Court finds lawyer, philanthropist never married

Fulbright & Jaworski counsel Mary-Ellen Conway of Houston may not have gotten all that she asked for when she intervened in the Estate of Henry H.N. Taub, but she apparently did not walk away empty-handed either. On Oct. 19, Harris County Probate Court No. 1 Judge Kathleen Stone signed a final judgment based on the agreement between the parties, Conway and the adult children of Taub, a Houston businessman and philanthropist who died on April 1, 2004. Conway, a former television reporter, filed an intervention in the probate of Taub’s estate on March 31, 2008. On Oct. 22, 2008, Conway filed her first amended petition seeking a declaration by the court that she was Taub’s common law wife and entitled to a portion of his estate, valued at $18 million at the time of his death, according to Michael Pierce, Conway’s attorney. Conway did not get a declaration that she was Taub’s common law wife. In the Oct. 19 findings of fact, Stone wrote, “Mr. Taub and Ms. Conway were never parties to a marriage, to each other, of any type, kind or character of any kind.” And in the final judgment Stone ordered that Conway take nothing on her claims. But that’s not the end of the story. Pierce, an attorney at Houston’s Arnold & Itkin, says, “The claim has been settled. The settlement amount is confidential.” Don Casey, attorney for Taub’s children and a partner in Houston’s Ware, Jackson, Lee & Chambers, said in an Oct. 19 press release, “The case has been resolved in my client’s favor for its nuisance value.” But Pierce responds, “I would not characterize the amount as a nuisance value settlement.”
-- Mary Alice Robbins