Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Alfred C. Glassell Jr.’s daughter won’t get a $100 million share of a half-billion-dollar fortune the Texas oilman left to his family foundation and a Houston art museum in his 2003 will, a jury determined yesterday.
Curry Glassell, 52, was the only heir to contest Glassell’s 2003 will, the last of more than a dozen wills signed by the Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Co. founder before his 2008 death at age 95. The rest of the family supported the 2003 will, which left half the estate to the Glassell Family Foundation and half to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which the oilman helped build into the nation’s fifth-largest art institution.
Curry Glassell favored a 1998 version of the will that left her 10 times the amount she was bequeathed in the 2003 will. Her attorneys told jurors the museum and its lawyers had pressured the elderly philanthropist to change his will and shift money earmarked for decades for family members to the museum and to a foundation run by her younger half-brother, Alfred C. Glassell III.
“The jury found Mr. Glassell had mental capacity and wasn’t unduly influenced” in rewriting his will in 2003, David Gerger, a lawyer for the family foundation, said in an e-mail following the verdict. Gerger said it took jurors about an hour to reach their unanimous decision after a two-week trial.
Glassell’s son told jurors that he wanted to honor his father’s 2003 bequests, even though it meant both he and his half-sister would lose the 25 percent shares of the estimated $500 million fortune that would have come to each of them under the earlier will.
The key here is "testamentary capacity" and not necessarily "mental capacity" as the foundation's lawyer stated. One can be under conservatorship or unable to handle day-to-day affairs, but still able to make a will. Generally, one must simply understand that he or she is making a will, understand one's own property and how it is being disposed of, and know their natural objects of their bounty" (aka "their kids").
Thanks to Attorney Matt Berger once again for bringing this to my attention
