An inheritance battle is brewing between the three adult children and much-younger, secret wife of the late celebrity photographer Bert Stern — famous for snapping provocative, nude photos of Marilyn Monroe just six weeks before her death.
Two competing wills, signed 13 years apart, are at the heart of the legal spat in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court over Stern’s $10 million fortune.
The Brooklyn-born shutterbug’s titillating photos of the platinum-blond star taken for Vogue magazine at the Bel-Air Hotel are memorialized in the book “Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting.”
Stern earned a spot in the National Film Registry for his iconic images, including shots of Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote and a teenage Sue Lyon wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and licking a lollipop for the poster for the 1962 movie “Lolita.”
Stern’s first will, signed in 1997 — years before his death three months ago at 83 — said half of his wealth should be divided equally between his two daughters and son, and the rest, about $5 million in archive photos, was to go a foundation based at his Sag Harbor, LI, home.
The contested, 2010 version is what’s known as a “pour-over” will, where all of his assets go to a private trust controlled by his young wife, Shannah Laumeister, 44.
Stern’s children are from his first marriage, which ended in 1975. Laumeister, a bit actress who directed the 2010 documentary “Bert Stern: Original Mad Man,” announced in obituaries that the couple had gotten married in 2009, but declined to say why it had been kept a secret.
Stern’s children — Bret O. Stern, of Fairfield, Conn., Trista Wright, of Westport, Conn., and Susannah Peterson Stern, of Manhattan, are demanding an examination of the attorney who wrote the second will and of the witnesses to its signing.
In court papers, Laumeister says she expects the new document, which stipulates that anyone challenging it will be disinherited, will be contested. A filing she submitted to Surrogate’s Court indicated that Stern’s children would still get “cash bequests” in the new will but did not say how much.
She did not return calls for comment. Her attorney declined to comment.
Anne Bederka, the lawyer for the Stern children, also declined to comment.