A Debate Over Will Benefiting Animals
Critical of city agency, son balks at turning over the $2-4 million

By BILL MURPHY | Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 20, 2008, 10:56AM

NICK de la TORRE CHRONICLE
Mike Meehan holds a picture of his late mother, Ann Slemons Young, at his downtown Houston apartment.
After her marriage soured in the mid-1980s, Ann Slemons Young left her home in Newport Beach, Calif., and moved to Houston, where she found consolation in her pets.

Her passion for animal causes grew. Before dying last year, the 70-year-old mobile home park owner specified that much of her estate would go to finding homes for unwanted animals and helping set up a veterinary clinic.
Everyone agrees that Young's estate left about $2 million to $4 million to animal causes. But there is immense disagreement over which animal organization should receive the money.

The city of Houston says Young's will explicitly states that what remains of the estate after bequests to relatives should go to a foundation.

"The foundation," the will says, "shall exist, and the properties of the foundation shall be used, exclusively and solely, for the support of the City of Houston Bureau of Animal Control (sic)."

But Mike Meehan, Young's son and executor of her estate, has balked at turning over several million dollars to the city agency — actually called the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care — because, he says, it does little to promote adoptions and is grossly underfunded.

Other parts of his mother's will, he said, give the foundation's trustees the right to choose which animal organizations receive funding.

"If my mom's will said I was supposed to hand over a big chunk of money to the city, that's what I would do," Meehan said. "But that's not what the will says."

The dispute has landed before Harris County Probate Judge William McCulloch, who will decide in the coming months whether the city or Meehan has interpreted the will correctly.

The charitable trusts division of the state attorney general's office has joined the battle. It says it needs to find out whether Meehan intends to comply with the will's intent of setting up a charitable trust that will benefit BARC or other animal facilities.
Young's interest in animal causes intensified about 10 years ago when she was thrown from a horse and nearly died, Meehan said. She decided she would use part of her money to help animals.

"My mother's thinking was that animals do not have ulterior motives. They can give unconditional love," said Meehan, 48, a yacht salesman in Newport Beach who spends part of his time in Houston, tending to his mother's estate.

When she died, Young owned two Tennessee Walker horses and several cats.

Elena Marks, Mayor Bill White's health policy director, said Young made plans to give money to BARC while she was alive. Marks said Young discussed the plans with her and Alison Smith, a lawyer and former chair of the mayor's Animal Protection Task Force.

Hopes of a new facility
A deal wasn't reached before Young died on March 28, 2007.

In her will, which includes several broken sentences, Young left her condominium, jewelry and other items to family members, including her son and daughter. She stipulated that $500,000 be put into a trust, with Meehan receiving $3,000 a month from it during his lifetime.

Essentially, the probate court fight is over Royal Coach Trails, a 15-acre mobile home park along the Hardy Toll Road in north Houston, as well as a 30-acre ranch in Waller County.

Meehan's appraiser estimated the value of Royal Coach Trails at $2.25 million. With about 100 lots, the park generates $384,000 in rental payments annually, Meehan said.

The will — immediately after stating that part of the estate will go to the Houston Bureau of Animal Control — says Young's money will help construct "a two-story animal shelter facility that will include, but not be limited to, (a) wellness clinic, illness clinic, cat-and-dog adoption area."

The city hopes to use the money to help establish a satellite animal shelter that would bolster the number of adoptions and reduce the euthanasia rate, said Marks and Smith, who is representing the city pro bono in the probate fight.

"There are definitely better facilities than BARC for adoptions. It is not as accessible to the public as we would like. It's more of an industrial setting," Marks said. "We want to couple this donation with private funding to build a facility we could all be proud of."

Other Plans
But Tom Coleman, a lawyer representing Meehan, said provisions in the will spell out that trustees overseeing the foundation can use the money to help build another BARC shelter or hand it to other organizations that promote sterilization and adoptions.

Instead of selling Royal Coach Trails and the ranch and giving the proceeds to BARC, Meehan would like to keep the properties.

Meehan had hoped to give land at Royal Coach Trails to Saving Animals, a nonprofit organization whose Fix Houston project aimed to halt euthanization of healthy, unwanted pets. Under that plan, Fix Houston would have run a new spay-neuter facility, called the Ann Slemons Young clinic, at the mobile home park.

But Fix Houston went under Thursday when it filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. Its assets will be sold.
Meehan said he now would like to help another nonprofit organization that would reduce euthanasia in Houston.

bill.murphy@chron.com