She had cut off her family and communicated mostly with her dolls over the past 20 years while living in almost total secrecy in several New York hospital rooms before her death last month at 104.
Now, it appears reclusive copper heiress Huguette Clark has cut her family out of her will, too, leaving most of her fortune, its value newly pegged at $400 million, to charity and to her nurse and close friend, Hadassah Peri.
The will, filed Wednesday in Manhattan court, sheds some light on the exact contents of the Clark estate.
Her assets include an art collection with works by Monet, Renoir, John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase; sprawling estates in Santa Barbara and Connecticut; a pricey Fifth Avenue apartment; and a vast doll collection, from porcelains to Barbies.
Most of the fortune – including the Santa Barbara estate, most of the art, all of Clark's musical instruments and rare books – will go to a foundation that will be set up to promote the arts. Separately, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington will receive a 1907 original Water Lilies painting by Monet, which hasn't been seen in eight decades.
Peri will receive the dolls, possibly worth millions, as well as 60 percent of the remaining assets. Clark's goddaughter, Wanda Styka, will get 25 percent.
The will, drafted in 2005, also leaves $1 million to Beth Israel Medical Center, where she lived for many years and died on May 24; $500,000 to her assistant; and $100,000 to a physician.
Clark's lawyer, Wallace Bock, and her accountant, Irving H. Kamsler, received $500,000 each – although the Manhattan district attorney's office is investigating how they have handled Clark's money.
Source: people
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