Senator wrestles heirs over nine-figure Texas fortune

LAREDO, Texas — Out behind the nursing home where Josefina Alexander Gonzalez turned 99 Saturday, there’s a dilapidated green ranch house, its porch cover still held up by rough-hewn tree trunks.

To the southeast, you see a lot of tall brush and honey mesquite, a view that hasn’t changed much since the 1940s, when her parents bought a 1,000-acre ranch outside this isolated border town.
Look in any other direction, and you’ll see new construction on her property, as developers cash in on the last large tract of open space inside of Loop 20 in north Laredo, now worth as much as $150 million.

But if you wanted to ask her what she thought of all the changes, you’d have to get past the guard in her room at Laredo Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, where she has been stashed by Carlos Zaffirini and his wife, state Sen. Judith Zaffirini.

The Zaffirinis are battling Gonzalez’s daughter and grandchildren for control of that fortune. They filed papers last month arguing that Rocio Gonzalez Guerra should forfeit her inheritance.

Rocio Gonzalez Guerra and her two teenage children stand to inherit an intricate cluster of interlocking partnerships, estates and trusts established by Gonzalez and her late and childless sister, Delfina Alexander.

For all those complications, the outlines of the case are plain: Guerra and her children may be the heirs, but the businesses and their funds are controlled by the Zaffirinis and their associates.

POWER PLAY: State Sen. Judith Zaffirini

 has filed papers arguing that the

 heir whose money she controls should

 forfeit an inheritance.

That’s why the guard is outside Josefina Gonzalez’s room — so she can’t be served papers in a lawsuit to appoint a guardian for her, a guardian who would wreck the Zaffirinis’ plans.

The Zaffirinis already have control over Delfina Alexander’s estate and a trust she set up in her will, and they claim to have power of attorney over Josefina Gonzalez, although Gonzalez’s bank won’t let them touch her accounts, according to court records, as the papers were signed shortly before she was declared mentally incompetent.

In two days of hearings last week, a Webb County District Court judge heard the first of dozens of motions that have piled up in three related lawsuits. This account is drawn from the records of those lawsuits.

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Senator wrestles heirs over nine-figure Texas fortune