Frania Tye Lee

Frania Tye Lee was the mother of four children by H.L. Hunt, who married her in November 1925, when she was living in Tampa, Florida, under the name Franklin Hunt while he was married to Lyda Bunker Hunt. The children were Howard, Haroldina, Helen, and Hugh. She died in 2002.¹

The 1942 Release

She testified in 1978 that in January 1942 Hunt met her at the Hotel Adolphus in Dallas, closed the doors, checked the hall, and offered her a million dollars to sign a statement that they had never married. "That's when I became very angry and screamed that I would never sell my children for all the money he had," she said. On January 24, 1942, she signed a 62-page statement denying the marriage and a release of all future claims. Hunt gave her a check for 300,000 dollars, 25,000 for her lawyers, and 2,000 dollars a month for life. Twelve days later she married Colonel John W. Lee, a former employee of Hunt Oil Company, who adopted the children. Hunt's lawyer in the negotiation, a Dallas attorney named Shank, acknowledged that he had researched the Texas bigamy statutes beforehand. Members of the family held that the cause of the settlement was Hunt's new relationship with Ruth Ray, a 25-year-old legal secretary in Shreveport, who bore him a son, Ray Lee Hunt, in New York in April 1943 and lived under the name Wright.¹

Lee v. Hunt

Hunt died in November 1974. In 1975 she sued the executor, Ray Hunt, in the federal court in Shreveport, claiming that she had been a putative wife with a community interest in the estate. The trial began on January 9, 1978. The only documentary evidence of the marriage was a voided entry in a marriage license ledger of Hillsborough County, Florida, which her son had found a few months before trial after years of unsuccessful searches by others. A documents examiner testified without contradiction that it was in a hand different from every other entry in the book. The ink was never dated. Not long after the lawyers in the case made certified copies of the entry, that part of the book was cut out, the first such incident in the history of the county clerk's office.¹

Margaret Hunt Hill, a potential defense witness, stayed away from the courtroom, as did Hassie Hunt, who had not appeared in public for more than 25 years. On January 16 the parties dictated a settlement to the court reporter in chambers and the jury was discharged. The estate agreed to pay 7.5 million dollars, half of the estimated community property as of 1942, drawn equally from the trusts of the first and second families, most of it to her children and grandchildren. She would be declared Hunt's putative wife. Hugh Lee would drop his separate suit to have the four declared legitimate heirs, and the family would sign another release. Hugh alone of the 19 parties then refused to sign the final agreement, pleading duress and mistake. The district court ordered him to execute it on December 27, 1979, and the Fifth Circuit decided his appeal on December 1, 1980.¹²