Yellowstone Club founders engaged in bitter legal fight

BILLINGS, Mont. - The divorced co-founders of the Yellowstone Club are waging an increasingly bitter legal fight over the remnants of their opulent empire in the wake of the club's recent sale to a Boston investor.

Tim Blixseth ran the 13,600-acre southwest Montana resort until last August, when Edra Blixseth took over following the couple's divorce. Edra blames her former husband for driving the club into bankruptcy and for spurring her own bankruptcy, which she filed in March with debts of at least $157 million.

But in newly filed documents in Edra's bankruptcy case, Tim Blixseth accuses his former wife of repeated financial fraud.

He says she tried to ruin him by scuttling a bid to sell the club last year for $470 million - more than four times the $115 million that CrossHarbor Capital Partners is now paying to acquire the property.

Tim Blixseth wrote in an affidavit that Edra had "engaged in a systematic campaign riddled with fraud, deception and illegal conduct with the singular goal of wrestling control of the (Yellowstone Club) and ruining me in all respects, at whatever the costs."

Edra Blixseth's spokesman, Bill Keegan, said Edra was reviewing the allegations.

"It appears that Tim Blixseth is using the same harassment tactics that he has employed for some time," Keegan said. He said Edra Blixseth would comment after the review.