Heiress leaves $40 million to PH-born nurse

New York—For the past several decades, Huguette Clark, a wealthy copper heiress, had largely been a mystery to the public. She cloistered herself in hospitals in New York, and saw only a small number of visitors. She had no children and no close relatives.

Her fortune was clearly huge—including a 42-room apartment on Fifth Avenue, an oceanfront estate in Santa Barbara, California, and a country manor in New Canaan, Connecticut—but her net worth was not clear.

So when Clark died last month at age 104, it naturally raised questions: How much was there to be inherited, and who would get it?

Some clarity was provided on Wednesday when a John D. Dadakis, a lawyer at the firm Holland & Knight, filed a will in Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan that Clark executed in 2005.

According to the will, Clark’s estate is worth about $400 million and is made up of an art collection with works by Monet, Renoir, John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase; her real estate and financial investments; and a vast doll collection, from porcelains to Barbies.

Nurse benefits most

Clark’s nurse and close friend, Philippine-born Hadassah Peri, is the individual who will benefit most, according to the will.

Peri will get Clark’s hundreds of dolls, potentially worth millions of dollars. She will also receive 60 percent of the various assets, worth about $40 million, including investments and much of her real estate holdings, not specifically bequeathed in the will.

The 60-year-old Peri, an immigrant from the Philippines, had been randomly assigned in 1991 by an agency to take care of Clark. Since then, she saw the heiress every day for 20 years.

“I was her private duty nurse, but also her close friend,” Peri, a married mother of three, was quoted as saying through a spokesperson.

“I knew her as a kind and generous person with whom I shared many wonderful moments and whom I love very much,” Peri added. “I am profoundly sad at her passing, awed at the generosity she has shown me and my family.”

Clark had earlier given Peri, of Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, cash to buy four homes worth nearly $2 million. The properties included a $700,000 house in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and a $500,000 home on a golf course on the Jersey Shore.

Clark also reportedly gave Peri money to buy upper East Side pads for her children.

“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 added.

Foundation

According to the will, Clark’s goddaughter, Wanda Styka, will get 25 percent of her estate.

But most of Clark’s assets will go into a foundation that will be established to promote the arts. It will be directed in part by the man who drafted the will, her New York lawyer, and her accountant, both of whom Manhattan prosecutors are investigating on how they handled Clark’s money.

Perhaps the most notable provision in the will are those that will leave $500,000 each to Clark’s New York lawyer and to her accountant, who also stand to gain significant commissions because the will names them the executors of Clark’s estate and names them to the board of the new foundation.

Another notable section of the will states explicitly that no family members were beneficiaries because of her minimal contact with them.

Last link to Gilded Age

An earlier article by The New York Times said Huguette Clark “was almost certainly the last link to New York’s Gilded Age, reared in Beaux-Arts splendor in a 121-room Fifth Avenue mansion awash in Rembrandt, Donatello, Rubens and Degas.”

Huguette Marcelle Clark, the youngest of seven children, was born in Paris on June 9, 1906. Her six siblings died long before her, one in the 19th century.

Huguette (pronounced hyoo-GETT) was the daughter of a scoundrel, William Andrews Clark, who was born in 1839 to a threadbare Pennsylvania family. Footloose and ambitious, he made his way to Montana where, in the early 1870s, he struck copper, and with it his fortune.

In the late 1890s, he bought a Senate seat in Montana. By 1907, Senator Clark was one of the richest men in America. The New York Times estimated his fortune then at $150 million—roughly $3 billion today. Besides copper, his interests included railroads, real estate, lumber, banking, cattle, sugar beets and gold.

After leaving the Senate, Clark settled his family in New York, erecting a mansion at 962 Fifth Avenue that was considered improvident even in an excessive age. Its 121 rooms included 31 bathrooms, four art galleries and a theater; there was also a swimming pool and a thundering pipe organ.

It was there, interspersed with stays in California and France, that Huguette grew up. She graduated from Miss Spence’s School (now the Spence School) in Manhattan and was introduced to society in 1926. New York Times News Service