PRESIDIO COUNTY — When tensions were high heading toward a Summer 2023 trial to try and remove James “Jim” White III as trustee of the historic 65,000-acre Brite Ranch in Presidio County, a pair of Jim’s siblings tried a rather unusual tactic to gain leverage in their lawsuit against him — adopting a then 59-year-old man to be their heir, according to court records.
While Jim’s children have made “sham adoption” allegations before in an October 2023 lawsuit against their uncles, Beau and Mac White, a new petition by three of them attacking the adoption was filed earlier this month and now includes the adoptee — Geoffrey Scott Connor as a defendant.
Jim’s daughter, Raphael White Woodward, said the nearly seven years of court battles are a result of her father’s intent to save the ranch and not have it be sold. “I witnessed my dad cultivate a deep love for this land,” Woodward wrote to The Big Bend Sentinel. “His connection to the ranch began long before he took on the challenge of its preservation. Unfortunately, the preservation of Brite Ranch was threatened by a sham, a fraudulent adoption scheme orchestrated by my uncles.”
Documents in past and recent court filings outline how Jim’s brothers — who had no children at the time of the pretrial proceedings in 2021 — threatened to adopt a child if they didn’t get a fair settlement in their lawsuit against Jim. That move would divide the inheritance and result in a potential $27.8 million loss to Jim and his sister Hester Ann’s children, with the ranch’s value in total set at about $65 million.
Jim’s son Cuatro took the lead in filing motion for partial summary judgement last month seeking a ruling that Beau and Mac violated their fiduciary duties for the ranch trusts by not notifying Jim’s children of the adoption, which would hurt them as beneficiaries, and therefore the adoption should not impact the heirship of Jim’s children. The petition could be headed for a hearing as soon as April 15 in the 394th District Court in Marfa.
The ranch is currently owned by the Jane White Trust (Jane was the siblings’ mother), of which Jim is trustee on behalf of his siblings in addition to the four individual smaller land trusts belonging to each of the siblings. When the sibling trustees die, their children will be beneficiaries. Currently, Jim’s children are Cuatro White, Marti White, Clint White, and Raphael White Woodward. Another of Jim’s siblings, who has been involved in some of the court filings — Hester Ann White — has three children. Geoffrey Connor would be an adopted heir of both Beau and Mac unless the petition against that status succeeds.
The sprawling Brite Ranch in southwestern Presidio County, near Capote Peak, was once 125,000 acres settled by Lucas Charles Brite in 1885, who went on to form one of the largest herds of Hereford cattle — three to four thousand pure-bred breeding cattle — in the nation. At one time, the Brite Ranch included a post office, store and school.
Jim, who had lived on the ranch for more than 50 years, continued to run a cattle operation when he became the ranch trustee in 2010. In 2018, his siblings sued him for breach of fiduciary duty for investing money in ranching operations and hiring family members instead of ensuring distributions to the siblings. An August 2023 district court jury ruled in favor of the siblings and Jim was removed as trustee and barred from the ranch. An 8th Court of Appeals ruling in December nullified the jury verdict and sent the case back to district court for another trial. The district court reinstated Jim as trustee on March 11, but numerous petitions are still active in the case.
While Beau and Mac’s threats of adoptions didn’t surface in court records until settlement negotiations in the 2018 lawsuit against Jim, the roots of the threats took form in comments made by Beau long ago during negotiations of the various ranch trusts that were formed in 2008.
Monte Kimball — now the newly-elected 394th District Court judge and longtime attorney for the family members at various times — helped handle those 2008 trust agreements. In a conversation with one of Cuatro’s attorneys — Donavan Campbell Jr. — around that time, Kimball was already hearing of an idea to disinherit Jim’s children. In an affidavit Campbell filed in court, the attorney wrote: “Mr. Kimball stated and admitted to me the following: On one occasion after these transactions, Beau telephoned Mr. Kimball and admitted and stated … that if he became dissatisfied with how those Trust transactions worked out for him, he would just ‘adopt a little [racial slur] boy’ and, practically speaking, disinherit Jim’s children (Cuatro, Marti, Clint, and Raphael) from obtaining their inheritance interests as remainder beneficiaries of said Trusts.”
Who is Geoffrey Connor?
Beau and Mac both officially adopted Connor in 2022. Connor, now 61, is an attorney and former Texas secretary of state appointed by Rick Perry in 2003. He resides in Bastrop, Texas, and since leaving office in 2005 he has been involved in numerous organizations working with international and security policy. In addition to his degrees in International Studies and law, he achieved a Ph.D. in history in 2016 from the University of Texas.
His LinkedIn page now lists him as “Honorary Consul of the Kingdom of Belgium.” In a 2021 LinkedIn post congratulating him on that honor, a Belgian official wrote: “He has worked with Belgium in an official capacity as a state official and later as a volunteer to help facilitate Belgian visits.” On his page, Connor describes his work as: “I promote Belgian interests, seek to foster trade and cultural ties for Belgium and aid Belgian subjects in my area.”
Connor also lives in a stately, historic 1852 Bastrop house and has hosted parties attended by state and local political officials. In February 2021, his property was considered by local officials as a location for relocating two confederate monuments from the Bastrop County Courthouse, but county officials ultimately chose another location.
While Connor ran in prestigious Republican political circles for decades, it was through Beau’s wife that the connection to the Whites formed. Beau’s late wife, Kathleen Harnett White, had an accomplished career in government and was also connected to the same people Connor served. She served on the Texas Water Development Board (appointed by then Gov. George W. Bush), the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (appointed by Perry) and the Lower Colorado River Authority (appointed by Perry).
It’s unclear exactly how close Connor and Beau and Kathleen White were, but numerous newspaper social columns show Kathleen and Connor attending the same parties. Social media shows the three shared a love for Jack Russell terriers — Connor’s dog is named “Cap.” “I’ve come to Maryland for the national Jack Russell Terrier championship show,” Connor posted on Facebook in 2015. “I love this! I’m with my friends Beau and Kathleen White who have won this competition several times. I’m rooting for their dogs, but there are many wonderful dogs here.” Another post shows him bottle feeding one of the White’s puppies.
Despite the close ties between Beau, his wife, and Connor, the Whites still living in Marfa give no indication in court filings that they even knew who he was. Raphael gave an affidavit for the current lawsuit stating, “Geoffrey Scott Connor is a stranger to the White and Brite families. He is not related by blood or marriage to the White or Brite families and was not a close friend…”
Connor initially corresponded with The Sentinel asking to see questions but has since not replied to requests for comment. Beau and Mac declined to comment for this story.
The “threatening” email
Court records show that during the pre-trial period on the lawsuit to remove Jim as trustee, settlement negotiations were underway for the parties. At one point on December 13, 2021, Beau and Mac’s attorney — Frank Ikard — sent Jim’s attorney an email that began, “I want to try one more time to seriously convey my previous offer. I honestly believe my offer is a win/win settlement for all parties.”
The settlement offer included Jim selling about 30,000 acres of the Brite Ranch — with him getting to pick which portions — to generate a $25 million payment to his siblings. Jim also would get “exclusive use” of the ranch.
“If this offer is not accepted on or before December 15, then both of my clients will proceed to adopt children,” Ikard wrote. He wrote that if Jim didn’t accept the settlement, his children (and Hester Ann’s) would “lose half the value” of their interest in the ranch and “they will be involved in years of litigation against Beau and Mac’s children to partition the ranch.” (The plural “children” indicates Beau and Mac may have considered adopting more than one child, instead of both adopting Conner.)
The settlement was rejected, and attorneys for Jim’s children now call the email “threatening” in their filing. The current petition by Jim’s children maintains that Beau and Mac breached their fiduciary duty to show “loyalty, honesty, and full disclosure” by not informing the beneficiaries of their intent to adopt Connor. “At no point prior to, or after, ‘adopting’ Geoffrey Connor, did Mac or Beau ever inform me of the effects of such adoption on my remainder interest in their Children’s Trusts and the Jane White Trust and/or that such adoption would be wrongful self-dealing on their part and breaches of their fiduciary duties as Trustees of said Trusts,” Raphael wrote in an affidavit.
The petition also said Beau and Mac gave testimony in previous court settings saying they had no children after they had adopted Connor.
Once the adoption became known to White family members, it led to an encounter between Mac and Raphael described in her affidavit. “On the eve of the original trial in this case, I encountered Mac drinking at a local restaurant called Spirit Marfa. My husband and I had a conversation with Mac as we were leaving. This conversation was the first time either of us had spoken to Mac in years. Mac was loud and the conversation was awkward. Mac stated that the trial would be ‘bad’ for Jim and Cuatro and they should settle. At that point, I asked Mac why he adopted Geoffrey Connor. Mac replied so that he and his wife would be “taken care of.” He further stated that they had an “arrangement” with Geoffrey to ensure that they would be “taken care of,” but that he could “get rid of him if the family wanted to cut a deal.”
An attorney for Beau and Mac later reiterated the reason for the adoption in a statement that ran in an October 18, 2023, article in The Sentinel. “The shares of the Brite Ranch pass, under the terms of the Jane White Trust, only to then children of the current four owners. Because Beau White and his wife Kathleen had no natural children and [Mac] White and his wife Julie had no natural children, the apparent scheme of James White, III was for his own children to own a double portion of the ranch when their uncles died,” wrote attorney Deborah McClure. “After [Jim] prevented Beau and Mac, for years, from receiving proper income from the Trust, they became very worried about the future for them and their wives. Beau’s wife Kathleen is now incapacitated with dementia and is in a memory care facility. Beau decided to adopt Geoff Connor, a close personal friend of him and his wife of many years. In this way Geoff could be responsible for Kathleen’s care if Beau passed first. Later, [Mac] White decided to do the same thing so Geoff could care for Julie if [Mac] passed first. Each brother adopted Geoff, but their wives did not.” (Kathleen Hartnett White died on August 6, 2024.)
The lawsuits involved in the legal battles specifically note details of the trust, which do not include spouses as heirs.
Attorneys for Jim’s children also argue that the structure of the adoption lends credence to their claims that it is fraudulent. “The bizarre structure of the adoption — an adoption where the purported adoptee has two different adoptive fathers, both of whom are brothers (making the purported adoptee his own cousin) — yet the wives of each adoptive father did not join in the adoption,” they wrote in their petition.
“This plot, of double adoption involving prior Secretary of State Geoff Conners, sought to undermine the ranch’s integrity and exploit its resources for personal gain. Raphael wrote in her statement to The Sentinel.
Editor’s note: When asked for comment this week, McClure emailed to say she had not given The Sentinel a statement — a portion of which is included in this article — for an October 23 article, and she asked that those comments be retracted from that story. The Sentinel located the statement sent from her email account and forwarded it to her. McClure emailed back, “No comment.”
For more background see bigbendsentinel.com/brite-lawsuit.
This story was updated (March 27, 12:15 p.m) and clarified to note that Jim became trustee of the ranch in 2010 and that in addition to Jim’s children, Hester Ann’s children would also be impacted by the adoption.