Metro

Copper heiress leaves $34M to nurse in will

A Brooklyn private nurse who was randomly assigned 20 years ago to care for eccentric Manhattan mega-heiress Huguette Clark now will inherit up to a stunning $34 million from Clark’s $400 million estate — plus her dolls, it was revealed yesterday.

Clark, who died last month at age 104 at Beth Israel Medical Center after decades spent willingly in Manhattan hospitals, also left up to $14 million to her goddaughter — and $500,000 apiece to her lawyer and accountant, who remain under criminal investigation for their handling of her finances, according to the last-will-and-testament signed in 2005 by the copper-mining heiress.

But the daughter of notorious Sen. William Clark of Montana — once America’s second-richest man — didn’t leave a single, red cent to any of her surviving, distant relatives.

READ THE WILL

Clark’s nurse, Hadassah Peri, was assigned to care for the uber-rich recluse at random by a nursing agency in 1991, and since then had spent more time with her than anyone else, becoming a “friend and loyal companion,” according to the seven-page will, filed yesterday in Manhattan’s Surrogate’s Court.

Peri will receive an estimated $33.6 million from Clark’s estate after the payment of estate taxes, according to John Dadakis, a lawyer who filed the will.

Peri also will receive Clark’s large collection of dollhouses, dolls and doll clothing, including many valuable antique ones, which she avidly acquired during the decades when the public forgot her once-famous name.

In a statement to The Post, Peri said, “I saw Madame Clark virtually every day for the 20 years. I was her private duty nurse but also her close friend. 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,” Peri said.

“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.”

Clark’s god-daughter, Wanda Styka, the daughter of late Polish painter Tade Styka, will receive an estimated $14 mllion.

Peri and Styka’s inheritance, cash distributions to other individuals, $1 million to Beth Israel, and an estimated $44 million in estate taxes will be funded with the planned sales of her massive, 42-room Fifth Avenue apartment and her 52-acre estate in New Canaan, Conn., Dadakis said.

The bulk of Clark’s fortune — an estimated $275 million — was left to establish an arts foundation, the Bellosguardo Foundation, at her 24-acre Santa Barbara, Calif., estate — which she hadn’t visited in 50 years.

That foundation and museum in the 21,000-square-foot mansion there will house most of her art collection, which includes pieces by Renoir, John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase, music instruments including a Stradivarius violin and rare books.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC — which has an entire wing named after Clark’s father — will receive a 1907 painting by Claude Monet, part of his renowned “Water Lilies” series.

That painting, which has not been seen in public since 1925, is valued at between $20 million and $25 million.

Clark’s lawyer and accountant — both of whom she called her “friend” in the will — each will receive $500,000.

The lawyer, Wallace Bock, and accountant, convicted sex offender Irving Kamsler of The Bronx, also were named as executors of Clark’s will, which the heiress signed and initialed in her long-time room at Beth Israel, where she was registered under a fake name, with phony next-of-kin listed in hospital records.

Several of Clark’s actual relatives last year unsuccessfully petitioned a Manhattan court to appoint a guardian for her after questions about the handling of her assets by Bock and Kamsler were raised by MSNBC.com and The Post.

Although that bid failed, both men remain the subject of a pending criminal inquiry by the Manhattan District Attorney’ office. Both have denied any wrongdoing.

In her will, Clark, who had no children, and whose sister died childless, specifically excluded descendants of her long-dead half-siblings or other distant relatives from getting anything from her vast estate.

“I intentionally make no provision in this my Last Will and Testament for any members of my family, whether on my paternal or maternal side, having had minimal contacts with them over the years,” Clark wrote in her will.

“The persons and institutions named herein as beneficiaries of my Estate are the true objects of my bounty,” wrote Clark.

Thomas Goldberg, a lawyer for Clark’s relatives, had no comment.

Clark left $500,000 to her “assistant and friend,” Christopher Sattler, and $100,000 to “my physician and friend, Dr. Henry Singman,” the will said.

Dadakis, who chairs Holland & Knight’s Private Wealth Services group in New York, which filed the will in Surrogate Court said, “Despite her substantial wealth stemming from the same gilded age that produced the Rockefellers, Astors and Vanderbilts, Huguette Clark lived a remarkably quiet and understated life.”

“Her final will reflects that modesty, as well as her great generosity and empathy for those who took care of her in her later decades.”