Ex-TV reporter claims stake in Taub fortune
Mary Flood
August 15, 2009
Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6574166.html
Society columns chronicled them arm in arm among the glitterati on the charity ball circuit for more than a decade, but the last chapter in the romance of then-TV reporter Mary-Ellen Conway and the late businessman and philanthropist Henry J.N. Taub could be written by a probate court jury.

A few minutes before midnight on the fourth anniversary of Taub’s 2004 death at age 85, Conway, now a lawyer at Fulbright & Jaworski, filed claim to her long-time companion’s estate. Acting as her own attorney, she filed papers saying she was Taub’s common law wife and that he had written a missing will codicil that granted her a $150,000 annual allowance, medical and nursing home care, a working horse farm in Brookshire and a brass sculpture of Taub, among other things.

By the time of Conway’s late-night filing, Taub’s three adult children — Kitch, Marcy and H. Ben — had already split the bulk of his sizable estate of land, stock, oil rights and privately held businesses. Taub’s uncle was Ben, for whom a local hospital is named and who famously shared his fortune with the University of Houston and the Texas Medical Center.

Henry Taub served on many boards including at Baylor College of Medicine, and inherited much of his uncle’s wealth. At stake in the Conway-Taub probate fight is no doubt far more than the $18 million listed in the estate inventory. Some estimate the true value of the private holdings could exceed $50 million.

Legally his bride?

The former medical reporter for KTRK Channel 13 was denied her request to scour Taub’s former River Oaks home for the codicil. It was never found and is no longer a legal issue. But a determination of whether Conway was actually Taub’s bride is set for a jury trial in October, unless Harris County Probate Judge Kathy Stone tosses the matter out of court before then as the Taub children have asked.

“She was married to Mr. Taub for 15 years. She was his confidante. She helped him in his business and personal affairs,” said Conway’s current lawyer Mike Pierce. Pierce said Conway waited four years, hoping the children would make good on their father’s promise to take care of her.

Conway, 62, claims the three essential elements of a common law marriage: They lived together, they held themselves out to others as a married couple, and they intended to be married. She said they met in 1985 at a Baylor lunch event, introduced by mutual friend and world-renowned heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey, and decided to be married in 1989. She says he even gave her a ring.

Conway’s lawsuit includes a legal claim to Taub’s $1.5 million River Oaks home where his son Kitch now lives. Conway says she and Taub lived together in both that house and her home in west Houston, spending weekends on his horse ranch near Hobby Airport where they shared a love for riding and breeding horses.

“It was where my body was and where my heart was,” Conway said of the River Oaks home in a deposition. “Also my clothes, my toiletries, my curlers and more important, my sweetheart.”

Neither Conway nor the Taub children would be interviewed for this story.

“My clients are not having fun,” said Don Jackson, lawyer for the Taub children. “Our main point is that the written record, documents created over the course of all those years, are consistent with the fact that Mr. Taub was single and Mary-Ellen Conway was single during the time she claims they were married.”

Jackson said the children contend their father’s only wife was their mother Carol Ellen Joseloff, who died in 1965 at the age of 38. A Taub family maid said when Taub was married, the couple entertained in the River Oaks home and had pictures of each other about the house. The maid said Conway had no such presence in the house and she was not to let her in when Taub was away.

Jackson said the evidence includes a written agreement between Conway and Taub from 1987 stating they were not married, their income taxes filed as single people throughout their relationship, Conway’s mortgage refinancing and homestead exemption documents swearing she lived as a single person and her representation to her law firm that she was single.

She wasn’t, she was

The Taub children also gathered 53 affidavits from relatives, help at the River Oaks house, and a Who’s Who of Houston including socialites Lynn Wyatt and Joanne Herring, famed trial lawyer Joe Jamail, members of the Hobby, Blanton, Love and Robertson families and prominent doctors all saying they knew Taub and he never told them Conway was his wife. These affidavits include one from Dr. DeBakey’s son Dennis.

On Conway’s side there’s the ring and some people with anecdotes to illustrate why they believed Conway and Taub were married or heard Taub say so. These include Conway’s sister, a restaurateur, Conway’s co-workers and another son of Dr. DeBakey’s.

That son, Michael DeBakey said he heard Taub and his father joke about how Taub got off easy financially by declaring Conway as his wife and saving the cost of a big wedding. But the younger Michael DeBakey later filed an affidavit for the Taub children saying the relationship doesn’t meet legal grounds as explained to him.

Conway lawyer Pierce said the contract the court has stating they were not married is not the one Conway signed. He said some of the folks in the 53, mostly boilerplate, affidavits didn’t know Taub and Conway well enough to know about the marriage.

Others supporting Conway include co-workers at KTRK-TV who heard Taub call Conway his wife to Marvin Zindler and heard Taub refer to Conway as “Mrs. Taub” at dinner.

Robert Painter, a lawyer who worked with Conway at Fulbright, recalled that shortly before his death Taub said he didn’t want Conway to attend the Super Bowl here in 2004 for fear of terrorism. “It was on the phone and he said something like ‘I’ve already lost one wife, I don’t want to lose another,’ ” Painter said.

Court records show Taub gave Conway several pieces of land, some $5,000 bonds, an annual $10,000 gift and that he also paid her for equestrian advice.

Mentions of the couple appear in society columns in the Houston Chronicle and the now defunct Houston Post starting in 1985. By 1986, the columnists were calling Conway Taub’s “frequent” or “constant” date.

Both sides of the dispute acknowledge there was a close relationship, and even that the couple considered having a child.

Should a jury determine Conway is Taub’s widow, the next step would be to identify community property and how much of it should go to Conway. But the Taub children have asked Stone to toss the case for a variety of reasons including that Conway waited too long to make a claim.