A billion-dollar oil dynasty. A 101-year-old patriarch. A family tearing itself apart in open court. Welcome to the Moncrief saga -- Fort Worth's ugliest inheritance fight, and one that makes the Roy family from Succession look like functional communicators.
The Moncriefs have been Texas royalty for generations, their fortune built on crude and cemented by philanthropy. But since the death of W.A. "Tex" Moncrief Jr. at 101, the family has descended into a sprawling, multi-front legal war over hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. Trust funds, ranch land, a private drilling company, vacation properties in Colorado -- everything is on the table, and nobody is pulling punches.
Since October 2020, family members have accused one another of siphoning millions from trusts and attempting to seize valuable ranch and vacation properties in Texas and Colorado. The allegations cut to the bone: each side claims the other obtained signatures from elderly or mentally impaired relatives to gain control of the family's sprawling empire, including their privately held drilling company, Montex Drilling Co.
And despite the family's prominence as philanthropists and social fixtures of Fort Worth's elite circles, this high-stakes battle stayed buried for years. Until now.
A power struggle over Montex Drilling
The whole mess detonates around one central question: who controls Montex Drilling?
According to half-brother Tom Moncrief, 65, and niece Gloria Moncrief Holmsten, 40, Richard "Dick" Moncrief, 79, had zero involvement in Montex for over 25 years. Then, in October 2020, he allegedly stormed into the company's Fort Worth headquarters and tried to seize the wheel. Dick reportedly fired the chief financial officer and offered jobs to nearly all the company's employees -- a blitz takeover attempt that blindsided the rest of the family.
The accusations get heavier from there. Tom and Gloria allege that Dick used "undue influence and/or fraud" to extract $10 million from their father, Tex, in his final years. They also claim he has yet to repay a $20 million loan that came due in 2018. All of this was laid out in filings to Judge Pat Gallagher's 96th District Court.
Dick tells a different story entirely. He accuses Tom and Gloria of manipulating their father, Charles "Charlie" Moncrief, who served as Tex's right-hand man before passing away in January 2021 from brain cancer. According to Dick, Charlie's signature was hastily scrawled on documents while he was hospitalized -- documents that transferred control of the family's 1966 trust without Tex's knowledge. Dick claims this maneuver was designed to shield the trust from an audit, or perhaps to counter his own efforts to secure control.
As the legal salvos flew back and forth, Gloria stepped into her father's role at Montex, asserting herself as his planned successor. She is a veteran of the company with over a decade of experience, and she has political connections to match -- Gloria served as a White House intern during the George W. Bush administration, where she befriended Bush's daughter, Jenna Bush Hager.
Battle over trusts and ranch property
The fight does not stop at Montex's boardroom door.
Gloria is also fighting to remove Dick and attorney Marshall Searcy from running a trust benefitting her uncle, W.A. "Bill" Moncrief III, who is in his 80s and reportedly in poor health. She accuses Dick of attempting to divert $5 million from Bill's trust for the benefit of his own children.
Then there is the land grab. Gloria claims Dick tried to seize control of a 250-acre Parker County ranch property belonging to Bill, using a questionable $1.5 million purchase. According to court filings, Dick even tried to claw back $500,000 of the sale price, only to have the bank freeze the transaction.
Dick has fired back with his own lawsuit in 17th District Court, seeking to remove Gloria as trustee of Bill's trust and accusing her of serious breaches of fiduciary duty. Meanwhile, many of Gloria's allegations -- including the ranch purchase -- remain unanswered by Dick's legal team.
A new chapter after Tex's death
If anyone thought the death of Tex Moncrief in December 2021 might cool things down, they were dead wrong.
On a rainy January morning in 2023, Gloria escalated the family feud by challenging the legitimacy of Tex's revised will, signed in March 2021. She claims her uncle Dick exerted undue influence over their aging patriarch, forcing Tex to appoint Dick and attorney Marshall Searcy as co-executors of the estate. Gloria is urging the court to void the will, arguing that Tex lacked the mental capacity to make such decisions.
Her latest legal filing brought receipts. Gloria cited a statement from Tex's kidney specialist, Dr. Robert Toto, who claimed the centenarian was "mentally incapable of managing his own affairs" in the final months of his life. Dr. Toto has refused to clarify the timing of his diagnosis, but the document has raised serious questions about the validity of Tex's final decisions.
Family tensions run deep
The Moncrief family's battles are not limited to Tex's direct descendants. The fractures go wider.
Lenore Long "BB" Moncrief, Charlie's eldest daughter from his first marriage, has also entered the fray. BB filed a probate court petition in July 2023, challenging an amendment to her father's trust made before his death -- one she fears cuts off her annual annuity of $60,000. Gloria and her mother, Kit Moncrief, have denied any wrongdoing, asserting that they did not pressure Charlie into making the changes.
BB's lawsuit is just one of several legal actions that have deepened the rifts. The source of her mistrust, she claims, is visceral: BB says she was physically prevented from seeing her father during his final days, blocked by specially assigned security. That kind of detail sticks with you. It also rhymes with earlier Moncrief family disputes -- particularly the one involving Tex's nephew, former Fort Worth mayor Mike Moncrief, who famously sued Tex over his inheritance in the 1990s.
History, in this family, has a nasty habit of repeating itself.
The Moncrief legacy and the stakes of this battle
As the lawsuits stack up, the Moncrief fortune -- once estimated at $2 billion -- remains largely shrouded in mystery. Court filings have pulled back the curtain on some of the family's holdings: oil production assets, ranch properties, a private jetliner. But the full scope of their wealth is still anyone's guess.
What nobody disputes is the family's lasting influence in Texas. The Moncriefs have donated millions to UT Southwestern Medical Center, Texas Christian University, and cancer treatment centers across the state. That philanthropy has cemented their legacy in Fort Worth for decades. But the ongoing legal battles now threaten to overshadow every dollar they have ever given away.
For now, the Moncrief family's future hangs in the balance. The next court hearing could shift control of one of the largest fortunes in Texas from one faction to another. Whether Gloria's accusations hold up or Dick prevails remains an open question. But the one thing everyone agrees on is this: the fight is nowhere close to finished.
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