Sibling sister quits attempt to stop the partition of the ranch
MARFA — In a new twist in the legal battle over the historic Brite Ranch in Presidio County, former combative litigants wanting to retain their rights to keep or sell their division of the land have teamed up against an heir sibling who was seeking to sell the ranch in its entirety.
Jim White (along with his son Cuatro White and some of his other siblings), Mac White, and Geoffrey Connor (the adoptive son of both Mac and the late sibling Beau White) have agreed to a settlement that calls for partitioning the land into four pieces, one of which would go to the sibling Hester Ann White, the others to Jim, Mac and Connor. A jury trial had been scheduled for October 21, with Hester Ann fighting the “in kind partition” and instead seeking a ruling that called for selling the ranch in one piece.
Jury summons had already gone out when yet another twist developed. Court records show a filing by Hester Ann on October 1 requesting to cancel the trial and noting her agreement in partitioning the land into four pieces.
The 65,000-acre ranch, once home to a famous and profitable Hereford herd created by pioneer Lucas Brite, is estimated to be worth at least $60 million. The ranch and Brite’s family played a prominent role in county and Marfa life, with many in the family serving as elected officials since the late 1800s.
Eldest son Jim, who grew up on the ranch, assumed the role of overall trustee in the early 2000s, maintaining the land and in charge of distributing profits to his siblings. However, In 2018, Jim’s siblings — Mac, Beau and, in some filings, Hester Ann — filed a lawsuit claiming Jim was not fairly distributing revenue to them from their family trust and sought his removal as trustee. A trial in the summer of 2023 ended with a court order removing Jim as trustee managing the ranch, and on September 3, 2023, the court appointed an interim trustee for that role — former State Comptroller Susan Combs — to handle financial management, such as paying bills and distributing revenue to the trustees. Jim, Cuatro and Raphael White Woodward, Jim’s daughter, objected to Combs’ appointment by District Judge Rex Emerson because they alleged Combs was a close friend of Beau’s wife, the late Kathleen Harnett White. A December 2024 appeals court ruling out of El Paso reversed the district court’s decision, saying improper jury instructions played a critical role, and Jim was reinstated as trustee.
What seemed to be the final showdown in the eight-year-long battle with multiple lawsuits and hundreds of filings has started to fizzle out with Hester Ann’s abandonment of a trial and the other siblings seemingly in sincere Kumbaya. However, sources close to the litigants, who wished to remain unnamed to sustain their relationship with the family, said the defendants in the trial — Jim, Cuatro, Mac and Connor — have asked the district judge in the case, Ben Woodward, to enforce keeping the trial and convert it to a bench trial. The requesting parties said a bench trial is needed to rule on the possibility of giving more land to them because Hester Ann has not paid any court fees or bills related to the maintenance of the ranch, the source said. As of The Big Bend Sentinel deadline, Judge Woodward had not ruled on that request. Jim and Cuatro have long maintained in court that they have no intention of selling whatever portion of the ranch they end up with and instead want to retain the land’s legacy, while the intentions of Mac, formerly Beau, Connor and Hester Ann are unknown. The parties in this case have all declined to comment over the years, on the advice of their attorneys.
The alliance of Jim, Cuatro, Mac, and Connor follows years of sometimes aggressive legal maneuvers between Jim, Cuatro and the Mac and Beau. When the 2023 jury trial stripped Jim of his role as the trustee of the ranch, where he lived, he was forced off the land, and Combs barred his family from accessing it — even filing criminal trespass complaints with the county sheriff when they tried to remove their possessions from the ranch headquarters.
Even more contentious was the issue of the then 60-year-old Connor, whom both Mac and Beau adopted in January 2022. Both had no biological children. Cuatro and his sister Raphael called it a “sham adoption” intended to dilute the worth of the ranch to the other heirs. Despite numerous court filings and a separate lawsuit, the issue of whether it was a “sham” was never ruled on. And remarkably, the parties objecting to the unusual adoption went ahead and recognized Connor as the late Beau’s heir trustee of his portions of the ranch. It seems clear that years of litigation and likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees played a role in the once contentious legal combatants wanting to finally resolve the case and accept the role of Connor.
The Brite Ranch, abutting Capote Peak in southwestern Presidio County, was founded by Lucas Brite, who built a Hereford cattle empire on the land in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The ranch was also the site of the Brite Store raid in 1917, in which Mexican bandits raided the headquarters and killed three people, and the following massacre of 15 Mexican and Mexican American young men in the village of Porvenir, Texas, has been alleged by many as payback for the raid. For more about the ranch and extensive lawsuit coverage, see bigbendsentinel.com/brite-lawsuit.
