A Manhattan court battle over the $10 million estate of Marilyn Monroe photographer Bert Stern just got a lot uglier, with his young widow fighting his kids to keep his psychiatry records under wraps.
“A significant portion of the value of [Stern’s] estate derives from his artistic works and reputation” and the records could damage his reputation and the value of his estate, Shannah Laumeister, 44, argues in her Manhattan Surrogate’s Court motion.
When Stern, 83, was on his deathbed Laumeister, 44, announced the pair had wed in secret but refused to say why the marriage was kept under wraps.
The celebrity shooter’s three kids cite “the obvious relevance of medical records in a probate contest” in their argument to obtain the shrink’s records – which could shed light on Stern’s mysterious marriage to the much-younger Laumeister.
The kids are fighting to toss out their dad’s 2010 will which gives Laumeister control of his estate in favor of a 1997 will nets them half of his estate.
The kids also claim that Laumeister’s worries over his reputation are ridiculous since she eulogized him as “the greatest experience in the world” was “driving through Sedona in his Mercedes convertible getting high on marijuana,” their court papers state.
An attorney for Laumeister declined to comment and an attorney for the three children did not return a call for comment.
The Brooklyn-born Stern’s titillating nude and semi-nude photos of the platinum-blond star taken for Vogue magazine at the Bel-Air Hotel just six weeks before her death are memorialized in the book “Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting.”