VIRGINIA CITY, Mont. -- The longtime secret companion of the late CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt is awaiting a judge's decision on whether she should inherit remnants of the clandestine life they shared together for three decades.
Patricia Shannon contends Kuralt intended that she have a Montana fishing retreat, a claim which Kuralt's widow, Suzanne "Petie" Baird Kuralt, has challenged.Suzanne Kuralt died in October. His two daughters from a previous marriage have taken up the legal battle.
The nonjury trial concluded after a single day of testimony Thursday. District Judge John Christensen said he expects to rule within 30 days.
The "On the Road" reporter died in 1997 at age 62.
Shannon testified that Kuralt, the traveling correspondent known for his folksy reports about quirky Americana, played the role of husband and father for his secret family while his wife lived in New York.
"I considered, and I think he considered, and I know the children considered, that we were a family," she said.
Shannon described how Kuralt paid for college for her children, provided her with money to live and start a business and gave her property in Ireland and Montana during their 29-year affair. She said her son sometimes traveled with Kuralt while he was on assignment with CBS and went with him to political conventions.
Shannon said Kuralt intended for her to have the 90-acre retreat, including a renovated schoolhouse valued at more than $600,000.
Her claim is based on a letter Kuralt wrote to her two weeks before he died of 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."
"I always thought of it as ours," Shannon said of the retreat. "Charles always thought of it as ours."
Todd Hillier, an attorney for the estate, argued that Kuralt knew how to write a valid handwritten will and that if he had wished to make the letter binding, he could have done so.
The daughters, Susan Bowers and Lisa Bowers White, did not attend the trial.
Kuralt met Shannon in 1968, the year after he started his "On the Road" travels, and six years into his second marriage, to Baird. Shannon was a divorced, 34-year-old social activist and mother of three.
For years, she testified, he called almost every night. They often spent time at a fishing cabin along the Big Hole River, one of America's finest trout streams.
In 1997, Kuralt gave Shannon the cabin and 20 acres, and she continues to live there. But in his will, he gave the adjacent 90-acre retreat to his wife and children.