The mom to teenage heirs of the late Manhattan philanthropist Doris Duke wanted to blow her kids’ trust funds on a $29 million Utah ranch, according to court papers.
Daisha Inman suddenly uprooted 15-year-old twins Georgia and Walker Inman, heirs to the late tobacco billionaire’s massive fortune, from their South Carolina home and holed up in a $120,000 a month hotel in Park City.
“Instead of locating a suitable rental property as she had represented she would do, Ms. Inman requested funding to buy a ranch in Utah with a listing price of $29 million (representing almost the entirety of the property held in the children’s trusts,” a JPMorgan executor for Duke’s reported in the Feb. 13 filing.
Georgia and Walker are the great-grandchildren of Nanaline Duke, whose husband was James “Buck” Duke, the founder of American Tobacco. Their great aunt was billionaire Doris Duke.
She left the twins trusts that are now estimated to be worth $14 million each. They gain control at age 21.
But since Georgia’s and Patterson’s father, Walker Inman, died of a methadone overdose in February 2010, there’s been a scramble for their cash.
The trustee, Francis Simms, denied that it had been nickel-and-diming funds, including its alleged failure to pay tuition for the twins in January. Rather Simms contends that Ms. Inman refused to provide an itemized invoice for the twins’ Utah schooling and instructed the school “Not to disclose any information to JPMorgan.”
Simms also rejected the mom’s claim that executors tried to push the family into a one-room apartment for the holidays. “JPMorgan is unaware of any occasion on which Ms. Inman and the children were almost evicted due to non-payment of rent.”
But Simms did shoot down Ms. Inman’s request to purchase the ranch, even at a deeply discounted price of $16 million because of the price tag and the mom’s erratic behavior.
“Shortly before she moved to Utah, Ms. Inman made another premature request to fund the purchase of a relatively more modest $4.3 million South Carolina residence, only to leave South Carolina without warning a few months later,” Simms asserts in the document.
Ms. Inman could not immediately be reached for comment. The St. Regis hotel where she’d been staying with her children said she’d checked out.
The trustees asked the court to intervene in the battle over the children’s money.