my husband was appointed administrator of his mothers' estate. There are 3 other children. Her estate consited of 2 homes. Valued around $250,000. When everything is settled will we owe taxes on the money? We live in Texas. We have a lawyer... just wanted to find out about taxes.

What does your lawyer say about the taxes?

I have not asked them.

To my knowledge, there is NO state inheritance tax in Texas. However, to confirm this, you need only make a phone call to the Texas tax authorities.

As for the federal estate taxes, the estate falls well below the minimum threshold for taxation, so NO estate tax return is needed.

You may need to file a fiduciary return (Form 1041) if the house are sold while part of the estate. If so, any tax professional wth experience in estate taxes can file that return for you for about a $300 fee.

Texas has neither an estate tax nor an inheritance tax, so you don't have to worry about Texas taxes - try saying that three time fast!

I hope you are right, I thought a saw a list that did not include Texas. Thanks for the answers. What about children that live out of state? OK and Ohio.

Neither OK nor OH have an inheritance tax - very few states do - so the children in thoise states do not have to pay any taxes on their inheritance. Now, both OH and OK do have ESTATE taxes, so don't be confused - the difference is that with estate taxes the executor is responsible for making sure that any estate taxes are paid out of the assets of the estate prior to distributing the remainder of the assets to the heirs, whereas inheritance taxes are the responsibility of the heir.

FYI - here is a pretty good web site that summarizes taxes by state:
Taxes by State (http://www.retirementliving.com/RLtaxes.html)