Trial Begins Over Kuralt Property

A trial is scheduled to begin in District Court here today to determine whether the woman who shared a secret life with TV journalist Charles Kuralt for nearly three decades should inherit his fishing retreat in southwestern Montana.

Pat Shannon contends Kuralt, who died in 1997, intended that she have the property and an old schoolhouse they had moved to a bluff overlooking the Big Hole River and renovated into a library and office for use when he retired.

Her claim is based on a letter Kuralt wrote to her two weeks before he died of complications from lupus. “I’ll have the lawyer visit the hospital to be sure you inherit the rest of the place in MT, if it comes to that,” he wrote.

Kuralt’s family argues the note was merely an indication he planned to have papers prepared that would give Shannon the 90 acres and schoolhouse, valued at more than $600,000. He died before that could be done and the letter is not a legal will, the family’s lawyers say.

The fight originally was between Shannon and Kuralt’s second wife, Suzanne “Petie” Baird Kuralt of New York City. But the case took an unexpected turn when she died Oct. 26.

Although attorneys talked of possible settlement, Kuralt’s two daughters from a previous marriage, Susan Bowers and Lisa Bowers White, have decided to continue the legal fight.