Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Oilman Alfred C. Glassell Jr., founder of Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co., was manipulated by a Houston law firm into leaving most of his $500 million fortune to charity, his daughter told a Texas jury.

Curry Glassell, the oilman’s 52-year-old daughter, is challenging a 2003 will believed to be the final one Glassell signed before his death last year at age 95. She is asking a Houston probate court jury to honor a 1998 version of her father’s will that leaves her 10 times more than the 2003 one.

The earlier will leaves Curry Glassell and her two sons more than $100 million, while the later will gives most of Glassell’s money to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and to a family foundation run by her younger half-brother, Alfred C. Glassell III. Lawyers from the Vinson & Elkins firm pushed her father to change the will, she testified yesterday.

“They manipulated and got everything moved into the foundation that was originally intended by my dad to be for me and my boys,” Curry Glassell told jurors regarding the Houston- based law firm that represented both her and her father.

“I was appalled and amazed,” she testified. “I don’t think Vinson & Elkins took care of me at all.”

With the exception of Curry, the rest of the Glassell family wants to honor the 2003 will that leaves the bulk of the fortune to the museum and the Glassell Family Foundation, even though it means bequests to individual family members are sharply reduced.

Alfred Glassell III

Alfred Glassell III, 45, told jurors this week that, under his father’s most recent will, the quarter-share of the estate originally bequeathed to both he and Curry will go to the family foundation, which he will run.

Both siblings, however, will keep trust funds that their father established for them separate from his will. Curry Glassell estimated her trusts are worth $15 million to $17 million, while her half brother estimated his net worth at $30 million to $50 million.

“We’ll both lose our 25 percent interest in the residuary estate,” which could be worth more than $100 million each, if the 2003 will is accepted, Alfred Glassell told jurors. “But I think the 2003 will was what my father wanted to see done. He wanted to see his name live on through the foundation and various charities.”

Houston Museum

During his lifetime, Alfred Glassell Jr. demonstrated his devotion to charity, especially the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the nation’s fifth-largest by exhibition space. He became the museum’s chairman emeritus in 2001 after serving as chairman of the board of trustees throughout the 1990s and leading a fundraising campaign that doubled the museum’s size in 2000.

Glassell also gave the museum more than 1,000 rare gold artifacts in three world-recognized collections of West African, Indonesian and Pre-Columbian art, which are housed in their own gallery within the Houston museum. The oilman also donated the Glassell School of Art, which serves as the museum’s teaching wing.

Curry Glassell told jurors yesterday she knows challenging her father’s will means she may forfeit her inheritance because of a broad no-contest clause included in his 2003 will. Lawyers told jurors her father must be declared mentally incompetent at the time he signed the 2003 will for it to be invalidated.

“I believe I’m vigorously taking legal action to see that my father’s desires for me are done,” she said, breaking into tears. “I do not believe that my asking questions destroys my father’s reputation in any way, shape or form.”

‘Rolling Around’

Alfred Glassell was asked yesterday by the foundation’s lawyer, David Gerger, if his father is “resting peacefully” with his daughter challenging his bequests. Glassell replied, “I think my father is probably rolling around and having a fit.”

While on the stand, Curry was shown a series of letters she wrote her father beginning in the early 1990s, most of them seeking a closer relationship with him and asking for gifts or money. In an early 2001 letter, she disparaged her stepmother’s lack of affection for her and said she was jealous of her father’s relationship with his namesake son.

“I want to ask you to please consider leaving me an inheritance,” she wrote her father in February 2001. “I know that you do not have to. I am humbly asking you to please consider it.”

In a January 2008 letter to her father, Curry Glassell asked for a $7.6 million loan to buy a ranch near Houston, after she’d learned he was leaving his extensive South Texas ranches to her half-brother.

‘Demented Old Man’

“You weren’t trying to take advantage of a demented old man, were you?” Murray Fogler, her brother’s lawyer, asked of her 2008 request for the loan.

“I never thought about my father in those terms,” Curry Glassell replied. “I will never tell anyone I thought my father was demented as long as I live.”

Curry Glassell said she grew more concerned about her father’s health in the last 10 years of his life.

“If my lawyers called him demented, I apologize,” she said. “What I do know is my father was very weak and sick.”

During opening statements, her lawyers said museum director Peter Marzio and his wife, Frances Marzio, the curator of the Glassell collections, worked with the Vinson & Elkins lawyers to exert undue influence on the elderly philanthropist to leave his estate to the museum and the foundation that would support it.

“Do you have anything other than your feelings to substantiate what you’re saying,” Joe Jamail, the museum’s lawyer, asked Curry Glassell yesterday. She said she didn’t.

Jamail asked Glassell if she doubted her father wanted his passion for art to live on after his death and had intended the museum to be his legacy to the community.

“Was there ever any question of that?” Glassell replied. “It was in the museum.”

The case is In Re Estate of Alfred C. Glassell Jr., 384045, Probate Court, Harris County, Texas (Houston).

To contact the reporters on this story: Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston at laurel@calkins.us.com; Margaret Cronin Fisk in Southfield, Michigan, at mcfisk@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 6, 2009 00:01 EST