About
Robert Ray
I limit my practice to one thing: representing people in Texas who are in a fight over an inheritance.
Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. My principal office is in Lantana, Texas, in the DFW area, and I handle inheritance disputes across the state.
More than 40 years of trial experience in Texas courts — and for the last stretch of it, this work almost exclusively.
What I do, and what I don't
This is worth being direct about, because it saves people a phone call to the wrong lawyer.
I handle litigation. Cases where there are two sides to a dispute and a trial is either required or may become necessary. Will contests, claims against executors and trustees, heirship fights, and the disputes that arise when someone has taken advantage of an elderly person.
I don't prepare wills. I don't do estate planning. I don't handle the administrative work of filing a will for probate when nobody is disputing anything. Plenty of good attorneys in the probate field do all of that, and if that's what you need, you want one of them rather than me.
I generally take cases where a successful outcome would mean the client receives at least $500,000. That's a judgment about the cost of fighting, not about whose situation matters. Litigating one of these properly is expensive, and a case that costs a substantial sum to try can consume most of a modest recovery — which would leave the client worse off than not fighting at all.
One caution before you rule yourself out: people routinely underestimate what is actually in dispute. Property moved before the death — deeds signed over, accounts made joint, transfers under a power of attorney — can often be challenged and brought back into the estate, and that is frequently where the money went. Mineral interests and land carried at decades-old values get missed too. The cost page goes through this properly — and if you're unsure, ask. It costs nothing to find out.
Why my board certification is in trial law
People sometimes notice that my certification is in trial law rather than in probate, and wonder about it. The answer is straightforward: what I do is try cases.
Many attorneys who work in probate are excellent at the administrative side — filing, accounting, moving an uncontested estate through the system. That is a different skill from standing in front of a jury. Inheritance disputes are litigation. When one is fought properly, it involves depositions, medical records, expert witnesses, and often a trial. A trial-law background is the relevant foundation for that, and it's the one I have.
How I ended up doing this
When I got out of the Navy, I knew I wanted to finish college. After graduating and working for a couple of years, I went to law school.
I always assumed I'd do Labor Law — it connected to the job I'd had before. As luck would have it, I never handled a single Labor Law case. Instead I went to work for a firm doing general practice, and I learned quickly that what interested me was helping people who had been hurt or taken advantage of. My practice turned toward personal injury trial work.
It wasn't long before I opened my own practice and became Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. That work was exciting and I threw myself into it. I liked representing clients in court and fighting for their rights.
As all things must pass, so did my excitement about it. After enough years, things become routine. Even routine cases got my best work — clients deserve that regardless — but I needed a change.
Over those years I had handled a few inheritance disputes. They were different, they were interesting, and they rekindled something. So I slowly shut down the injury practice and began limiting the cases I took to inheritance matters. That's where the practice has stayed. I don't take personal injury cases now unless they're connected to an inheritance dispute.
Background
- More than 40 years handling litigation in Texas
- Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization
- Past chair of the State Bar of Texas Computer & Technology Section
- Appointed by the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court as an ex officio member of the Judicial Committee on Information Technology — the committee that brought electronic filing to Texas courts
- Published in the Texas Bar Journal and the American Bar Association's GPSolo journal
What working together is like
Inheritance disputes are private, painful family matters. They're legally complicated and they're tangled up with things that have nothing to do with law — old resentments, a parent's last months, who was there and who wasn't. I represent people knowing that.
What I try to do is get the best result available as quickly as it can be gotten, so this stops being the thing your family is about. Sometimes that means trying the case to a jury. Sometimes it means a settlement, reached with your agreement, without a trial. Either way you'll know where you stand and what your choices are, and the decisions stay yours.
If I don't think you have a case, I'll tell you that too. Finding out early costs you a conversation. Finding out late costs considerably more.
Talking to me
A first conversation costs nothing and doesn't obligate you to anything. Bring whatever dates you know — when they died, when the will was filed, when things changed. If you don't know those yet, that's fine; knowing what to go find out is often the useful part of a first call.
Both numbers ring the same office. Use whichever is a local call for you.