A Brooklyn nurse who tended eccentric Manhattan heiress Huguette Clark for 20 years will inherit nearly $34 million from her $400 million estate — and her dolls, Clark’s will revealed yesterday.
Clark, who died last month at age 104 at Beth Israel Hospital after decades spent willingly hospitalized, also left up to $14 million to her goddaughter — and $500,000 each to her lawyer and accountant, who are under criminal investigation for their handling of her finances. But the daughter of Montana Sen. William Clark didn’t leave a red cent to any of her surviving distant relatives — “having had minimal contacts with them over the years,” she wrote in a will signed in 2005.
Clark’s nurse, Hadassah Peri, who was assigned at random by an agency in 1991 to care for the uber-rich recluse — and then spent more time with the copper-mining heiress than anyone — was a “loyal friend and companion,” according to the will filed in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court.
Peri will receive an estimated $33.6 million from Clark’s estate — and all of the valuable dolls, doll clothing and dollhouses that Clark avidly collected over the years, said John Dadakis, a lawyer who filed the will.
“I saw Madame Clark virtually every day for the 20 years. I was her private-duty nurse but also her close friend,” Peri said. “I knew her as a kind and generous person, with whom I shared many wonderful moments and whom I loved very much. I am profoundly sad at her passing, awed at the generosity she has shown me and my family, and eternally grateful.
“Just as Madame Clark demonstrated kindness toward others in her actions, so, too, will I and my family devote a substantial portion of this bequest toward making the world a better place for all people,” Peri said.
Peri’s and Clark goddaughter Wanda Styka’s inheritance, cash payouts to others, $1 million to Beth Israel and $44 million in estate taxes will be funded with the sale of Clark’s 42-room apartment on Fifth Avenue and her 52-acre estate in New Canaan, Conn.
Clark left an estimated $275 million to establish an arts foundation, the Bellosguardo Foundation, at her massive Santa Barbara, Calif., estate, and a Claude Monet painting valued at $25 million to Washington’s Corcoran Gallery of Art.