MARFA — In June, when a judge ordered warring parties — all from the same family — in lawsuits over the Brite Ranch ownership to enter into mediation, there was at least a dollop of hope from some that the fourth attempt to find resolution outside of the courtrooms would be the charm.
But brothers Mac and Beau White filed a petition on October 18 — just days before mediation — asking the court to appoint a receiver with total control of the ranch, including its potential sale and possibly ousting of brother Jim White III and his son Cuatro White from any use of the land. When a court appoints a receiver, usually when co-owners of land disagree on what to do with it or a trustee breaches their fiduciary duties, a judge has a menu of options for what powers they grant over management of the land and finances. Mac and Beau’s petition urges the judge to grant them all of those powers. (Sister Hester Ann White did not add her name to the application for a receiver but has been named in other legal proceedings.)
While the application for a receiver may have been a threat to bolster Mac and Beau’s position in mediation against their brother Jim, the mediation ended in failure with no agreements among the parties.
None of the parties involved in several lawsuits over the ranch would comment on this story on the advice of their attorneys. On November 15, Cuatro fired a volley back at his uncles Mac and Beau with a petition to partition the land — essentially have the court split it up amongst the siblings’ trusts — and go after attorney fees he says he’s owed. The partition pleading is “expressly in response and answer to, and as an absolute and affirmative defense against” Mac and Beau pleading for a receiver, his petition states.
Cuatro’s petition for partition of the ranch could further complicate several ongoing legal actions because of the vast amount of financial and legal work needed in his petition for decisions on appraising the ranchland and what rules would govern how the land is divided between the complicated web of trusts for the brothers and sister and their descendants. What appears to be an effort to divide and sell could end up creating a logistical nightmare that drags on in the courts for months or years to come; Cuatro also has requested a jury trial.
The Brite Ranch is estimated to be worth at least $60 million, but court records show the legal battles between the White siblings — each of whom are heir to a large trust and have their own trusts for the ranch — also center around differences in ideas about how to preserve or profit from the land. The ranch, nestled in the heart of western Presidio County north of Capote Peak, played an important role in the county’s history. Lucas Brite settled the land in 1885 and eventually established a 128,000-acre, thriving Highland Hereford cattle ranch. The ranch headquarters became a town of sorts with a store, post office and school.
Eventually, rights to the ranch passed from Lucas’ wife Edward “Eddie” McMinn Anderson to her granddaughters Nancy and Jane, which then split the ranch ownership into two. The trusts in question now are all related to Jane White’s division of the portion of the ranch — about 64,000 acres, the “Jane White Trust” — and to complicate matters more, each of her four children also now have individual trusts under their name, “The Children’s Trusts,” with claims to portions of the land.
The legal battles began in 2018 when Mac and Beau sued Jim for breach of fiduciary duty, claiming he — as a designated trustee to manage the land — was operating the ranch to enrich himself while not generating enough money for his brothers as beneficiaries of the trust. A jury in that Presidio County District Court case rendered a verdict in June of 2023 agreeing with the plaintiff brothers Mac and Beau, and the court eventually ordered the removal of Jim as trustee and the division of the family trust into separate new trusts for each sibling. (Jim appealed that ruling to the Texas 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in El Paso, which is expected to rule on the case toward the end of the year.) The district court ruling created a co-tenantcy for the siblings with equal rights to access to the land, but further legal squabbles surfaced over that access. An “interim trustee,” former State Comptroller Susan Combes, was appointed by the court to replace Jim, but she resigned last spring.
“Since the removal of the trustee, the Jane White Trust has been in chaos,” the pleading by Mac and Beau for the receivership states. “The trial court attempted to provide a temporary interim solution, but additional chaos ensued. … This was a sad and costly miscalculation. Jim has capitulated his duties as trustee to his son [Cuatro], who has operated Jim’s interest to the detriment of all other joint owners and has committed waste and mismanagement. … Over hunting and over grazing has placed the property at risk of material injury.”
With Cuatro now doing most of the upkeep on the ranch, he’s facing the same claims of mismanagement from his relatives as his father Jim did during his 16 years managing the range. Cuatro has countered in court that he is paying all the upkeep and maintenance on the ranch.
Jim’s four children are heirs to his trust and possibly the trusts of Beau and Mac — who had no biological children. However, the brothers made a seemingly calculated move in January 2022, while the lawsuit was ongoing, by both adopting the same son, Geoffrey Connor, who is now 61. Conner is a former Texas secretary of state who was involved in former Gov. Rick Perry’s circle of Republicans and a good friend of Beau’s late wife Kathleen. He’s now an attorney in Bastrop. The adoption of Connor muddies the water on potential heirs as well as parties who have legal claims in the morass of legal battles.
Cuatro’s partition pleading also includes a request for the court to decide on what he calls the “Sham Adoption” of Connor and whether “the Sham Adoption was fraudulent.” He also asks the court to authorize a foreclosure on several properties owned by Mac and Beau that Cuatro obtained liens on to pay court cost in a previous lawsuit he won. The Presidio County Sheriff’s Office would seize the properties and sell them at auction with up to $39,022 going to Cuatro’s legal fees. It’s unclear what those properties are worth.
A hearing in the 394th District Court on both petitions has been set for December 9 in Alpine.