This prosperous Upper East Side family has been dealt more than its fair share of misfortune.
After philanthropist Barbara Weiden Schwartz Fischler was stabbed to death with a kitchen knife by her own schizophrenic son in 2011, her second husband nearly wiped out her $5.8 million fortune on risky short-sales, and then earlier this year her second son committed suicide.
The handling of Barbara’s estate, slashed to $700,000 from the volatile trading by her widower Burton M. Fischler, 63, was turned over to her first husband, by a Surrogate’s Court judge last year.
The first spouse, Maryland resident and retired Merrill Lynch executive Steven Schwartz, is still fighting Fischler in court for documents he needs to reverse the financial havoc that devastated the estate.
As fate would have it Barbara’s remaining wealth will go to the two men who tore her family apart — her older son Jonathan Schwartz, 44, who is awaiting trial on second-degree murder charges and her second husband Burton who squandered the inheritance she left for her unemployed younger son Kenneth Schwartz, 39.
“For the last decade of her life, my mother generously paid all my bills and was my sole source of financial support, so much so that I rarely received mail at my own apartment,” the distraught son confessed in his lawsuit against his stepdad.
“Believing that I would probably inherit a few million dollars from my mother, reassured me that in the midst of the tragedy, I would at least have enough money to live on,” Kenneth added.
Kenneth killed himself in January 2013, about six months after learning that he could no longer count on his mother’s largess.
“I had lost both my brother and my mother to an act of unspeakable violence that I will never understand,” Kenneth wrote to the court six months before he committed suicide.
Though Barbara was well-to-do, she was “almost completely housebound and largely bedridden with many health problems, including battles against addiction to the many painkillers she was prescribed for her medical problems,” according to Kenneth’s suit.
Jonathan lived down the hall in the family’s luxury E. 85th Street apartment as a recluse, locked in his room even when his younger brother came to visit.
“Burt worked as a wealth management advisor, had been married twice before, and had relatively few financial resources of his own,” Kenneth said.
Kenneth said Burt approached him just a few days after his mother’s death and convinced him to relinquish his control over her estate.
The move was against Barbara’s wishes. She had signed a post-nuptial agreement with Burt that prevented him from overseeing her finances after her death.
Barbara was 67 when she died. She was the daughter of the late financial guru Norman Weiden and headed a charity named after him.
Burt claimed in court papers that his sickly wife “wanted to take higher than average risk” and said he was playing the market with a “long-term strategy.”