How to Remove Someone Who Is Not on the Lease in Texas

The Short Answer

In Texas you remove someone who is not on the lease the same way you remove a tenant: written notice to vacate, then a forcible detainer suit in justice court. The deciding question is never whose name is on the lease but whether they ever had permission to live there. If they did — from you, or from your tenant — they are an occupant with a possessory interest, and Texas Property Code §24.002(a)(2) treats a tenant at will or by sufferance as someone who commits forcible detainer by refusing to surrender possession on demand. That makes the courthouse the path. §24.005(b) sets the floor at three days written notice unless a written agreement says otherwise.

The sheriff shortcut created by Senate Bill 1333 in 2025 does not help here. It is written for people who never had permission from anyone, and it expressly excludes immediate family members and current or former tenants. Nine times out of ten, the person an Austin owner wants gone — a partner who moved in, a cousin who was staying two weeks in March, a roommate the tenant never disclosed — is exactly the person Chapter 24B does not reach.

Who Counts as "Not on the Lease" in Texas?

"Not on the lease" is not a legal category in Texas, and that is the whole problem. Owners use it to mean six different situations that carry four different remedies, and choosing the wrong remedy is what turns a three-week problem into a damages claim against you.

Texas defines a lease broadly. §92.001 of the Property Code defines lease as any written or oral agreement between a landlord and tenant that establishes or modifies the terms, conditions, rules, or other provisions regarding the use and occupancy of a dwelling. Read that twice. The conversation on your porch in which you told your brother-in-law he could stay in the Pflugerville rental until he got back on his feet is capable of being a lease. No signature required.

Here are the people owners actually mean, in the order we see them in Travis, Williamson and Hays counties:

• An occupant your tenant moved in. A partner, adult child, roommate or friend who is living there under your tenant’s roof. Their relationship is with your tenant, not with you.
• A person you personally let move in. A relative, a friend, an ex. No lease, no rent, or rent paid casually. This is the classic tenancy at will.
• A holdover. Someone who did have a lease that ended and simply stayed.
• A true unauthorized occupant. Someone who got into a vacant house with no permission from anyone.
• A trespasser. Someone who entered and is not residing there.
• A household member in a family violence situation. A different body of law applies, and it moves faster than eviction.

When Does a Guest Become a Tenant?

A guest becomes a tenant in Texas when the arrangement starts to look like residency rather than a visit — and no fixed number of days triggers it. There is no Texas statute that says a guest converts at 14 days or 30 days. What courts look at is substance: whether the person lives there continuously, keeps their belongings there, receives mail at the address, contributes money toward rent or utilities, and has no other residence.

That is why the safest working definition for an owner is the one that costs you nothing to adopt: anyone who is sleeping at the property as their home, rather than visiting it, should be treated as an occupant with possession rights until a court says otherwise. The Texas State Law Library reaches the same place, advising that the safest way to remove a guest who does not have a lease is through the formal eviction process, and warning that if you do not follow those procedures the guest may be able to sue you.

The 14-day and 30-day numbers owners quote come from lease clauses, not from state law. A well-drafted guest and occupancy provision caps consecutive guest stays and defines when a guest must be added to the lease and screened. That clause is contract, and it is enforceable — but only against the tenant who signed it, and only if it is actually in your lease. Our guide to what a Texas residential lease has to contain covers where that clause belongs.

Which Removal Path Applies to You

Match the person to the path before you send a single piece of paper. This is the table to keep.

Who is in the property	Ever had permission?	Removal path	Authority
Roommate, partner or adult child your tenant moved in	Yes, from your tenant	Enforce the lease against the tenant; if uncured, evict the tenant and all occupants	Prop. Code ch. 24
Friend or relative you let move in, no written lease	Yes, from you	Tenancy at will: 3-day written notice to vacate, then forcible detainer	§24.005(b); §24.002(a)(2)
Former tenant who stayed past the end of the term	Yes, and it ended	Holdover: notice to vacate, then forcible detainer	§24.002(a)(1)
Person who got into a vacant home with no permission from anyone	No	Sworn complaint to the county sheriff, no suit required	Prop. Code ch. 24B (S.B. 1333)
Someone who entered and is not living there	No	Law enforcement; criminal trespass	Penal Code §30.05
Household member in a family violence situation	Varies	Protective order granting exclusive possession of the residence	Fam. Code §85.021

Two lines in that table do the most damage when owners get them wrong. The first is the Chapter 24B row: the sheriff-removal process created by S.B. 1333, effective September 1, 2025, is only available where the property was not open to the public when the person entered, there is no pending litigation between the owner and the person, the owner has directed the person to leave and they have not gone, and the person is not an immediate family member and not a current or former tenant of the owner under an oral or written lease. Those last two exclusions knock out most "not on the lease" situations. The full rules, including what happens if a sheriff removes the wrong person, are in our Texas squatter removal guide.

The second is the criminal trespass row. It is real law — Penal Code §30.05(a) makes it an offense to enter or remain on property without effective consent after receiving notice to depart, and §30.05(d) grades trespass in a habitation as a Class A misdemeanor — but it applies to someone who is not residing there. Once a person claims the address as their home, an Austin Police Department or Travis County Sheriff unit will nearly always tell you it is a civil matter and leave.

When Your Tenant Is the One Who Let Them In

Go after the lease, not the person. This is the most common version of the question and the one owners most often over-complicate. If your Round Rock tenant moved a partner in without approval, you have no contract with the partner. You have a contract with the tenant that the tenant is breaching.

The clean sequence:

1. Confirm the facts before you write. A car in the driveway is not evidence. A pattern over several weeks, a neighbor report, a package addressed to a new name, or an inspection is.
2. Send a written notice of lease violation citing the specific occupancy or guest clause and stating a cure period. The cure is usually one of two things: the person leaves, or the person applies, is screened to your published standard, and is added to the lease.
3. Offer the add-to-lease path in writing. Apply your screening criteria consistently to every applicant — the same income, credit and background standard you use for anyone else. Selective enforcement is how fair housing claims start.
4. If the tenant will not cure, serve a notice to vacate on the tenant and file. Name every adult occupant you know of plus "all other occupants" so nobody can later say they were never noticed.

What you do not do is send the occupant a notice to vacate as if they were your tenant while your actual tenant remains in possession under a valid lease. You cannot dispossess one occupant of a household without terminating the tenancy that lets them be there.

The Three-Day Notice and How to Deliver It

Three days written notice is the statutory floor, and delivery is where cases are lost. §24.005(b) requires at least three days written notice to vacate before you file against a tenant at will or by sufferance, unless the parties contracted for a shorter or longer period. Under §24.002(b) the demand for possession must be in writing, must come from a person entitled to possession, and must comply with §24.005.

On delivery, §24.005(f) allows the notice to be delivered in person or by mail at the premises in question. §24.005(f-1) permits the alternative of securely affixing the notice to the outside of the main entry door with a same-day mailing, under conditions set out in the statute, and §24.005(f-2) provides that notice delivered that way is considered delivered on the date the envelope is affixed to the outside of the door. §24.005(g) starts the clock on the day the notice is delivered, not the day you wrote it.

Practical version for an Austin owner: date the notice, deliver it by a method the statute names, photograph the delivery, keep the mailing receipt, and count from the delivery date. A sloppy notice does not just delay you — it hands a disputed fact to the other side and turns a routine setting into a contested trial. Our guide to the Texas notice to vacate walks through what the document must say line by line.

Filing in Travis, Williamson and Hays County

An eviction is filed in the justice of the peace precinct where the property is located, not where you live. Central Texas owners get this wrong constantly, because the portfolio spreads across county lines faster than the paperwork does.

• Travis County — five JP precincts covering Austin, Del Valle, Manor and the unincorporated county. Central and east Austin properties sit in different precincts than Lakeway or Pflugerville addresses on the Travis side.
• Williamson County — Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown and Leander. A Cedar Park duplex and a Georgetown single-family are typically different precincts.
• Hays County — Kyle, Buda, San Marcos and Dripping Springs.

Pflugerville is the trap worth naming: the city straddles the Travis and Williamson county line, so two houses four minutes apart can belong to different counties, different JP precincts and different constables. Verify the precinct against the property address before you file, not after the clerk rejects it.

How Long It Takes and What It Costs in Austin

Budget three to five weeks from the day you deliver the notice, and about $150 in court costs to start. The steps below reflect the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure and Property Code as summarized by the Texas State Law Library.

Step	Timing	Authority
Written notice to vacate delivered	At least 3 days before filing, unless a written agreement says otherwise	§24.005(b)
Eviction suit filed in the JP precinct where the property sits	Day 0	Prop. Code ch. 24
Occupant served with citation	At least 4 days before trial	TRCP 510.4
Trial setting	No sooner than 10 days after the suit was filed, no later than 21 days	TRCP 510.4
Deadline to appeal the judgment	Within 5 days of the judgment	TRCP 510
Writ of possession may issue	6 days after final judgment	§24.0061
Constable executes the writ	Within 5 days of receiving it	§24.0061

On cost: the Travis County JP civil fee schedule effective January 1, 2026 puts an eviction at $144 to file and serve one party — $54 filing plus $90 service. Add a second occupant and the service line rises. A writ of possession and constable execution are separate charges, and an appeal to county court adds an appeal bond or statement of inability.

None of those numbers is the real expense. The real expense is the month of lost rent and the condition of the house at the end of it. At Austin-area rents, every 30 days an unwanted occupant stays costs roughly a month of income plus turnover — which dwarfs the $144. Our Austin rent guide has current submarket numbers if you want to price the delay honestly.

Texas eviction procedure also changed for suits filed on or after January 1, 2026 under Senate Bill 38, which compressed timelines and tightened the procedural requirements. The mechanics are covered in our step-by-step walkthrough of the Texas eviction process.

Can I Change the Locks or Call the Police?

No to the locks, and usually no to the police. This is the single most expensive mistake in this whole topic, and it is always made by an owner who is out of patience rather than out of options.

§92.0081(b) of the Texas Property Code says a landlord may not intentionally prevent a tenant from entering the leased premises except by judicial process, unless the exclusion results from bona fide repairs, construction or an emergency; from removing the contents of premises abandoned by a tenant; or from changing the door locks on the door of a tenant delinquent in rent — and that last exception carries its own written-notice requirements under §92.0081(c), including a 24-hour location or phone number to get the new key and a statement that the key must be provided regardless of whether the tenant pays.

§92.0081(a) separately bars removing a door, window, attic hatchway cover, lock, latch, hinge, hinge pin, doorknob or other mechanism, or removing landlord-furnished furniture, fixtures or appliances, other than for bona fide repair or replacement. Turning off the utilities is its own violation.

The price of getting it wrong is set out in §92.0081(h): a tenant may recover possession or terminate the lease, and recover a civil penalty of one month rent plus $1,000, actual damages, court costs and reasonable attorney fees. Note what that means in practice. You do not merely lose the lockout — you pay for the other side’s lawyer and you still do not have possession. The eviction you were trying to avoid is now the eviction you have to file anyway, from behind.

As for calling law enforcement: officers will remove a trespasser who is plainly not residing at the address. Once someone asserts they live there, the deputy is not going to adjudicate possession at the curb. The Texas State Law Library notes that authorities may be reluctant to intervene because the person may claim residency, and that the matter is typically pursued through court. Plan for that answer so it does not cost you a week.

Ex-Partners, Relatives and Family Violence

If there is family violence, the protective order is faster than the eviction, and it is the right tool. Under Texas Family Code §85.021(2), a court may grant exclusive possession of a residence to a party and, if appropriate, direct one or more parties to vacate the residence, where the residence is jointly owned or leased by the party receiving possession and the party being denied it, or is owned or leased by the party retaining possession, or is owned or leased by the party being denied possession where that party has an obligation to support the party or a child granted possession.

That is a court order excluding a person from a home — a different mechanism from a forcible detainer suit, on a different track, with law enforcement behind it. If safety is the issue, this is the conversation to have with a family law attorney or a local advocacy organization today, not a notice to vacate.

Where there is no violence and the situation is simply an ex-partner or relative who will not leave a home you own, you are back in the tenancy-at-will lane: three days written notice under §24.005(b), then a forcible detainer suit. It feels absurd to sue a family member over a house you hold the deed to. Do it anyway. The alternative is a self-help lockout with a §92.0081(h) price tag attached.

How Austin Landlords Keep This From Starting

Every case in this article traces back to a document that was missing or a check that was never run. The prevention list is short and it is boring, which is why it works.

• Write a real occupancy and guest clause. Name the maximum occupants, cap consecutive guest stays, define when a guest must be added to the lease, and state the consequence. A clause you did not write cannot be enforced.
• Screen and add every adult, every time. If someone is going to live there, they apply. Apply identical criteria to everyone — consistency is the fair housing defense.
• Inspect mid-lease. A documented interior inspection is how unapproved occupancy gets caught in month three instead of month eleven.
• Never let an informal arrangement drift. If you are letting a relative stay in a property, put a term and a move-out date in writing at the start. It is far easier to end a written arrangement than to prove the boundaries of an unwritten one.
• Do not leave a home visibly vacant. Long vacancies in the Austin metro are what create genuine unauthorized-occupant cases, which are a separate and uglier problem.

The broader statutory backdrop for all of this — entry, deposits, repairs, disclosures — is in our complete guide to Texas Property Code Chapter 92, and the list of things Texas simply does not let an owner do is in what a landlord cannot do in Texas.

Where Flat Fee Landlord Fits

You are the one who owns the property and carries the risk. Our job is to make sure the paperwork behind it is strong enough that this situation never gets started: a lease with an occupancy clause that actually says something, screening applied to every adult the same way, mid-lease inspections that catch an extra occupant early, and a licensed Texas team that knows which of the six paths above applies when something does go sideways in Travis, Williamson or Hays County.

And because we charge a flat monthly fee instead of a percentage, your management cost does not rise just because your rent did — the number is the same whether the house rents for $1,750 in Pflugerville or $3,400 in Westlake.

If you own a rental in the Austin area and want it managed so problems like this never start, request a free rental analysis.

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Last reviewed: September 2026. Reviewed by Mo Hashem, Designated Broker, Texas Real Estate License #686637. This article is general information for Texas property owners and is not legal advice; consult a Texas attorney about your specific situation.

Sources: Texas Property Code §24.002 (forcible detainer), §24.005 (notice to vacate prior to filing eviction suit) and §24.0061 (writ of possession), texas.public.law; Texas Property Code §92.0081 (removal of property and exclusion of residential tenant), texas.public.law; Texas Property Code Chapter 24B (removal of certain unauthorized occupants), added by S.B. 1333, 89th Texas Legislature (2025); Texas Penal Code §30.05 (criminal trespass), texas.public.law; Texas Family Code §85.021 (requirements of order applying to any party), texas.public.law; Texas State Law Library, "How do I remove a guest who won’t leave?" (sll.texas.gov/faqs/remove-unwanted-guest) and "The Eviction Process," Landlord/Tenant Law research guide (guides.sll.texas.gov/landlord-tenant-law/eviction-process); Travis County Justice of the Peace Civil Fee Schedule as of January 1, 2026 (traviscountytx.gov). All sources fetched September 10, 2026.