Milbank acts for the Public Administrator in high profile estate litigation
Milbank litigators frequently are involved in high stakes and high profile trusts and estates and fiduciary disputes in New York, Delaware, and throughout the United States, including will contests and trust disputes. A current example of such litigation involves the Estate of Huguette M. Clark. We are co-counsel to the Public Administrator for New York County, who is acting as Temporary Administrator of the Estate of Huguette M. Clark. Mrs. Clark was the daughter of former U.S. Senator and industrialist, William H. Clark, one of the wealthiest Americans in the early 20th century. She died in May 2011, at the age of 104, leaving a vast estate including homes in New York, Connecticut and California, and masterpiece works of art. In the few years before her death, MSNBC published a series of investigative articles discussing Mrs. Clark's mysterious lifestyle and questioning the roles of her longtime attorney and accountant. Mrs. Clark had spent the last 20 years of her life living in New York City hospitals, having little contact with anyone other than her nurses, doctors, attorney, and accountant. Mrs. Clark's last will, which was prepared by her attorney, named her attorney and accountant as executors and granted them, along with Mrs. Clark's private nurse, significant bequests while leaving nothing to Mrs. Clark's relatives. Upon Mrs. Clark's death, the Surrogate's Court, New York County, acting on concerns raised by the N.Y. Attorney General's Office, appointed the Public Administrator to act as Temporary Administrator in conjunction with the Preliminary Executors.
On December 20, 2011, the Public Administrator successfully filed an order to show cause and petition seeking the revocation of the Preliminary Letters Testamentary issued to the Preliminary Executors. Over the course of the last year, Milbank, as co-counsel for the Public Administrator, has prosecuted an accounting proceeding, seeking review of the payments that Mrs. Clark's attorney and accountant made in their purported capacities as attorneys-infact; an accountant malpractice action against Mrs. Clark's former accountants seeking damages for, among other things, failure to file Mrs. Clark's gift tax returns; a legal malpractice action against Mrs. Clark's attorney; and a turnover proceeding seeking recovery of millions of dollars of alleged "gifts" made by Mrs. Clark to persons with whom she was in a confidential relationship, including her nurses and doctors. The litigations remain pending.
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