Family Settles Famous Feud Over Prime Real Estate

Tapping Christmas-season sentiments of peace and goodwill, three warring sisters who have carried on a 13-year feud over a tidy fortune tied up in a family estate announced Wednesday they have settled their differences and will fight no more.

The Gisler sisters have brokered a deal that will allow them to sell 21 acres of prime real estate west of the Camarillo Town Center along the Ventura Freeway, bringing an end to what some top trust lawyers viewed as one of the longest, nastiest probate fights in California history.

That land, held for decades by a pioneering Ventura County farm family, has been at the center of a protracted legal battle that has ranged from courtrooms in Ventura to the California Supreme Court.

But it also evolved into a deeply personal feud, one that pitted the two older sisters against the youngest. At one point early on, the legal dispute even was raised in the investigation of the murder of one of the trustees.

The trustee, a 73-year-old cousin who tried to resolve the dispute, ended up with her head bashed in and her throat slit. No case was ever made against any of the family members and the murder remains unsolved.

While details of the settlement are being kept secret by a confidentiality agreement, representatives of the Gisler Trust said the sisters are relieved to finally put the family feud behind them.

“All it took was to get them to sit down and talk, and the problems of the past melted away,” said Kevin Staker, a local attorney who took over last year as trustee of the estate. “I can tell you that they have agreed to sell the property. These are all very good people and it has all been just a tragic misunderstanding.”

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It all started very simply, with a routine family will drawn up to protect the heirs of the small Camarillo farm.

In 1955, Margaret Gisler filed a will parceling out her estate to her children and other relatives. One of her sons, William, and his wife, Angela, were to have the little farmhouse and a 22-acre tomato field nearby. If William died first, Angela would have the house to live in until her death. Then the house and the land would pass to their three daughters, now known by their married names of Patricia Wise, Gertrude Hall and Barbara Kennerly.

The first difficulties began not after Margaret Gisler died, but after William died in 1969, leaving Angela alone in the little house next to the tomatoes.

By this time, the Bank of A. Levy was managing the estate. But when it attempted to sell the land for about $200,000, all three daughters objected, saying they had no idea the bank was planning a sale and complaining that the property was worth far more.

By the 1970s, Barbara Gisler had married a San Diego attorney named Paul Kennerly, who eventually succeeded in having himself and a family friend named as trustees of the estate. Years later, Kennerly also succeeded in having his wife named as an additional co-trustee, and the couple moved into a trailer on the tomato field, just behind the house where Angela Gisler was living.

Angela Gisler died in 1983. And the next year, the Kennerlys submitted a document saying they felt entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars for services rendered as trustees of the estate.

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Thus began the all-out legal war. The two other sisters, Patricia Wise and Gertrude Hall, tried to remove the Kennerlys as trustees, and an accusation of fraud eventually became the basis of a $120-million lawsuit against the couple.

Most outrageous, in the view of Wise and Hall, was their sister’s $237 bill for attending their mother’s funeral. Other disputed claims included a $19,115 bill for mileage, a $12,000 demand by Barbara Kennerly for clipping newspaper stories about zoning developments in Camarillo and $11,000 for time spent discussing trust matters with her mother.

The rest has been a blur of legal maneuvers, a series of offensives and counteroffensives that some observers surmised could ultimately use up all of the assets of the trust for litigation expenses.

“I never thought I would see it end,” said Oxnard attorney Fred Rosenmund, who has represented Wise and Hall since the feud started. “I thought too much animosity had been built up.”

In the end, a combination of factors pushed the parties toward settlement.

The Kennerlys had filed for bankruptcy in 1989 in federal court in San Diego, and Rosenmund said hearings were scheduled to decide how assets should be divided. At the same time, Rosenmund said his clients have been receiving unsolicited offers to purchase the property, prime commercial acreage worth at least $4 million and thought to be a natural extension of Camarillo’s booming commercial corridor.

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Last month, Rosenmund said, the husbands of the three sisters were able to sit down and reach an agreement.

“It has been amazing to me after all these years how cordial everyone has been to each other,” Rosenmund said. “It has had quite a history to it and I know everyone will be glad it’s over.”

Neither Rosenmund nor Staker will say how the money will be divided between the sisters after the property is sold. But they will say that they expect the property to be sold in less than a year and that each sister will come away with something.

That will leave only one outstanding issue. Hall and Wise still are not on speaking terms with Kennerly, no mean feat considering that Wise and Kennerly are next-door neighbors sharing space on the family estate.

The lawyers say they hope that relationship can be rebuilt.

“I think breaking the ice will be difficult, considering everything that has occurred,” Rosenmund said. “But I think over time they will be able to put this behind them and start speaking to one another again.”

Staker said: “There is a very good feeling between all parties. It would be my hope that all wounds would heal in time.”