A Brooklyn nurse has to pay back $6.7 million in gifts from the copper heiress she long cared for and lost out on an additional $30 million bequest — and that’s fine by her.
“The Peri family is very happy to contribute to the settlement,” 63-year-old retired nurse Hadassah Peri said in a statement Tuesday.
Attorneys in the estate battle over Huguette Clark’s $300 million fortune finalized a settlement deal Tuesday that will give her family $34.5 million and memorialize her love for the arts at a California foundation.
The agreement establishes an arts and cultural nonprofit at Clark’s $85 million Santa Barbara mansion Bellosguardo. The foundation also gets the heiress’s beloved $1.7 million doll collection that was originally gifted to her nurse and $4.5 million in cash.
The $34.5 million will be split among 20 of the childless heiress’s distant relatives. Clark’s goddaughter Wanda Styka won a $3.5 million bequest.
The Clark family applauded the Peri payback and the stripping of almost $1 million to their aunt’s other staff—attorney Wallace Bock and accountant Irving Kamsler.
“By removing Wallace Bock and Irving Kamsler from their positions as executors, and having Hadassah Peri return a significant amount of money, the settlement sends a strong message that those entrusted with the care of the elderly will be held accountable for their actions,” the family said in a statement released by their attorney, John Morken of Farrell Fitz.
Morken’s firm won a tidy $11.5 million in fees from the deal, the same amount awarded to attorneys for Bock from the national firm Holland Knight. Peri’s lawyer will get $1.5 million. That’s a total $24.5 million in legal fees.
The Peri payback includes Clark’s doll collection plus $5 million, but returning the gifts will free the nurse from any future lawsuits related to Clark. Peri received a total $31 million from Clark during her lifetime including a Jersey Shore vacation home though she worked 12-hour days, seven days a week from 1991 to 2005.
Beth Israel Hospital, where Clark lived out the last 20 years of her life until she died at age 104 in 2011, will get to keep a $1 million gift from the contested will, however, it will not be immune to potential, future litigation.
The financially strapped Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.– where Clark’s father, mining king and Sen. W.A. Clark gave many charitable gifts during his lifetime– will receive $10 million plus half the proceeds from the sale of a $25 million Claude Monet painting called “Water Lillies.
Other payments include $100,00 for Clark’s physician Dr. Henry Singman, $500,000 to her assistant Christopher Sattler, a year’s salary to the caretaker of her New Canaan mansion and two years pay to the manager of Bellosguardo.