A man is serving a four-month sentence in the Starr County jail without having committed an actual crime. He is being held in civil contempt for refusing to stop fighting for an inheritance that the courts ruled he had no right to claim because he is adopted.
If this story wasn’t true, it would be absurd.
STARR COUNTY, 1943
This story begins in 1943. The United States was in the middle of the second world war, and many young men in the country, including in Starr County, were getting ready to serve. In that year, Maria Lopez viuda de Pena, or La Tia Maria as she was known, made her final Will.
La Tia Maria never had children, but she raised her nephew Santiago, and she loved him as if he was her own son. Santiago was 19 years old in 1943, and he was drafted to fight in the second world war. And, it was in this historical context that La Tia Maria made the fateful decision that caused a series of events that landed Santiago’s son in the Starr County Jail 82 years later.
THE WILL
In her final Will, La Tia Maria left two of her relatives a half acre each in the land in which they had built their homes. Her nephew Santiago was named as the sole heir of her remaining estate, which consisted of eleven tracts of land and mineral rights. La Tia Maria had other nieces and nephews through her sister Eucebia, Santiago’s mother, but they were not “explicitly” named in her Will.
In peacetime, La Tia Maria would probably not have contemplated the possibility that her healthy 19-year-old nephew would die before her, and without children. However, Santiago was going to fight a war, and death was a real possibility. So, she named her sister as her heir, ONLY, if Santiago didn’t make it back. The Will states: “But should he die without ‘lawful issue of his body’, then, and in that event…” her estate would go to Santiago’s mother or her heirs.
A HAPPY ENDING… ALMOST
Santiago served honorably in the Pacific theater and came home alive. He married a woman of his same age named Olivia in 1948. La Tia Maria moved in with him in the house he built on her property… the same house Santiago’s son, Gabriel, would later raise his own family in.
Unfortunately, Olivia did not get pregnant. La Tia Maria died in 1957 without meeting Santiago’s son, Gabriel, and without changing her Will.
After ten years of a childless marriage, Gabriel Rodriguez, the only child of Santiago and Olivia was born in Rio Grande City. However, he was not born to Santiago’s wife… he was adopted. Santiago and Olivia brought him home straight from the hospital and registered him as their son. Apparently it was a closed adoption, and the paperwork of the adoption never turned up. The process wasn’t as strict back then.
They never told Gabriel he was adopted; however, Santiago’s siblings were keeping tabs and they knew… and they passed that knowledge to their own children, Gabriel’s cousins. Over the years, when Gabriel’s cousins made remarks about him being adopted, he asked his father, but Santiago insisted Gabriel was his biological son, and Gabriel believed him.
THE VULTURES WASTED NO TIME
Santiago died of a heart attack almost 30 years later, in 1984, and the vultures immediately descended on his ranch. According to a family member, Gabriel’s cousins brought up the subject of the Will at his father’s funeral. In their eyes, Gabriel was not their real cousin and had no right to inherit the property that Santiago had inherited from La Tia Maria. So, they sued. It was during this lawsuit that Gabriel found out it was true he was adopted.
La Tia Maria explicitly states in her Will that she loved a child she raised as if he was her own son. Therefore, it is unlikely that she meant to include language that would deprive Santiago of doing the same. Nonetheless, Gabriel’s cousins argued otherwise. In 1986, they filed a lawsuit in the 229th district court.
Initially, things looked good for Gabriel and his mother, Olivia. In 1998, 12 years after the lawsuit was filed, it was dismissed because it was filed in the wrong court, the cousins appealed, but lost. However, the cousins also filed a new lawsuit in the Starr County Court-at-Law (where they should’ve filed in the first place), and they were able to continue the legal fight.
The lawyers for Santiago’s heirs argued that the probate case of La Tia Maria was closed, and the county court no longer had jurisdiction to decide the probate case again. Santiago was granted her estate in what is called a “fee simple absolute,” which means the property became his, and it was lawfully passed on to his heirs. They claimed that if Santiago’s siblings, or their heirs, had any issues with the interpretation of the Will, they should have brought it up then. Again, Gabriel and his mother won the case.
In 2002, the 4th Court of Appeals reversed the ruling dismissing the case. It held that in 1957 a county court did not have the legal authority, yet, to construe provisions of a Will and to decide who owns the property (the law changed in 1973), and it reversed the county court’s ruling that had dismissed the cousins’ case for lack of jurisdiction. This is the technicality that allowed them to “officially” re-open La Tia Maria’s probate case almost 50 years later.
NO JURY TRIAL
Juries decide issues when the facts of the case are disputed. If there’s no disputed facts, then Judges are supposed to evaluate the facts, and make a ruling based on the law. The 4th court of appeals sent the case back to the county court, and Craig Smith, the cousins’ lawyer filed a motion for summary judgment arguing there were no issues of fact to resolve. Gabriel’s lawyers disagreed. They argued that La Tia Maria intended for Santiago to inherit her estate without conditions, and that adopted children have the same rights as biological children; therefore, the term “lawful issue of his body” applies to Gabriel. And, that both of these questions should be decided by a jury of their peers, not a Judge.
In 2005, twenty years after Santiago’s death, the county court ruled that it was not for a jury to decide, because neither Gabriel nor his mother had the right to keep the lands Santiago inherited from La Tia Maria, as a matter of law.
After almost 20 years of “winning” battles, it was now the heirs of Santiago that had to appeal. This particular fact is relevant to understand the tragedies that would follow.
FINAL JUDGMENT
In 2007, the 4th Court of Appeals upheld the summary judgment granted in favor of Gabriel’s cousins. The appellate court agreed that a Will is construed according to the intent of the person; however, it also ruled that a jury wasn’t necessary to determine the intent of La Tia Maria when she signed the Will. Based on legalese terms that were likely chosen by the person drafting the will, not her, it determined that La Tia Maria intended for Santiago, the child she raised, to inherit her estate, but not be able to pass it to anyone else other than his biological children. It’s important to point out that no such bloodline requirement existed for her sister and her heirs if Santiago died without children. And, for that matter, there was no requirement for Santiago to pass on the inheritance to his biological children either, if they had existed. Any reasonable juror would have looked at this fact and questioned the court’s interpretation of La Tia Maria’s intent.
We believe the decision by the 4th court of appeals is cruel and wrong. Nonetheless, the decision is based on legal precedent, regardless of how cruel it may be. There’s no fraud and no corruption… we just don’t agree with it. The appellate court did elaborate on its legal reasoning, but this story is already pretty long as it is, so we’ll leave that out, for now.
Gabriel and his mother appealed to the Supreme Court of Texas, but the court denied their petition to review the case. At that point, the judgment of the 4th Court of appeals was final.
THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS
Santiago Rodriguez dedicated his life to working on his property. When Gabriel, his son, came of age, he followed his father’s footsteps and he too dedicated his life to working in the family ranch. It was their livelihood. Gabriel had two sons with his wife Esmeralda, Gabriel Jr. and Santiago(in honor of his father), and they were raised in the same home that Santiago had built.
One day a group of attorneys showed up with deputies from the Sheriff’s and Constable’s offices, and they were told they were being evicted and had to move out immediately. According to a family member, they showed up the same day the judge signed the eviction order. There was no time to make sense of it. They weren’t allowed to take anything, not even their personal possessions, nor their vehicles… not even their dogs. They were told they had to do inventory but they could return three days later for their personal belongings, but they weren’t allowed in the property again.
Perhaps there was miscommunication with their lawyers, because they thought they were still fighting the case.
If being evicted from their home wasn’t enough, Olivia, Santiago’s widow, and his son were told they had to pay back the mineral royalties they had received in the last 20 years since Santiago’s death, plus interests, attorney fees, penalties, etc. Except, most of it had been spent on legal fees.
In 2016, Judge Romero Molina granted a judgment for $1,696,311.25 against the 93-year-old widow. All of her property, even the property she had inherited from her own family was taken from her to satisfy the judgment. A Bill of Review was filed in 2019 on her behalf, but it was denied… she died months later.
Gabriel Rodriguez, Sr was forced into an involuntary bankruptcy by the cousins, and everything he owned was also taken, including property not connected to the case.
THE AFTERMATH,
Gabriel Rodriguez Sr, and his family were convinced they were the victims of fraud and corruption, and were determined to keep fighting. However, there was nothing to fight… at least not in regard to the judgment that granted La Tia Maria’s estate to Gabriel, Sr’s cousins.
During this period of assimilation, they felt victim to a charlatan named Paul Celestine that induced them to file frivolous, and in some cases, ridiculous, lawsuits in a desperate attempt to keep fighting. Frivolous lawsuits with false allegations are filed all the time in Federal and State court, but they are usually filed by attorneys representing clients, so they are overlooked by the courts as some sort of “attorney privilege.” However, when such frivolous legal actions are filed by pro se litigants, it’s not tolerated.
As a result of these desperate lawsuits filed under Gabriel Sr’s name, he has been ordered to pay thousands of dollars in sanctions several times in the last 3 years; however, all the wealth he once had has already been taken from him. What else can they take from the old man for refusing to accept defeat?
In a hearing held in the Starr County Court-at-Law earlier this year, Gabriel Rodriguez, Sr, now an elderly man, refused to recognize the validity of the legal judgments again, and once gain, vowed to continue fighting. Attorney Craig Smith made sure it was stated in the record and reminded Judge Creg Perkes of something Gabriel hadn’t lost yet, his freedom. He asked Judge Perkes for a jail sentence and Judge Perkes did just that. He sentenced Gabriel to four months in jail… a longer sentence than what common thieves and petty criminals usually get.
And that’s not all, Gabriel Jr. tried to help his father by helping him file another lawsuit in federal court in an attempt to obtain a temporary restraining order to keep his father out of jail. The problem is that Craig Smith has already obtained anti-suit injunctions prohibiting Gabriel Sr and Jr from filing lawsuits questioning the judgments against them.
Now, Craig Smith is trying to get Judge Randy Crane of the U.S. District Court and Judge Baldemar Garza of the 229th District Court (he is up for re-election next year) to hold them in contempt, and lock up both, father and son. That would be in addition to the contempt order in the County Court.
Both contempt hearings are scheduled for today.
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