Every deadline, and the day it starts running

The court may not grant a divorce before the sixty-first day after the petition is filed. A narrow exception applies where the respondent has a family violence conviction or deferred adjudication against the petitioner or a household member, or where the petitioner holds an active protective order.

Sixty days is a floor, not a target. Filing early to start the clock is only useful if the rest of the case is actually moving.

Tex. Fam. Code § 6.702

Your answer is due by 10:00 am on the Monday following the expiration of twenty days after service. Not twenty days. The Monday after. Filing even a bare general denial preserves your right to be heard.

Miss it and the other side can take a default judgment on property, custody and support without you in the room.

Tex. R. Civ. P. 99

One spouse must have been a domiciliary of Texas for the preceding six months and a resident of the county of filing for the preceding ninety days. Section 6.303 treats time stationed in Texas by a servicemember as residence, which matters for Fort Bliss families.

Filing in the wrong county invites a plea to the jurisdiction and can cost you months and the filing fee.

Tex. Fam. Code § 6.301

The court sets the full hearing not later than the fourteenth day after the application is filed. A temporary ex parte order can issue the same day on a sworn showing of clear and present danger and lasts up to twenty days.

Fourteen days is short. Start gathering photographs, messages and the police report number before you file, not after.

Tex. Fam. Code § 84.001

Within one year of the order, a suit to change who designates the child's primary residence must be supported by an affidavit alleging the present environment may endanger the child, or that the primary conservator has voluntarily relinquished primary care.

If the judge finds the affidavit inadequate, the case is dismissed on the papers without a hearing.

Tex. Fam. Code § 156.102

You may modify support if circumstances have materially and substantially changed, or if three years have passed and the guideline amount now differs from the ordered amount by twenty percent or one hundred dollars, whichever route you can prove.

Modifications are generally effective from the date of service of the motion, not from the date your income actually changed. File promptly.

Tex. Fam. Code § 156.401

A notice of appeal is due within thirty days of the signed final order, extended to ninety days if a motion for new trial, motion to modify or request for findings of fact and conclusions of law is timely filed.

The deadline runs from the signature date on the order, not the date you received a copy in the mail.

Tex. R. App. P. 26.1

An affidavit of voluntary relinquishment of parental rights may not be executed before forty-eight hours after the child's birth. Once filed, it is irrevocable after sixty days unless procured by fraud or duress.

An affidavit signed too early is void, and the termination built on it will not survive a challenge.

Tex. Fam. Code § 161.103