This is going to go away. Other marquee entities include the Kansas City Chiefs, FC Dallas … He was married to a model for less than a year, and he financed B movies through his video production company. In the complaint filed in state district court, Al III accused Tom of hiding Hunt Petroleum’s true value from the trusts’ beneficiaries, of conspiring with the family to cheat the tax man, and of raiding the trusts to finance other family deals. Finally they grabbed him by the arms to restrain him. Erin called Chapman before the lawsuit came out and said she hoped they would remain friends. “I want a full accounting,” he said. They’re about to get that shot when the Chiefs … He tried to retire in 1988, when he hit 65, but H.L.’s eldest child, Margaret Hunt Hill, convinced him to stay on. Hunt Family mansion, located on 10 acres surrounding beautiful White Rock Lake, is a monument to the kind of wealth portrayed by the character JR Ewing in the blockbuster 80s soap opera “Dallas”. “The truth is, they are trying to steal my children’s inheritance.”. Erin and Vicki just don’t get along. Prior to her first marriage, Hunt worked in her father's Dallas office. A later criminal indictment said that when the couple went to bed, Al Jr. had begun biting her genitals, and the couple fought. He’s in the book.” On the back was a verse from Jeremiah: “Call unto me and I will answer thee and I will show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”. Now, with one member suing the others, things are about to get very public and very ugly. The areas of activity of the different Hunt … The H.L. Al Hill Jr. parked his wheelchair beside the front pew. “But I made a decision that I wouldn’t pander, that I wouldn’t crawl back under some new deal for me. He dropped his old friends and hard-partying peers. “As a wife, a mother, a volunteer in the community, she’s just unparalleled,” she says. “And you can replace that car. Al has a good heart. In addition to the motion to disqualify Brewer, Lynn argues that Al Jr. was in no shape to know what he was doing when he signed away his rights to most of his mother’s trust fund. But the current chairman says that’s not true; he did an excellent job. They still live just blocks from each other. There’s nothing wrong with that. But as recently as mid-January, long after Brewer filed suit against Al Jr., Bickel & Brewer’s billing minions were still accidentally sending copies of payment requests on the Coates case to Al Jr.’s home. Tom is the glue,” says Lyda Hill, one of H.L.’s granddaughters. Buddy Schoellkopf, whose wife, Caroline (a Hunt), bought the Mansion and brought the 21 Club to Dallas, is Hugo’s son. She was thrown from the bed. The primary bedroom features an elegant wood four-poster bed, and a brightly-colored area rug complements the hardwood floor. Lamar Hunt's family has a net worth of more than $15 billion, making them one of the wealthiest clans in the U.S. A man inside ran out the back as Al III came through the front. His mother and father, despite their divorce a decade earlier, flew to Waco and surprised their son at his apartment. But now this stack of paper sits on his desk. Tavia set up Al III on a blind date in 1995 with Erin, who was working at the time in Dallas as a publicist for the Hoop It Up streetball competitions. He got it a year later, in November 2003. Earlier in the evening, he had taken the woman, a house guest and occasional date for the last nine years, to dinner at a strip club (it had a great chef, he says). “I wanted to buy her something really nice to wear to the event,” he says. There is, of course, an explanation for Al III’s lawsuit that has very little to do with a full accounting or with honoring the legacy of H.L. On the front it said, “Jesus. If this property and all its amenities appeal to your oil-baron aesthetics, you better be as rich as JR Ewing, because the asking price is a cool $19 million. In June, when they vacationed in Italy and Cap d’Antibes, France, they spent $343,000. But Al III flew in for the day this time and left after the family meeting. Four days later, his father and aunts fired him from Hill Development. He graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Then last summer she stopped eating, and a few weeks later, on June 14, she passed away at 91. Hunt and Ruth Ray, one of Hunt’s three wives. in the oil fields. In Brewer’s view, he knew very well what he was doing. Even when it was painful. He thought at that point his son was going to go along with the plan. Ray Hunt’s Reunion Tower still blinks above the Hyatt hotel, an icon of the Dallas skyline for 30 years, and his Hunt Oil Tower was just completed. “Life is too short to play games,” Al III said. But they wouldn’t go for it. Gretel C. Kovach is a contributing editor to D Magazine. The empire H.L. When their eldest son was born, Margaret said, “Of course he has to be Al IV.” Then came baby Nance and Caroline. Erin Nance, a gorgeous doe-eyed blonde with a megawatt smile, was Miss Georgia and finished second in the 1993 Miss USA pageant. He says he stumbled and fell forward, tumbling over a waist-high ledge. Hopefully, at some future point you will consider taking the time to visit with the person who cares more about you than anyone else in the world. There is an office, study, and a library with built-in bookcases, all of which showcase dark wood walls and hardwood floors. Of the time he went to Betty Ford, he says: “That year was my best ever, financially.” His son was overly concerned, he says, because after you’ve been to rehab it’s easy to think everyone who drinks has a problem. At the scene of the crash, they saw skid marks in the grass. “This is just another business deal. The windshield shattered, and wooden beams shot like spears toward Al III’s face. He dated a string of starlets, including a Bond girl and Audrey Landers, from the TV series Dallas. Faced with his own mortality, Al III pulled his life together and became a God-fearing young man. But they’re the Duke and Duchess, spending it like it’s going to fall out of the sky.”, A longtime Hunt Hill family friend says, “He’s desperate for money because Erin has spent them into this situation, and he has to support her lifestyle. Al Jr. became sufficiently alarmed that he asked the couple to agree to limit their spending to $45,000 a month. and his descendents helped shape the city of Dallas. “I changed my life, my major, my faith,” he says. The Hunt family is one of the richest and most private families in Dallas. “The trusts have become so intertwined and commingled. Caroline Rose Hunt, mother of the Crescent and the Mansion, dies at 95 Caroline Rose Hunt was a philanthropist, author, world traveler, gourmet, entrepreneur, hotelier, mother … But that doesn’t tell the whole story.” Chapman says Erin is often underestimated because of her looks. In September, Al Jr. fired his son from their personal services contract. Hunt alone (see family tree). “I love you unconditionally and I am here for you.”, His head was hanging down. Many of Al III’s closest relatives say his actions are completely out of character. Hunt. They were standing there, gaping, when the woman who owned the house drove up. (Al III says Coates wanted him, not his own children, to oversee his Liechtenstein trust, but a New York court threw out the case in late January. “I know, Mom,” he said quietly. But now Al Jr.’s lawyer, Mike Lynn, is fighting to get Brewer disqualified from the case on the grounds that Brewer allegedly prepared a lawsuit against his own client. Ray Hunt, H.L.’s son from a later marriage, is the wealthiest individual Hunt today, according to the Forbes 400. Lyda Hill, Margaret’s eldest child, isn’t an emotional woman. The dispatcher called back, and Al Jr. answered. As he puts it, in the ’70s he bought a cellar’s worth of fine wines, and in the ’80s he drank them. That was also the year that Al Jr. signed away most of his share of his mother’s trust fund, prematurely making Al III and his sisters heirs to Margaret Hunt Hill’s billions. Ross Perot Jr. went, along with million-dollar contributors Annette and Harold Simmons and Ruth Altshuler, one of Margaret Hunt Hill’s closest friends. But it was even more confusing to outside auditors, and it carried with it numerous tax advantages, including the potential for passing the family wealth down through the generations by means of the trusts.”, George Bramblett, the Haynes & Boone attorney representing Tom Hunt, says the factual allegations in Al III’s lawsuit are severely ill-founded. But you can be sincere-and still be wrong. His father, Al Jr., had been her high school sweetheart; they were married for 13 years. But she had read the lawsuit. After his divorce in 1980, Al Jr. lived fast and furious. He wore them around the office. The documents outline the wills he will execute, and which of the dozens of interrelated family trusts he oversees. In June 2007, two years after Al Jr. signed away most of his rights to his mother’s trust, when father and son were still on good terms, Al III was working at Al Jr.’s house when a delivery arrived. She told police that Al Jr. had drunk “a great deal of liquor” that night. View royalty interests and mineral rights held by Hunt Family Trust of Dallas, TX. These trusts were written and they should be abided by.”. But Al III had hardly spoken to his mother in years. 15, with $14.2 billion spread out among 33 descendants. “This is an extortion deal,” Al Jr. kept telling the officers in an upstairs room of his house. H.L. H.L. What Erin wants, Erin gets.”. The DWI charge was reduced to reckless driving. “Despite the fact that we share the same gene pool and background, our personal and business philosophies and goals couldn’t be more divergent. Abbott's Jive Talk About Failed Wind Power, Dallas Restaurants That Are Open or Closed Due to Weather, Dallasites Crowdsource Winter Storm Tips for Stocked Grocery Stores, Hotels With Vacancy, and More. “Most importantly,” the complaint says, “Hill seeks to honor his great grandparents’ intentions by preserving and protecting the legacy which resides in those trusts.”, “To me words are important,” Al III says, “the written words. Al III plans to try again.) He’d had a lobotomy, a cutting-edge treatment at the time, but it hadn’t dulled Hassie’s mind for detail. Their request, according to a review of the document, cited potential conflicts relating to the need to diversify trust holdings, to avoid self-dealing, to “invest and manage the trust assets solely in the interest of the beneficiaries,” and to keep a beneficiary reasonably informed of trust activities. Al III, her eldest child, was always such a kind and gentle boy, always trying to please. The areas of activity of the different … From his glass-walled perch, Tom has a view of the many ways that H.L. Hunt, based in El Paso, Texas, is a diversified, family-owned holding company that invests in operating businesses, real estate assets and infrastructure assets. Margaret Hunt Hill died on June 14, 2007. If there is a luxury you can think of, this sprawling masterpiece already has it. The Texas mansion that was named after George Washington’s Mount Vernon home and the long-time residence of the family that invented the Super Bowl, cornered the world's silver market, … “She thought the world of Tom Hunt,” she says. “The beauty pageant gold digger shows up, small-town girl comes to the big city. In addition, Mr. Hunt is President of the Hunt Family Foundation and chairs the Hunt Family Council. Wright Foundation. But Erin and Al III soon became estranged from some of his closest family members and friends. “Al, we have come to take you back to Dallas for a while,” they said. “We all have heard the alarming news of the melting ice caps and rising waters and the imminent threat to the extinction of polar bears and penguins,” she wrote. After Suffering Storm Damage, These Dallas Nonprofits Are in Dire Need of Donations, As Power Returns, Questions About Outage Distribution Remain, WFAA Catches Gov. Her beloved cousin Tom Hunt was there. Al III had already wrecked an Alfa Romeo, a motorcycle, and a Mercedes. 16 hours ago. He gave up drinking and never resumed, aside from the occasional champagne toast. According to the lawsuit, Tom responded by calling Al III a “whippersnapper,” and saying that his efforts could even land his father in jail. Despite all of this, Al III said he does not have a spending problem. Al III said his children would not pose in his father’s annual Christmas card photo. Hunt’s Mansion in Dallas, TX (Listed for $19 Million). Another was shattered and spilled. His mother stood in the parking lot, watching him go. Doctors told his children he would never walk again. Al III spent 30 days in rehab and returned to school. In recent years, the couple has been burning through an impressive amount of cash, according to documents provided by Al Jr., who loaned his son the money or guaranteed his line of credit. His mother stared at the wreck and cried. Hunt is 84 years old. He was taken to the hospital and then arrested. A reference to a “general” power of appointment had been dropped. Some of his relatives have been whispering that Al III was fired as chairman of the Thanks-Giving Square foundation. Ray Lee Hunt is the son of H.L. He did a faith walk and a “transpersonal psychology conference” and a lot of praying and reading the Bible. He liked to gamble, whether in poker, horse racing, or oil drilling. This may look like a story about a father and son fight, but the underlying force of this whole thing is Erin. Al III’s father had his awakening much later in life, at the cost of much graver bodily injury. He lived in a white colonial mansion on White Rock Lake modeled after George Washington’s Mount Vernon, only bigger. His grandmother Margaret even made the trip the summer before she died. “I didn’t have the heart,” he says. By Gretel C. Kovach … But after a smattering of letters from Al III and his lawyer, his relatives had thrown the first punch in the courts. once said, “If you know how rich you are, you aren’t very rich.”. The H.L. At the time, it was the largest oil field discovery in the world. Al III asked the court to stop his father and aunts from selling Hunt Petroleum and partitioning the trusts, citing H.L.’s provision that the trusts remain intact until 21 years after Margaret’s and Hassie’s deaths. Stanley Korshak hit $87,000. 40 results. The woman sued, but they settled out of court. Since Al Jr. had already signed over most of his claim to Margaret’s fortune to his own three children after his fall, that would mean Al III could expect to receive about $5.5 million a year in interest income on the proceeds of the sale. What’s more, the trust explicitly forbids the beneficiaries from suing the trustee. Erin chaired the Neiman Marcus and Crystal Charity Ball Best Dressed luncheon and fashion show last year. Instead they’re living out of the company [Hunt Petroleum], getting benefits and undervaluing the assets of the company. Lamar was raised in Dallas, Texas. The lawsuit filed in November was bound to cause tension for Crystal Charity, which included several Hunt family volunteers this year. Albert Galatyn Hill III was the first-born great-grandchild of H.L. Join Facebook to connect with Dallas Hunt and others you may know. He went from being totally out of it, to ‘God bless you,’” a fellow Baylor alum remembers. Al III and Erin’s spending might be mere change for a billionaire. If someone did rewrite the “irrevocable” disclaimer letter, then the second version is a fraud, Brewer says. After a lot of soul searching, Al III, the oil heir, switched his major to environmental science and moved to Austin. “Mom, you know better than that!” he said. In the first 10 months of 2007, the couple spent $188,821 on household staff, including a British butler that some relatives took to calling the “manny.” About $461,000 went to clothes (twice as much as the previous year), and $503,000 went to vacations. It might seem like a small thing, just a single word missing. “Have you read the Texas trust code?” he told his sisters. Al III’s parents figured they would be sued. While Al Jr. was trying to cut his son out of Margaret’s trust, he sent him a letter saying “you have certainly ended up becoming my best friend, in addition of course, to being my son. He did cut back a little. That’s when Margaret’s 37-year-old grandson, Albert Hill III, sued his father, his sisters, his aunts, and Tom Hunt over the management of Margaret and Hassie’s trust funds and their primary asset, Hunt Petroleum. JR Ewing would find it hard to compete with H. L. Hunt family’s Dallas, Texas mansion. The property is perfect for welcoming family and friends for overnights or extended stays. When Frania learned of HL's other wives, they divorced in 1942. Later in court, facing a charge of assault causing reckless injury and a maximum of one year in jail, Al Jr. said that the woman’s injuries, if any, were caused by her own negligence. Established in 1976, The Rosewood Corporation is a family-owned company with diverse worldwide operations and investments. One Hunt Petroleum secretary asked Tom, tears in her eyes, how Al III could have sued him. Not long afterward, his wife, Erin, tried to fill their son’s prescription for eczema cream, and she discovered that their health insurance had been canceled. His holdings were estimated to be worth $600 million ($5.5 billion in today’s dollars), and they grew considerably. Trust law is quite malleable, unlike tax law, he says. It began, more or less, when Margaret died in June 2007 (Hassie had passed away two years earlier). The Hill branch of the Hunt family had summered there ever since. It was notarized with the same date. The three-level five-bedroom, nine-bathroom home features banks of windows and hardwood flooring throughout. The entry is simple, but elegant, with a foyer featuring a crystal chandelier, large archways, and a carpeted staircase leading to the second floor. Margaret had been ailing for years. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. His and her Mercedes bills came in at more than $128,000; the Porsche was $82,000. They were structured as “spendthrift”trusts. Five months later, her 37-year-old grandson launched a multi-front lightning offensive in Dallas County District Court (the case … That summer, after meeting with Tom Hunt, Al III figured he needed help. (Erin would not agree to be interviewed for this article.) Then he rolled up his window and sped away. Hunt. If you’d rather exercise indoors, make your way to the fully equipped indoor gym with floor to ceiling mirrors and all the up-to-date modern workout machines. “I was so proud.” In 2005, Al Jr. hired his son for $10,000 a week to serve as his investment consultant and family representative. Al III became the president of his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, which was trying to clean up its act, as well, after being kicked off campus. It was late. Al III and his two younger sisters moved from their father’s historic mansion on Lakeside Drive in Highland Park to slightly less tony University Park with their mother, who remained single for years while she raised the children. H.L. Since its founding in 1947, Hunt… “Honey, it’s your day,” he told her. “I was going to be the big Hunt, in terms of physical stature,” he says affably. Over the years, Tom, a childless bachelor, became the one the younger Hunts turned to when they wrecked their cars and didn’t want Mommy and Daddy to know. “The change was shocking. … Happily remarried, Al III’s mother, unlike the hundreds of Hunt family heirs, their spouses and lawyers, has nothing to gain from this court battle. He struck a plea deal, paid a $1,000 fine (in addition to a donation to a women’s shelter), and was given probation. The areas of activity of the different Hunt … Then one early morning, at the wheel of his girlfriend’s Toyota Supra, with a friend in the passenger seat, he had the accident that would change his life. You can’t dance.”. “Al, I love you,” she said, as they finished their embrace and he climbed into his Range Rover. Dallas, Texas is a city known for its rich sports tradition, oil, and energy industry, and, let's face it, the iconic 1970s-80s television show about J.R. Ewing and his misbehaving family … Erin, dressed in scarlet Armani, posed for pictures at the ball with Rachael Dedman and this year’s ball chairman, Vicki Chapman. Instead, they blame the beauty queen. But H.L. In his press release, headlined “Betrayal of Trust,” Lynn claims that Brewer was actually working on the Coates case for Al Jr., who showed him hundreds of pages of confidential documents. Generations of Hunts came to rely on “Uncle Tom” as their peacemaker, corporate investigator, and Christmas turkey carver, the one trusted above all others as the arbiter of matters relating to the family fortune. She said, ‘”I don’t need that. “There was a continuing need for more and more funds all the time,” Al Jr. says. He gave up drinking after the accident, one reason he and his son grew closer than ever. She called Al III, who says he found one wine glass standing on the porch table. Margaret checked under the blankets of each, making sure they had the Hunt family gene: curled-under pinky toes (they all do, Al III says). The woman’s name appears in public records, but D Magazine is withholding it.). Al Jr. wanted to go downstairs to see the woman “and help you guys with this.”. Al III is old enough to remember H.L., who seemed like Santa Claus to him, like a character in a storybook. So was her son, of course. The lawsuit was prepared by high-flying Dallas attorney Bill Brewer, of Bickel & Brewer.