HB2524

HB2524 makes reasonable and necessary attorney’s fees, court costs and expenses an express part of many Family Code payment and enforcement provisions. It is not a new statewide filing-fee schedule, and it does not make the losing side pay every bill in every family case. The governing provision still determines who can recover, whether an award is optional or required, and how it can be collected. The changes apply to suits filed on or after September 1, 2025; earlier-filed suits remain governed by the former law. Final law, Sections 1–57; history.

Divorce, maintenance and property division: Courts may include costs and expenses alongside attorney’s fees in temporary divorce orders, final awards and orders during appeal. A new provision expressly allows awards in proceedings to terminate, modify or enforce spousal maintenance. Related changes cover recovery of overpaid maintenance, orders directing payments from retirement plans, enforcement of property divisions and division of property omitted from a divorce decree. The maintenance-overpayment award remains required when its statutory findings are met, with a stated good-cause waiver. Final law, Sections 1–12; maintenance termination; modification; enforcement.

Children, custody and protective orders: The act updates temporary and appeal-related payment orders, general fee judgments in parent-child suits or motions and habeas corpus proceedings, and compensation for appointed child representatives in the covered nongovernmental cases. It expressly adds court costs and expenses to protective-order fee assessments against a person found to have committed family violence or a party subject to the specified agreed order. The existing requirement to consider that person’s income and ability to pay when setting attorney’s fees remains. Interstate custody provisions retain their “clearly inappropriate” exceptions to required awards. Final law, Sections 17–25; protective-order fee safeguard.

Child-support and visitation enforcement: The changes reach repayment of support paid after an order terminates, frivolous modification suits, forfeited bonds, enforcement even without a contempt finding, community-supervision conditions, support liens, retirement-plan orders and income withholding. Courts must generally award the specified reasonable and necessary fees, costs and expenses after findings of unpaid support or noncompliance with possession/access orders, subject to the law’s waiver rules. For a person held in contempt who owes at least $20,000 in support arrears, a waiver additionally requires findings that the person is involuntarily unemployed or disabled and lacks resources to pay. Final law, Sections 26–40, particularly Section 30.

Collection rules matter: Many provisions allow payment directly to the attorney and collection in the attorney’s own name as a judgment for debt, sometimes expressly including postjudgment interest. Certain child-support-related awards can instead also be enforced through child-support remedies, including contempt. For possession/access awards, those remedies require the additional child-health-or-welfare finding and exclude income withholding. Withholding for fees and expenses from child-support enforcement remains subordinate to child-support withholding and subject to the existing withholding ceiling. Support-payment priorities continue to put support principal and interest before the listed legal fees, costs and expenses. This is not blanket authority to jail someone or garnish wages for every family-law fee award. Final law, Sections 20 and 29–40; withholding safeguards.

Employers: The act updates recoverable fees, costs and expenses when employers fail to follow spousal-maintenance or child-support withholding orders, or intentionally discharge employees in violation of the protections against withholding-related dismissal. It adds direct-to-attorney payment and debt-enforcement language. Existing liability for the unpaid or unremitted money, and for wages and benefits in unlawful-discharge cases, is not replaced by the legal-expense award. Final law, Sections 7–8 and 41–42.

Other covered cases: The same terminology and related collection changes reach interstate support proceedings; parentage cases and proceedings concerning unvalidated gestational agreements; recovery for interference with child-possession rights and defense against frivolous claims under that law; and parental liability for a child’s willful and malicious property damage. The property-damage provisions keep the $25,000-per-occurrence actual-damages limit, with the specified reasonable and necessary legal fees, costs and expenses added separately. The act does not create or validate a gestational agreement. Final law, Sections 13–16 and 43–48; parental-liability basis; unvalidated agreements.

Child-support agencies and child protection: The act updates expenses recoverable for a vendor’s false child-support-eligibility certification on a state contract, in the state child-support enforcement program’s cases and administrative-subpoena enforcement, from someone convicted of intentionally making a knowingly false abuse report, in qualifying defenses against unfounded claims involving protected reports, and in successful claims for employer retaliation against protected professionals who report or assist investigations of child abuse. It also expressly includes expenses in eligible kinship caregivers’ nonrecurring permanency-care reimbursement, while retaining the $2,000 maximum and the existing eligibility/agreement requirements. Final law, Sections 49–55; vendor certification; retaliation protections; kinship-care agreement.