Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

June 18, 2012

Heiress gave out millions; court wants them back

A court officer says the recipients of lavish gifts manipulated the heiress who lived in a hospital.

By JENNIFER PELTZ The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Her nurse was showered with almost $28 million in gifts, including three Manhattan apartments, two homes elsewhere and a $1.2 million Stradivarius violin. Her doctors' families received more than $3 million in presents. A night nurse received a salary plus money to cover her children's school tuition and to help buy two apartments.

Now the court-appointed official overseeing copper heiress Huguette Clark's estate wants all these gifts -- and more -- back.

Saying that the recipients manipulated the reclusive multimillionaire into lavishing largesse upon them during her long life, public administrator Ethel J. Griffin is trying to reclaim a whopping $37 million for the $400 million estate.

Besides seeking an order for return of those gifts, the administrator asked a court last month to investigate whether a hospital where Clark lived should have to give back a $6 million painting by French pre-Impressionist Edouard Manet and whether the prominent Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington should have to return $250,000.

MANIPULATION OR GRATITUDE?

While clashes over who got what and how during someone's lifetime crop up in many will fights, the staggering size, two-decade timeframe and uncommon circumstances distinguish the dispute surrounding Clark's gifts.

A court will likely have to reconstruct the intentions and mental state of an eccentric woman who died at 104 last year, and discern whether manipulation or gratitude was behind the gift-giving. Another issue is how well Clark was advised by her lawyer and her accountant. Both have come under scrutiny for their management of her affairs.

The public administrator's court papers portray a frail, secluded Clark exploited by a scheming retinue. But recipients say Clark was a generous, independent-minded woman who did exactly what she wanted in enriching people around her.

A separate fight is roiling over what will ultimately become of Clark's fortune. The last will she apparently signed, in April 2005, leaves most of her money to charity, with a bequest of more than $30 million to her private nurse. Another will, signed six weeks earlier, left her estate mostly to about 20 great-nieces and great-nephews. They are challenging the latest will.

A daughter of a U.S. senator from Montana who amassed his Gilded Age wealth mining copper, building railroads and founding Las Vegas, the childless, briefly married Clark owned the largest residence on Fifth Avenue and mansions in California and Connecticut. But she voluntarily spent the last 20 years of her life in two Manhattan hospitals.

She was hospitalized in 1991 after a friend sent a doctor to see her. The physician found a 75-pound octogenarian in a disheveled apartment illuminated by a single candle, her face ravaged by skin cancer, according to a recent court filing.

Clark was in better health by 1996, talking with her staff and involved in handling her affairs but still "shy and reticent, avoiding most people," though she exchanged letters with friends and relatives, Dr. Henry Singman wrote. She was unwilling to go home, even when he urged her to.

GIFTS SHOT UP

Clark paid the hospital $300,000 to $400,000 a year to care for her and hired private nurses and doctors, according to court documents. In addition, she rewarded members of her inner circle beyond their salaries.

In the quarter-century before her hospitalization, she averaged less than $40,000 a year in taxable gifts. That amount shot up afterward, the public administrator said in a May 22 court filing.

Private nurse Hadassah Peri made a salary of $131,000 a year, and she got roughly $28 million in real estate, jewelry, checks and other gifts, the public administrator said. Peri's family also received another $3 million. A handful of other nurses and doctors got more than $4 million among them.

(Continued on page 2)

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