'A rat in the woodpile': Allegations fly among heirs to the fortune of former Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe Jr., as the family's storied ranch holdings hang in the balance.
UVALDE, Texas—In a family photograph taken in 1958, future Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe Jr., wearing a starched white cowboy shirt, is pictured with his wife and three young children in front of their wooden ranch house, surrounded by Briscoe land as far as the eye can see.
Mr. Briscoe’s oldest daughter, Janey Briscoe Marmion, died of cancer in 2018 at the age of 68, leaving no heirs after her only child, Kate, died by gunshot a decade earlier. The families of the surviving siblings, Cele Briscoe Carpenter and Dolph Briscoe III, known as Chip, are fighting in court over how to divide up Janey’s portion of the Briscoe fortune.
Growing up, the Briscoe children split their time between a modest home in the town of Uvalde, about 85 miles southwest of San Antonio, and the family’s two ranches. One property sits in the Texas Hill Country, a rugged region of central and southern Texas where former President Lyndon B. Johnson was born and raised.
The future governor was a four-term Texas state representative when his father died unexpectedly of a heart attack in his early 60s. Mr. Briscoe cut his legislative career short and returned to run the ranch. His father had made sure the family business had enough cash so his son didn’t need to sell land to pay the estate tax. “He had seen too many examples of heirs who couldn’t hold onto what they were fortunate enough to inherit,” Mr. Briscoe wrote.
She fell in love with John W. Carpenter III, the heir to an old-money Dallas family. When they were married in 1980, Mr. Carpenter sought Big Daddy’s approval, while Cele sought Chip’s, seeing him as a kind of father figure. Robin Lewis, Cele’s friend for four decades, said Cele avoids glitzy social functions and instead prefers hiking, taking in rescue dogs and visiting small-town craft fairs in the North Carolina mountains. “She’s real comfortable shopping at Walmart,” Ms. Lewis said.
“He looked like a regular cowboy with a straw hat on and he was out there working with them,” he said. Leigh said he got along with Cele’s children growing up but didn’t feel particularly close to them since he only saw them on holidays and didn’t communicate between gatherings. He said he had a closer bond with Janey’s daughter, Kate, in part because he and his family had weekly lunches with his grandparents and Kate would often join.
Chip’s son D.B., who was in graduate school at the University of Texas at the time, and used to meet Kate at football games with their grandfather, said, “Kate’s death in January 2008 remains one of the most painful moments of my life.” Shortly after her divorce, Janey signed a new will and made some changes to the agreements governing key trusts, according to her estate documents. Unbeknown to Cele, the moves entirely bypassed the three Carpenter children. Under Janey’s prior estate plan, the three Carpenters stood to inherit about $480 million of Janey’s approximately $940 million fortune, according to the Carpenters.
A few days after Janey died, Cele and Chip met in their late father’s wood-paneled office on a November morning to pick out hymns and scripture readings for her funeral. They were getting up to leave when Chip told her he needed to show her something.She drove to the local Sonic Drive-In, where she ordered a large ice tea with two lemons and read the will.
Cele said she believes Chip was angry that Janey was giving her family control of the ranch. She said Janey’s new will violates their father’s express intention in his own estate documents that the three children share equally in his estate. Chip “resented that I wasn’t working there and was an equal owner,” she said in an interview at the Big Home.
Chip’s lawyers provided an email that Janey wrote in February 2017 as evidence she understood and was committed to the will. In an email, one of her attorneys reminded her of the terms of the will and asked if she wanted to revisit them. “I am happy with my will at this time,” Janey wrote. Chip said that Cele has keys to all of the ranches and can visit whenever she wants without asking permission.
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