Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Texas

Hello,

My mother died without a will in Sept. of 2005. She owned a home that later due to hurricane Ike had its power knocked out. A friend had been living there, but had moved out at the time. The city had the house torn down on the grounds that someone was living in it without power and building fires in the fireplace. (This was after the city labelled it condemned.) There was a roof built over a mobile home and attached to a garage. The siding was peeling off that enclosed the entire structure and needed to be replaced.) My cousin had hired a structural engineer to do an assessment on the place and validated that it was structurally sound. No one lived there and I found out about it being torn down the day before it happened. It turned out that the company hired to demolish it is owned by someone that I know but had not spoken to in several years. They had tried to track me down to find out what the situation was before the demolished it. Unfortunately my cousin who hired the structural engineer has also died and I have no documentation to validate who he hired or what services they performed. I have checked public records and my mother is listed as 100% owner per tax records. I have a sister and we are both wondering. Is there anything we can do with this property? And if we can somehow document what services had been rendered is it possible that the city would be liable for demolishing the place when it could have been repaired?

Roy

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