Fight for $1 billion fortune tears apart Moncriefs, wildcatter family that shaped Fort Worth

Feuds, even lawsuits, are nothing new among the Moncriefs of Fort Worth, heirs to an estimated $1 billion fortune. Now, a relatively new and deep family split has evolved into a brutal conflict over hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, made more complicated by the Dec. 29 death of patriarch W.A. “Tex” Moncrief Jr. at 101. Since October 2020, relatives accused kin of wrongly siphoning millions from trusts while trying to grab ranch and vacation property in Texas and Colorado. Each side claims the other extracted signatures from dying or mentally infirm relatives for documents that affect the leadership of trusts and Moncriefs’ privately held operating company, Montex Drilling Co. No one is pulling punches in a drama that smacks of Shakespeare’s King Lear colliding with HBO’s Succession in downtown Cowtown.

Remarkably, the high-stakes clash among Fort Worth’s most prominent philanthropists and social luminaries has unfolded without a word in the news media for more than a year. The vacuum endured despite local movers and shakers increasingly agog over a prolonged row marked by reputation-shattering name calling. Richard “Dick” Moncrief, 79, is accused by his half-brother Tom, 65, and niece Gloria Moncrief Holmsten, 40, of having played no role at Montex “for more than 25 years,” yet marching into its downtown headquarters on Oct. 2, 2020, to seize control, firing the chief financial officer and offering jobs to 20 of 22 employees. Dick did so, they claim, after receiving a $10 million transfer from Tex using “undue influence and/or fraud” on the failing centenarian. Moreover, Dick, has yet to pay a dime toward principal and interest on a $20 million loan that was due in 2018, Gloria and Tom allege in filings to Judge Pat Gallagher’s 96th District Court. For his part, Dick Moncrief accuses the pair of manipulating another “incapacitated” person – Charles “Charlie” Moncrief, his half-brother and Gloria’s father, who had been Tex’s righthand man. A few chicken scrawls purported to be Charlie’s signature appeared on a document while he was being treated at Dallas’ Zale-Lipshy Hospital for glioblastoma, a virulent form of brain cancer.