Briscoe children feuding over riches
Claims include heirs cut from will, bid to take foundation’s cash
During his lifetime, former Gov. Dolph Briscoe Jr. amassed a South Texas ranching empire surpassed in size only by the storied King Ranch.
The land and cattle baron assembled more than 600,000 acres stretching over 10 counties. He owned some 15,000 cattle, part of a family fortune that Forbes valued at $1.3 billion six years ago.
Briscoe died in 2010 at 87, leaving the family business to his three children to share equally.
The Briscoe family remains a force in Uvalde, the slow-beating heart of the region’s agricultural industry. Dolph “Chip” Briscoe III, 67, runs Briscoe Ranch Inc. from an office there, and the family still controls the First State Bank of Uvalde.
Now, Uvalde is one front in a legal battle between Chip Briscoe and the late magnate’s younger daughter, Cele Carpenter, 64. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.
Carpenter and her three children have sued Briscoe, alleging that he persuaded sister Janey Marmion — who was seriously ill for the last decade of her life — to modify her will in 2014, effectively cutting the Carpenter heirs out of a portion of their inheritance.
Marmion died in 2018 at age
68.
The Carpenters contend that “behind (Cele’s) back, Chip engineered a change in Janey’s estate documents so none of Janey’s assets would go to Cele’s children and Chip’s family would seize control of the business.”
The Carpenters live in Dallas and filed a lawsuit there. Carpenter’s three children also filed suit in Uvalde County, challenging the validity of Marmion’s will.
Briscoe has yet to file an answer to his sister’s lawsuit in Dallas. But he disputed the allegations made by his niece and two nephews in the Uvalde case. He accuses them of trying to take more than $500 million from a charitable foundation Marmion and her father established to honor her late daughter Kate, who died in 2008 at age 20.
Marmion had no other children.
“Whether the Carpenters think leaving money to charity is rational or not, that is exactly what Janey wanted; it was her money,” Briscoe says in his response. “Although not a beneficiary of her will, as executor of Janey’s estate, I will defend Janey’s estate plan and preserve Kate’s memory and Janey’s wishes for the Kate Marmion Charitable Foundation.”
Briscoe’s court filing doesn’t address the allegation that the Carpenter children were cut out of the will to benefit his two sons.
Rancher and banker
A Uvalde native, Dolph Briscoe Jr. graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1942 and served in the China-burmaindia theater during World War II.
Briscoe launched his political career in 1948 when he was elected to the Texas House. He sponsored legislation that gave Texas its statewide paved farm-to-market road system. He served four terms until 1957.
He ran for governor in 1968 and lost but was elected when he tried again four years later. He was the first Texas governor to serve a four-year term. Governors served two-year terms until 1974. Winning re-election, he led the state during its oil and gas boom years.
He sought a third term but was upset in the Democratic primary by Attorney General John Hill.
Briscoe returned to Uvalde, where he worked as a rancher and banker. Texas’ largest individual landowner, he kept his ranch headquarters at his office at the First State Bank of Uvalde. The bank, with nearly $1.9 billion in assets and eight branches today, remains a part of the Briscoe family business and is chaired by Chip Briscoe.
Dolph Briscoe Jr. and his wife, Janey, who died in 2000, considered San Antonio a second home. They were among the biggest benefactors of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
San Antonio’s Briscoe Western Art Museum was named in the couple’s honor. The museum features art, history and culture of the American West.
The family business
Briscoe died of kidney failure and pneumonia in his hometown.
In an amended lawsuit filed last month, Cele Carpenter and her children say her father was “scrupulous” in his estate planning “to ensure that his three children … share equally in the ownership and benefits of the family’s assets, its vast ranching
operations, valuable oil and gas interests and large banking business.”
Chip Briscoe, though, wanted to make decisions about the family business “unilaterally” and was “particularly disdainful” of Carpenter and her family because they live in Dallas and, in his view, know nothing about ranching, the Carpenters assert. Carpenter’s husband is real estate developer John W. Carpenter III.
Briscoe and Cele Carpenter’s sister, Marmion, learned she had cancer not long after her father’s death, according to documents filed in her probate case by Carpenter’s three children.
The three siblings — sons Benjamin Carpenter II and Austin Carpenter and daughter Bonner Acker — say their aunt’s illnesses, the deaths of her daughter and father, and the end of her second marriage took a toll on her mental and physical health. Marmion suffered from anorexia, arthritis and depression, the Carpenters say.
In 2011, the three contend, Marmion executed a will that provided for half of the family trust’s assets to be divvied up equally among her niece and four nephews. The other half would be placed in a charitable trust for the benefit of a foundation established to support causes important to her daughter Kate.
Kate Marmion died from a gunshot wound to the chest at close range. Her death was ruled an accident.
The Kate Marmion Charitable Foundation was created to support nonprofits in Uvalde and South Texas. A 2019 tax filing shows that its beneficiaries have included Uvalde Memorial Hospital, Uvalde County Jr. Livestock Association and the Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas in San Antonio.
Cele Carpenter says her brother kept her away from Marmion prior to her death so Carpenter wouldn’t learn about Marmion’s revised will.
New will
At Marmion’s funeral in 2018, Carpenter and her children contend, Briscoe presented his sister with new estate documents that Marmion allegedly executed in 2014.
Under the revised documents, the foundation was to receive almost all of Marmion’s estate and some trusts. The foundation also received a third of a 2012 trust, with Chip Briscoe’s two sons — Dolph “D.B.” Briscoe IV and James “Leigh” Briscoe — each getting a third.
The already substantial assets became even more valuable as a result of the oil and gas boom in the Eagle Ford Shale.
Marmion’s original 2011 will directed her assets to be placed in a revocable trust. The foundation would have received income from half of her wealth for 22 years, with the remainder going to Carpenter’s three children and Briscoe’s sons. That arrangement would have given the Carpenters majority control of the family business, the Carpenters say.
The “prospect that Cele’s family would actually control the family business after (Chip Briscoe) died was anathema to him,” the Carpenters say in the Dallas lawsuit.
The 2014 estate documents named Briscoe the will’s sole executor, rather than him sharing those duties with Cele Carpenter, her children say.
Another change, the Carpenters say, called for the assets in the charitable trust Marmion created to be “entirely and immediately granted” to the foundation. Briscoe and his sons control the foundation, the Carpenters say. The original trust called for the assets to be paid out at about 6 percent a year.
Marmion’s legacy
Briscoe says his niece and nephews’ claims are without merit.
The three, “although already wealthy in their own right, filed this will contest seeking to overturn Janey’s estate plan and take in excess of half a billion dollars from Kate’s foundation to put in their own coffers,” Briscoe says in a Feb. 11 court filing.
“In what can only be described as breathtaking audacity, they attack their aunt for leaving so much money to charity instead of to them,” he adds. “Waiting until Janey can no longer defend herself, they allege that Janey ‘lacked the necessary capacity’ to execute her estate plan.”
The Carpenter children say in their lawsuit that after 2012 their aunt “lost her grasp of reality (and) suffered from insane delusions.”
David Beck, a Houston lawyer representing Briscoe, called those allegations “hurtful and untrue.” Beck said that after Marmion changed her will in 2014, she continued to manage her sizable assets, sold stocks and bonds and sat on various boards, including at the Briscoe Western Art Museum.
“She was a wonderful person who deserves better than to have her good name drug through the mud,” Beck said.
Marmion changed her will to give a substantial portion of her wealth to the Kate Marmion Charitable Foundation, he said.
Why did Marmion cut the Carpenter children out of her will?
“Because she decided she wanted more to go to her foundation,” Beck said.
Splitting assets
In a Feb. 15 letter to the foundation and the Texas attorney general’s office, the Carpenter children say that “under no circumstances” will they take assets that otherwise would go to the foundation.
Beck, however, dismissed as “baloney” any suggestion that the Carpenters are not seeking to seize the foundation’s assets.
The same day the letter was filed, the Carpenters filed an amended complaint in Dallas that seeks the return of $27 million that Briscoe distributed to the foundation on behalf of the trust Dec. 31 — over Cele Carpenter’s objection.
“For over two years, the Carpenter family has held hostage Janey Briscoe Marmion’s $500 million gift to the Kate Marmion Charitable Foundation,” said James Hartnett Jr., a Dallas attorney for the foundation. “It is tragic that the foundation has been deprived of its ability to provide significantly more financial support to South Texans during this difficult pandemic.”
Also in their Feb. 15 letter, the Carpenter children proposed a settlement that would involve
“an equitable split of the remaining assets in the family business” between the Carpenter and Briscoe families.
Beck dismissed the proposal, recalling a 1998 interview in Texas Monthly in which the former governor said he hated to see “big ranches broken up and subdivided.”
The Kate Marmion Charitable Foundation filed a counterclaim Feb. 25 in the Uvalde case.
The foundation alleges that the Carpenter children and their mother “seek to undermine the legacy that Janey and Gov. Briscoe created for Kate by contesting the 2014 will.” It calls their legal challenge a “backdoor attempt to unwind Janey’s estate plan and her legacy to honor her deceased daughter.”
The foundation wants the court to declare the 2014 will valid, while the Carpenter children want it set aside. They say that if Marmion signed it, “she did so as the result of fraud.”
If the Carpenter children can’t get the will invalidated, they will seek to have Chip Briscoe removed as the will’s executor.
Family lawyer
In their Dallas lawsuit, the Carpenters say Chip Briscoe enlisted the Briscoe family’s longtime lawyer to carry out his alleged scheme.
R. James Curphy, of the San Antonio law firm Schoenbaum, Curphy & Scanlan, allegedly prepared Marmion’s new will and trust and concealed the changes from Cele Carpenter. The Carpenters say Curphy should have disclosed his “conflict of interest” to Cele Carpenter.
“Mr. Curphy and his law firm had to choose sides, and they chose Chip’s side because he had provided, and would provide, a much more lucrative source of attorney’s fees than Cele,” the Carpenters say in the lawsuit.
The suit accuses Curphy and his firm of fraud, legal malpractice and conspiring to divert assets from the Carpenter children to Chip Briscoe’s children and the foundation.
Curphy didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Others named in the suit include Briscoe’s sons and the Kate Marmion Charitable Foundation.
Briscoe is accused of breach of fiduciary duty, breach of trust and conspiring with Curphy.
The suit seeks more than $1 million in damages.