Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The Saga of Huguette Clark Continues

This story isn't specifically real estate related, but as all the children surely know, Your Mama is obsessed with the following story and we can't resist the urge to pass it along...

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Bill Dedman filed his latest installment today on the life and times of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark who went to meet her maker in May 2011 at the very old age of 104.

Mister Dedman's newest story covers the juicy details of Miss Clark's just-filed will and its numerous bequeaths that include half a million dollars to a long-time male assistant and a cool million to Beth Israel Medical Center where she lived in a nondescript room for the last couple decades of her long life. Other disbursements include $100,000 to her personal physician, and estimated $12-14,000,000 to a goddaughter and half a million each to her controversial attorney Wallace Wally Bock and even more controversial accountant Irving H. Kamsler who pleaded guilty to charges related to his attempt to send lewd material to underage children.

Miss Clark's longtime nurse makes out with an estimated $33,600,000 and a valuable collection of French and Japanese dolls. Her relatives, all distant and by all accounts not particularly close to Miss Clarke, were very pointedly left out of the the will. It's presumed the will be contested.

Miss Clark owned three substantial pieces of real estate. Prior to moving into an unmarked room in a hospital under a fake name, her primary residence was a prairie-like full-floor apartment in a very swank (but not top-tier) building on New York City's posh Fifth Avenue. Miss Clark also owned an additional half floor in the building. The apartments have for decades been maintained as if Miss Clark were about to return at any moment. Rumors are already started to swirl about just who wants a piece of Miss Clark's Manhattan real estate pie. Some have gossiped that Martha Stewart, who owns a pied a terre in the building, has long had her real estate eyes of Miss Clark's spread. Let those games begin...

Miss Clark also owned Le Beau Chateau, a 52-acre New Canaan, CT estate she bought in 1952 and in which, rumor has it, she never spent a single night. Miss Clark's Connecticut residence has been on and off the market since 2005 when it was first listed with an asking price of $34,000,000. The 9 bedroom and 9 bathroom mansion remains listed but with a much reduced $24,000,000 price tag.

The undisputed sugar in Miss Clark's real estate coffee is Bellosguardo, a 23-plus acre estate on a prime bluff top in Santa Barbara that includes an imposing 21,000-plus square foot beast of a mansion that she staffed and maintained at great expanse but, reportedly, had not stepped foot in since 1963 when her beloved mother died. Miss Clark will provides about $8,000,000 to establish an arts foundation on the grounds of Bellosguardo, her legendary Santa Barbara, CA estate. Your Mama assumes–without any direct knowledge–that the Bellosguardo endowment will balloon with the proceeds taken in by the eventual sale of her Connecticut and New York City properties.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great article...please keep us updated with this Huguette Clark saga, it's fascinating how reclusive she was, how much money and property she had and how strange (and possibly shady) her financial advisers seem to be.

The Swanky Socialite said...

New Canaan, CT is my hometown and our paper has done a bunch of articles on her. I find it fascinating as well! It is true that she has never spent a night in her New Canaan estate. So strange!!

Anonymous said...

We need to know what the residual clause in the will says. All those specific bequests add up to no more than about $50-75M. Pocket changes for Ms. Clark, if recent reporting is to be credited.

So what becomes of the residual of the estate? The will ALWAYS says something about that.

- The AttorneyStalker

StPaulSnowman said...

Mama........does this mean the sweet old girl left that Santa Barbara place to us...the public? If it is going to be an arts center, one would assume we will be able to see it. I hope they don't litter the place with dry erase boards and conference furniture........the odd easel and potters wheel would be OK by me. I know LGB has had his eye on the docent position there with permanent residence in the caretaker's villa. I don't know how his interview went. This was a most thoughtful bequest to the public. Those distant relatives must be deliciously pissed off.......God I love this celebrity real estate gambit!

chris said...

Her will seems quite sensible to me. Most money to the people who were close to her and caring. No money to people who were distant and useless to her. Modest amounts to her lawyer, accountant and MD. I see nothing strange at all. And I doubt it will be easy to break a will written by a good lawyer. You can't demand money if the person who dies doesn't wish to give it to you, even if you are related.

Anonymous said...

Almost $34 million to her nurse?
Yeah, that will is getting contested.

I like how the physician who actually kept her healthy and alive gets a measly $100,000. Doctors really need to start charging more and start charging people based on their net worth.
Try living in mansions and having fun when you are dead. See how that works out for you.

Anonymous said...

What would be the argument why she can't give 34 million to her nurse? Does someone in the USA have to obey some unwritten laws about whom they can leave money to? I am not aware of them. Her nurse didn't draw up the will; her lawyer did. Doris Duke left a large amount to her butler; it was not overturned, to my knowledge.

Anonymous said...

She lived to 104 years of age! She probably outlived how many doctors? Doctors come and go, nurses are always thier, even when your stuck in second gear! If Robin Wright was my nurse I would easily leave her at least $10,000,000 :)

Anonymous said...

Why shouldn't her nurse, who probably spent the last 20 years cleaning her bed pan and attending to her every need, get what she deserves? In more sensible countries a legally made will is final and cannot be contested by greedy relatives, as it should be.

If those were her final wishes then they should be respected. In light of how she lived her life at a distance from relatives, this will doesn't seem out of order. It's not like she married a toyboy on her deathbed and left him her entire estate. Hopefully the courts will see sense and throw any contests out.

Anonymous said...

Anon 7:35 - if her doctors and nurses are anything like the ones I know, the nurse/doctor ratio of money is spot on! Give me a break - the doctor is not responsible for her good genes and the nurse I assume had endless patience for a reclusive old woman. It's probably her company that kept her alive - not the occaisional bottle of pills prescribed by the doc.

The modest amounts to her lawyer and accountant will increase since they will both conveniently be paid to administer both the estate and the establishment of the Cal museum at Santa Barbara. At $500/hour each I'm sure they'll make short work of any residual.

Anonymous said...

How do you pronounce her name, LOL? Hyoo-GET?

Anonymous said...

Is the goddaughter inheriting the $12-$14 million a relation to one of her lawyers/advisors?

Dr. Evul said...

Anon 7:35; I completely sympathize with you. No doubt, you are a physician who accepts Medicare reimbursement. People think doctors make so much and they never really see what small fraction of our "extravagant" bill. We actually lose money on every mole we remove in the office. Old Doc Welby is on the train outta here and the folks in this country will be shocked to see how much attitude and compassion the future will not bring. "I would like to care about you, I really would, I just don't have the time what with all this pesky paperwork". NHS here we come! Isn't that Zsa Zsa person dead and having fun in a mansion? It seems to be working out for her OK.

Lilithcat said...

@ TheAttorneyStalker -

There is a residual clause. 60% to Hadassah Peri (the nurse/companion), 25% to her goddaughter, and 15% to the Bellosguardo Foundation that is established in the will. You can read the will here. (.pdf)

Anonymous said...

Wow...what an eccentric lady! I hope her final wishes are carried out. I do find it sad that she spent her final TWO DECADES in a non-descript hospital when she could have had round-the-clock care by an entire team in any of the places she owned. I hope that was her own choice (eccentric as it may be) and not at the insistence of greedy children/financial advisors "Momma, the staffing costs of keeping you at home alone will be a million a year...and to widen the doorways to accomodate a hospital bed will be detrimental to the value of the home"

Anonymous said...

When you or one of your loved ones have an aneurysm, need a bypass or organ transplant or any kind of surgery to keep you alive, call the nurse instead of the physician, see how well that works out for you.

No one respects the physician or the work they do until they are lying on the OR table dying, begging God and everyone else for their life.

Anonymous said...

Oh boy! She has 21 living relatives who are ready to put their boxing gloves on.

I completely agree with the fact that the nurse absolutely deserves her fair share. I'm sure she was there 24/7, and was as a friend as well as a care-taker. While I'm sure the doctor did his due diligence he was certainly not the one sitting by her bedside day after day, night after night.

What a classy lady! She will be giving so much to the arts for all to enjoy!

Anonymous said...

10:41 - Though both are essential, 'surgeon' and 'physician' are not interchangeable terms.

No mention no mention has been made of any serious health issues regarding Hugette, so one can only assume that it was nursing and companionship that kept her around all these years - not the white coat that popped in once a day.

I love the fact that the nurse was randomly chosen by an agency years ago - good for her.

lil' gay boy said...

Snowman, you let the cat out of the bag! Now that my BGD has found out, he's digging in his heels & refusing to accompany me on the interview (I told him it was a second honeymoon, booked by moi on a private Californian estate...)

Now he refuses to set foot in that, tsk, artists' colony... tsk.

Seriously though, he is indeed a retired doctor and is not surprised by the nurse's bequest ––– although the physician may be much more highly skilled, it's the nursing staff that perform the majority of medical care-giving and bonding with each patient. He always relied on his nurses to give him a heads up about any changes, knowing that their intuition was akin to money in the bank.

When a single individual provides such ongoing, intimate services over a long period of time, they tend to become closer than either friends or family, and as such deserve a tad more than a construction paper star with blobs of cheap dime store glitter on it...

StPaulSnowman said...

LGB; I couldn't agree more about the appropriate bequest to the nurse. I think it is not about caring per se, but about the goals of physicians and surgeons and nurses. I often have to do and say things to patients which cause physical pain, fear, and anxiety. I do these things to solve a specific problem or to alter a disease state. I cannot avoid these unpleasantries and hope the patient feels the result justifies them. Nursing focus is to help the individual deal with the pain, stress and anxiety that disease and treatment cause. It is far more nurturing and reinforcing to have someone sponge a febrile brow than to have a broken bone set. The goals are all toward helping. I am thrilled that the old girl rewarded her long time nurse caregiver. I hope she remembered the occupational therapist and physical therapist as well. I find it sad to see the comments noting adversarial rather than collegial relationships between physicians and nurses...........we all know that's what lawyers are for.

Jeannified said...

I'm sure we'll all go visit the grounds when they open them up!

Pollylanda said...

I have followed this story since moma put it up last year. at first, I followed like most, and it seems especially women, thinking , so sad, her heart must have been broken and thus she became a recluse. then I really started thinking, what a waste, god gives you 1.health,2.money 3.lots of time on the planet to enjoy both, and she just wasted all of it, dolls? well what about animals, or children or something living, plants , nature, thank god she allowed for the santa barbara mansion to be shared by everyone, but it appears that she just wasted most of her life and incredible resources , who knows maybe she needed some antidepressants or something, but no one close enough to suggest, her whole life seems like a huge waste for someone who had so much to give and share, granted she did what she wanted but seems very very selfesh to have so very much and not use it for so many years to create beauty around you and or for others.he life seems very boring and self absorbed now to me.

StPaulSnowman said...

I suspect she simply didn't know any better. I cannot believe that the super wealthy can afford a very healthy weltanschauung. Yes, Virginia........"weltanschauung" was indeed my word verification.