Try it. Worst case, the judge can say, "No".

Ask, and ye might receive. Ask not, and ye definitely will not receive.

Btw, my lease specifies that any time I must take action to enforce the lease for damages or other matters, there is a charge equal to 10% of the charge in question or $50, whichever is greater. This is my "Admin Fee."

How that helps on eviction is I can apply the deposit to the Admin fee, which I don't ask for in court, but then there's a higher balance of court awarded fees I can send into collections. That's why you should always charge fees. The court may not award them in a judgment, but all that means is you can't legally garnishee wages or levy a bank account to pay the balance due. So instead you apply the deposit to your fees that the court didn't award, then go after 100% of the fees that the court DID award!

Example:

Court awards a judgment for $2,000 rent, late fees, legal costs.

My Admin Fee: $200 (10%).

Total Owed in my software ledger: $2,200.

Tenant Deposit: $1000.

I apply $200 of the deposit to my Admin Fee and $800 to the judgment, leaving $1,200 I can still collect.

If I hadn't charged the Admin Fee, I would only have $1,000 I could still collect. The Admin Fee is legit, because I had to go through the hassles of evicting the tenant, contacting the attorney, emailing documents, etc. To avoid it, the tenant would have to sue me and claim the fee isn't legit. How many evicted tenants are going to willingly show back up in court with their landlord who just won an eviction against them to try to demand their deposit back?

You can charge them but the TX statutes preclude the judge from adding fees to the eviction judgement. Just back rent and actual damages (IE: court filing costs, lawyer bill, property damage).

You can however pursue it separately in small claims court and get a 2nd judgement if you have them either spelled out in your lease agreement or you can show that you have actual damages to back it up. This is the same process to collect late fees during/after the eviction.

I charge $100 eviction filing fee. That is to help with the costs associated such as paper, ink, fuel, etc.

Zero, you need to adopt the Admin Fee. If the law says you can't charge for filing an eviction, charge for lease non-compliance. Or charge the a lease renewal fee. Or charge them (insert fee).

There are ways around Govt shenanigans for the creative. Just like the Govt runs around the requirement to have tax laws passed by a VOTE of the people by creating "fines" and "fees" which require no vote.

Sid you are absolutely correct in this line of thinking.

We state in our lease if court action is required we add a fee equal to one months rent to amount owed.

Wow, I like that fee. Will really make them think again about breaking the rules.