The termination option · Texas
When a Texas option period actually ends
You bought a window you can walk away in. The contract runs two deadlines through that window at different speeds, and only one of them gets the weekend off — which is the part almost nothing written about this mentions. Here is what the paragraph says, read against the form rather than repeated from another page.
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The thing nobody tells you
One contract, two deadlines, two different rules.
Paragraph 5 sets a deadline for getting money where it needs to go, and a deadline for changing your mind. They are written differently on purpose, and the difference only shows up on the weeks it matters.
The money clock
Bends around a weekend.
If the last day to get the option fee or the earnest money to the escrow agent lands on a Saturday, a Sunday or a Legal Holiday, the contract moves it to the end of the next day that is not one.
Lands on a weekend → steps to the next business day
TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5A(2)
The walk-away clock
Does not.
The deadline to terminate has no such provision anywhere in the paragraph. It is 5:00 p.m. local time on the date written in the contract. A Sunday is a day. A holiday is a day.
Lands on a weekend → still 5:00 p.m. local time
TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5B
So a short option signed late in the week can expire on a weekend day while the money deadline for that same contract rolls to Monday. Somebody should be watching both, and it should not have to be you.
It is not the inspection period
“Any reason” means any reason.
Almost everything written about this window calls it the inspection period, and the paragraph that creates it does not mention inspections once. The right you bought is unrestricted: no finding, no report, no defect, no estimate. Most people do use the time for an inspection, because that is the obvious thing to do with it. But if you walk the house a second time and simply feel differently, that is inside what you paid for, and you do not owe anybody an explanation.
The other half of that sentence is the one that catches people: the right is only unrestricted for as long as it lasts, and TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5E puts time of the essence over the whole paragraph — not just the money in it. Strict compliance, in the contract’s own words.
Where the money actually goes
What one payment pays for, in order.
The contract sets the order, not whoever banks it — and the order runs in your favor, which is worth knowing on the day something goes wrong.
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1
The option fee
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2
Then the earnest money
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3
Then any additional earnest money
A payment that arrives short still covers the option fee before it covers anything else — so the first thing the contract protects is your right to walk away. TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5A(3).
What most guides get wrong
You do not hand the option fee to the seller. It goes to the escrow agent, made payable to the escrow agent, within 3 days. Pages telling you it goes “to the seller, or the seller’s agent, or the title company, depending on the contract” are describing a version of this that the form does not contain.
And what the other half says
That is about delivery, not about who ends up with it. TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5A(4) says the escrow agent may release the option fee to the seller at any time, without notice to you — so treat it as spent the moment you send it. The half worth holding on to: if you go through with the purchase, the option fee is credited to the sales price at closing. Both are in the same paragraph, and pages tend to quote one.
Before the window closes
What people ask once the clock is running.
Does the option period deadline move if it lands on a weekend?
No — and this is the detail that costs people the whole window, because a different deadline on the same contract does move. TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5A(2) says that if the last day to deliver the option fee or the earnest money falls on a Saturday, Sunday or Legal Holiday, that deadline rolls to the end of the next day that is not one. The deadline to actually terminate has no such provision anywhere in the paragraph — TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5B. It is 5:00 p.m. local time on the date in the contract, weekend or not.
What counts as a legal holiday on the 2026 form?
This changed in the form effective July 2026, and the change is only visible as a diff. Every earlier revision used the words “legal holiday” in lower case and never defined them anywhere. The current form defines the term by statute — Texas Government Code §§ 662.003(a) and 662.003(b)(4) and (6), as adopted into TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5A(2). The practical difference: whether the title office happened to be closed is not the test, and never was. The statute’s list is. We are not going to paraphrase a statutory list on a web page; the sections are linked below, and your title company will confirm a specific date.
Do I need a reason to use the option period?
No, and nobody can require one. TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5B gives an unrestricted right: a notice that says nothing beyond “Buyer terminates” does the same work as one with a forty-page report behind it. If somebody asks you to justify it, the answer is that the contract does not ask you to.
If I send one payment, what does it pay for first?
The order is set by the contract rather than by whoever banks it. TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5A(3) applies what is received to the option fee, then the earnest money, then any additional earnest money. That order is in your favor and it is worth knowing when something goes wrong: a payment that arrives short still covers the option fee before it covers anything else, which is the part that protects your right to walk away.
Does the seller get to keep my option fee?
Assume so — though not by the route most pages describe. The fee is delivered to the escrow agent, not to the seller. But TREC No. 20-19 ¶ 5A(4) then authorizes that the escrow agent may release the option fee to the seller at any time, without notice to you. So “you pay the seller” is the wrong picture of the mechanics and the right picture of the outcome. The part worth holding on to is the other half of the same paragraph: if you go through with the purchase, the option fee is credited to the sales price at closing. You are not paying it twice.
Sources for the contract and statute detail on this page, verified September 2026: TREC One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), No. 20-19 · TREC Third Party Financing Addendum, No. 40-11 · TREC Addendum Concerning Right to Terminate Due to Lender’s Appraisal, No. 49-1 · Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1101 · Texas Property Code § 5.008. Paragraph numbers move between form revisions, so each one above is cited with its form — and the revision this page reads is TREC No. 20-19, revised 05-04-2026, effective 07/01/2026. Everything here describes how the contract works; what it means for your contract is a question for an attorney.
The deadline that does not move
Have somebody watching the clock who is not you.
The window is short, the deadlines behave differently, and the one that matters most does not move. That is a good reason to have somebody whose job is the calendar — who knows which of your two deadlines moved this week and which one did not, before the week it matters.
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