Empty Mansions

talk about it after the holidays.
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    Now she had pneumonia. With her health in question, and with Hadassah nagging for the promised $5 million, Huguette finally said she’d sign.
    Bock and Kamsler took a draft to her hospital room on February 28, 2005, two weeks after she first fell ill. But Huguette didn’t want to wait until she died to pay Hadassah the $5 million, so that day she approved putting the Connecticut home on the market. She was ambivalent, however, about selling even a home she had never spent one night in. She changed her mind several times in the following weeks. Huguette even proposed letting Hadassah act as the real estate agent, so she could also pocket the commission, but her advisers said that wasn’t feasible. ThenHuguette proposed just giving the Connecticut house to Hadassah, but Kamsler told her that would be “a financial disaster” because of the gift taxes she would have to pay.
    Beth Israel’s administrators heard that a will was in the works. Putting on a full-court press,Dr. Newman visited Huguette three times that month.
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    On March 7, now recovered from her pneumonia, Huguette signed a will, a simple document of barely three pages. Its main beneficiaries were people who were not named at all: her father’s descendants from his first marriage. The will said she left her estate to her “intestate distributees.” In other words, she left her money to the same people who would inherit it if she didn’t have a will. Under New York law, if she had no children and no siblings and her mother had no other living children, the entire estate would go to her father’s descendants. (Her mother had no other descendants.) So in this regard, the will changed nothing.
    This document did, however, accomplish two goals: First, it left the $5 million to Hadassah, if she had not already received it from sale of the Connecticut property. Second, it named Bock and Kamsler as executors, putting the two men in line forautomatic commissions under state law of roughly $3.1 million each. Someone would get the $6.2 million, and now it would be her longtime advisers, which is not unusual.
    If Huguette didn’t want to leave money to her relatives, why did she sign a will that specified just that result?Bock and Kamsler explained later that this will was intended to get the ball rolling, that Huguette asked that it be as uncomplicated as possible so she could rest easily that Hadassah would get the $5 million. She and her advisers agreed that they would return soon for the more difficult task of updating her list of beneficiaries. The first will, Bock said, was a “stepping stone.”
    On March 23,Kamsler sent Huguette a list of possible beneficiaries, based on previous lists, and on April 12 he amended the list in a meeting with her with a check mark or an X changing the future for her friends. Two names from earlier lists were noticeably absent. The first was Madame Pierre, who had already received $10 million from the Monet. The second was Etienne’s daughter, Marie-Christine, who had correspondedless with Huguette in recent years. Hadassah’s share doubled. Bock sent the draft will to Huguette by courier on April 15. Kamsler says he went to the hospital to read it to her and explain each provision.
    Four days later, on April 19, just six weeks after she’d signed the first will,Huguette signed the second one. Her medical chart, with notes from various nurses and doctors, shows that Huguette’s mind seems to have been clear and sharp throughout this period. The chart shows her conversing cheerfully, reading French magazines, walking easily without assistance, sitting up in a chair soaking her feet in soapy water, writing letters, approving the auction at Sotheby’s of her devotional Book of Hours from the Middle Ages if it could fetch at least $100,000, reminiscing about how much she liked the old Doctors Hospital, writing $90,000 in checks to Hadassah and her family, giving $50,000 more to Dr. Jack Rudick, overdrawing her checking account again and again, enjoying visits with Madame Pierre, even giving herself a haircut.
    She had no medical problem other than worsening hearing. On March 21 and 25,she refused a hearing aid, but she was still able to listen to programs on the radio. The visiting doctors, who were not otherwise involved in her treatment and who didn’t benefit from either will, said later that she seemed mentally competent, answering their questions