues. Stem asked attorney John Malone to take over as trustee, and Malone agreed. The parties agreed that Fran would keep handling the trust’s finances even though she was no longer trustee.
In October 2024, Fran sued Malone in McLennan County district court for breach of fiduciary duty and got an ex parte temporary restraining order blocking him from granting easements or selling trust property. Vernon Leuschner — acting under a durable power of attorney for Kathy — and Kathy’s three children intervened, seeking declarations about the trust property and alleging Fran had committed a breach of trust.
Malone resigned effective February 24, 2025, leaving the trust with no trustee at all. That same day Fran filed an amended petition dropping her claims against Malone, adding claims against the intervenors, and arguing for the first time that the county court at law never had subject-matter jurisdiction over trust matters. If that were true, she said, the order appointing Stem was void — and so was everything Stem did, including removing her and installing Malone.
The next day, Vernon moved to appoint a receiver “to take possession of the Trust property, and to deal with such property according to the terms of the Trust.” He argued Fran’s suit and the flood of filings that followed had made it impossible for a trustee to function, and that a receiver was needed to finish a process that had already dragged on three and a half years.
The district court held a joint evidentiary hearing on Fran’s motion to reinstate herself as trustee and the intervenors’ motion for a receiver. On March 31, 2025, it granted the receiver motion in part, appointing a receiver for the limited purpose of taking possession of and selling the Front 45, granting any easements tied to it, and distributing the proceeds under the trust. Fran appealed. The case landed in the Fifteenth Court of Appeals on a Texas Supreme Court docket equalization order.
How Texas Law Handles a Trustee Who Won’t Follow the Trust
To understand why a court can hand trust property to a receiver, we first have to look at what a trustee owes and what happens when she doesn’t deliver. Texas trust law lives in the Property Code, not the Estates Code — a point worth knowing, because the two intersect constantly when an estate holds a trust but the rules come from different books.
Start with the duty. Texas Property Code § 113.051 says the trustee “shall administer the trust in good faith according to its terms and this subtitle.” That is the whole job. A trustee does not get to substitute her own judgment for the settlor’s written instructions. If the trust says sell the property, the trustee sells the property. She can go to court and ask permission to deviate, but she cannot simply decide the settlor got it wrong.
Now the violation. Section 111.004(25) defines a “breach of trust” as “a violation by a trustee of a duty the trustee owes to a beneficiary.” Notice how little that requires. There is no requirement of bad faith, no requirement of theft, no requirement that anyone lose money. Failing to do what the trust says is itself a breach of the trustee’s core obligation, whatever the trustee’s explanation and however messy the surrounding family fight.
Then the remedy. Section 114.008(a) gives a court a menu of ten options “[t]o remedy a breach of trust that has occurred or might occur.” A court may compel the trustee to perform, enjoin her from committing a breach, compel her to restore property, order an accounting, suspend her, remove her, cut her compensation, void her acts — and, under subsection (a)(5), “appoint a receiver to take possession of the trust property and administer the trust.”
Two features of that statute matter enormously in practice. First, look at “has occurred or might occur.” A court does not have to wait for the damage to be done. It can act on a breach that is still coming. Second — and this is the point that decides cases — § 114.008(a)(5) does not require the beneficiary to prove there is no other adequate remedy at law. That is a real distinction. A receiver appointed under the Business Organizations Code does carry that extra burden. A receiver appointed under the Property Code to remedy a breach of trust does not.
A receiver is also a different animal from a replacement trustee, and that difference is practical rather than theoretical. A new trustee can be sued by whichever side dislikes the next decision, which in a family already this far into litigation guarantees more of the same. A receiver acting within the court’s mandate is entitled to derived judicial immunity for what he does in the course and scope of those duties. He can actually finish the job.
Appellate courts review the appointment of a receiver for abuse of discretion. A trial court abuses its discretion when it acts arbitrarily or unreasonably, and also when it acts “without supporting evidence.” Under that standard, legal sufficiency is not a separate ground of error — it is one factor inside the abuse-of-discretion question. The reviewing court views the evidence in the light most favorable to the finding, crediting favorable evidence a reasonable factfinder could credit and disregarding contrary evidence only when a reasonable factfinder could not.
What the Court Decided and Why
The court affirmed. It held the district court acted within its discretion under § 114.008(a)(5), and it got there on Fran’s own conduct as trustee.
The first ground was the sale that never happened. The trust required the Front 45 to be sold as soon as practicable after Dorothy died. In the 20 months Fran served as trustee, it was not sold. The district court found a receiver “necessary and appropriate” to “effectuate the terms of the Trust in an efficient and expeditious manner.” The court of appeals agreed that even if there was fault on both sides of the family fight, it was no abuse of discretion to appoint a receiver three and a half years after Dorothy’s death to do what Fran had failed to do much sooner.
The second ground was the 12 acres. Rather than sell the whole Front 45, Fran wanted to carve out part of the front pasture for her son Nicholas. Stem testified that putting one of her children up front was “not consistent with the trust” and “a clear violation” of it, because “there’s no language [in] the amended trust that can justify sectioning out any acreage in the front pasture. All that property was intended to be sold.” Fran argued that past breaches could not be cured by a receiver, but the court noted the breaches began while she was trustee and continued right up to the appointment — visible in the district court’s reference to the “extraordinary controversy surrounding the sale of the Front 45” and in years of contentious filings.
Fran’s headline argument on appeal was that the receiver order was void because it “silently,” “implicitly,” or “indirectly” adopted the county court at law’s orders — a court she said had jurisdiction over the estate but not the trust. The court never reached the jurisdiction question, because it did not have to. The district court’s order does not incorporate any county court order. As the court put it, “We construe the district court’s order according to what it says, not what it doesn’t say,” citing Lone Star Cement Corp. v. Fair, 467 S.W.2d 402 (Tex. 1971), for the rule that court orders are read like other written instruments. Fran’s own reply brief conceded the order “does not state that it is adopting, enforcing, or incorporating aspects of the county court’s void orders.” That concession ended it. Her habeas cases did not help, because in those cases the challenged order actually rested on the prior order — here it did not.
Fran also complained that Stem was the only witness at the hearing. The court pointed out that nothing stopped her from calling witnesses or testifying herself; she simply didn’t. Most of Stem’s testimony came from his own observation of the parties over years of service, which is exactly what Texas Rule of Evidence 701 allows — lay opinion “rationally based on the witness’s perception.” His view that there “will be a never ending merry-go-round here” of future lawsuits without a receiver, and that “[t]he only way to save these people from themselves is the appointment of a receiver,” was personal opinion grounded in what he had watched happen. Fran called that testimony “impassioned and partisan” but conceded “the trial court could have believed Judge Stem.” Under City of Keller v. Wilson, 168 S.W.3d 802 (Tex. 2005), an appellate court cannot disregard testimony unless no reasonable factfinder could believe it. Her own concession put her outside that rule.
Two smaller challenges failed for the same reason — reading words that were not there. Fran said the provision requiring her to keep paying the trust’s bills was an unconstitutional taking of her personal property. The order says no such thing. It directs her “to continue to make regular and routine payments of any bills or invoices incurred by the Trust in the ordinary course of business” — trust bills, paid in the ordinary course, exactly the arrangement everyone had agreed to when she was removed as trustee. She also argued the injunction against interfering with the receiver was so broad it would bar her from filing this very appeal. The court declined to read an order as implicitly stripping a right that Texas law expressly grants.
Finally, the court rejected any suggestion that a receiver is a last-resort remedy requiring proof that nothing else would work. Section 114.008(a)(5) contains no such requirement, and the court cited Estate of Price, 528 S.W.3d 591 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 2017, no pet.), for the contrast with statutes that do impose that burden. The court affirmed the receiver’s appointment for the limited purpose of selling the Front 45 and lifted the stay.
The Takeaway
Shelton is a reminder that the trustee’s most basic obligation is to do what the trust says. When a trust directs that property be sold as soon as practicable, those words carry legal force. Years of delay, a proposal to carve acreage out for the trustee’s own son, and refusals to grant the easements other beneficiaries need to reach their land are not neutral administration. They are the kind of conduct that gets a court to take the property out of the trustee’s hands entirely.
For beneficiaries, the practical lesson is that you do not have to prove a receiver is the only option left. Section 114.008(a)(5) sets a lower bar than most people assume — a breach that has occurred or might occur is enough — and the statute lets a court act before the harm is complete. If a trustee has sat on a required sale for years, that record alone can support the appointment.
For trustees, especially the very common trustee who is also a beneficiary, the lesson is narrower and sharper. Attacking the jurisdiction of a court that entered orders three years earlier will not undo an order that stands on its own. Courts read orders for what they say. And the trustee who tries to steer trust property toward her own children while the clock runs on a sale the settlor demanded is building the record that will cost her any further role in the trust.
If you are dealing with a trustee who won’t follow the trust, a stalled sale of estate or trust property, or a fight over who should be administering a trust, talk with our Houston Probate Attorneys. We help clients work through even the most complex estates. Call today for a free confidential consultation, (281) 317-2449.
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