Probate Court No. 3 — Court Procedures, Judicial Preferences &… — Dallas County, TX · BenchPath

Probate Court No. 3 — Court Procedures, Judicial Preferences & Requirements (Hon. Margaret R. Jones-Johnson)

High confidence· verified September 21, 2026Judge PreferencesDallas County Probate Court No. 3, Court Procedures, Judicial Preferences & Requirements (rev. Jan. 24, 2025)

Summary

Probate Court No. 3's Court Procedures, Judicial Preferences & Requirements (rev. Jan. 24, 2025; posted Mar. 2026): Zoom testimony mechanics with the notarization rule for call-in witnesses, the $600 registry deposit for safe-deposit-box motions, three-signature substitution motions, small-estate-affidavit review flow, the 60-day annual-account deadline with TEC §309.057 sanctions, hard-copy delivery of 15-plus-page audit filings, summary-judgment titling and submission-default, the mediation-before-setting rule for contested matters, the Agreed Scheduling Order gate on trial settings, and pre-hearing exhibit delivery with PII/HIPAA redaction.

Applies to

Texas > Dallas County > Probate Court No. 3 (Hon. Margaret R. Jones-Johnson, Presiding; Associate Judge Tomi J. Shehan — officer layer; the county's mental-illness docket sits in this court under Local Rule 2.01)

Source of truth

COURT PROCEDURES, JUDICIAL PREFERENCES & REQUIREMENTS ZOOM HEARING INSTRUCTIONS If your hearing is being held via ZOOM, please note that the Applicant does not need to be physically present with the attorney so long as both parties appear via ZOOM. All witnesses will be required to sign testimony reduced to writing (Proof of Death/Statement of Facts/Witness Testimony) at the time of the hearing. I

Official source: Dallas County Probate Courts — dallascounty.org (county site tree)
Source health: Healthy · checked September 27, 2026
Effective date: January 24, 2025
Last verified: September 21, 2026benchpath-tx-corpus0920-p12-2026-09-21

Reviewer note: Own-site instrument composed verbatim (custody sha in the crawl ledger); the body is stamped 'Revised 1/24/2025' while the filename carries the county's 2026-03-09 re-post date — the body date is used as effective; Associate Judge Tomi J. Shehan surfaces here as PC3's associate judge (officer layer, not an OCA bench seat); staff emails preserved in the source, summarized as 'designated staff' in the composition. [TRANSCRIBED BY EYE 2026-09-21 (corpus-0920 P12): every page of the registered file (sha256 dbbdcbf209e3..., 2 page(s), digital layer that failed the machine checks; text taken from the layer and corrected word by word from the page) read against the rendered file; verbatim, source typos kept, stamps/signatures bracketed; the earlier abstract replaced by the full instrument; confidence high. benchpath-tx-corpus0920-p12-2026-09-21]