For Woman Behind Throne, a Share of an Empire
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For Lillian Goldman, her fight for a share of her late husband’s enormous real-estate fortune was never just about money. It was also about controlling her own life. To Mrs. Goldman, the late Sol Goldman’s holdings represent more than the hundreds of millions of dollars they are valued at. They are also the fruit of a wife’s business contribution, she says; of her eye for value, and of her determination to keep the empire together when her husband, disheartened by losses, was ready to quit. On Friday, a judge in Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan upheld her claim to one-third of the estate, once valued at $1 billion — a claim based on a 1984 handwritten agreement with her husband to avoid a divorce. The ruling was a defeat for Mrs. Goldman’s four children. They have questioned her sanity, denied that she contributed to the creation of the fortune and at one time maintained thatshe was not really their father’s widow because she was living apart from him when he died at the age of 70 in 1987. ‘Fighting for What I Earned’ “It was a power struggle,” Mrs. Goldman said yesterday in a telephone interview from her estate in Mill Neck, L.I. “They were fighting to follow their father, to be in control of everything. I was fighting for what I earned.” The Goldman children have repeatedly refused to comment on the case. Their lawyer, Thomas McGrath, could not be reached yesterday. Mrs. Goldman, who is 69 years old, said she would now devote herself to her charities and perhaps resume traveling to Europe with some of her five grandchildren, an activity she had always enjoyed. But even if her four children — Amy, Jane, Diane and Allan, all in their 30’s — forgo the appeal that is open to them, Mrs. Goldman still faces new fights over how to carve a third of the value out of an estate that includes 270 Manhattan properties. They vary widely in value, from the Hyde Park and Stanhope hotels to dozens of small properties worth little in themselves but potentially very valuable as future development sites. Hoping for Reconciliation “Realistically, I would say that I am going to face another fight,” said Mrs. Goldman. “But hope springs eternal in the human breast, and I am hoping that this creates a reconciliation. My children have always known that I would welcome them back to my bosom.” Although the value of the estate has often been put at $1 billion, in today’s depressed real-estate market it is probably closer to $800 million. But even that figure is uncertain. It could dwindle if a settlement means breaking up valuable clusters of properties or dumping large holdings on the already depressed market. Neither Mrs. Goldman nor her lawyer, Richard Emery, would guess at how the property would be divided. Mr. Emery said no decision had been made yet on whether Mrs. Goldman’s one-third should be calculated to reflect property values at the time of her husband’s death, when the market was high, or today, when it is believed to have lost about 20 percent of its peak value. The long Goldman estate fight is as complicated as the New York City real-estate laws that Mr. Goldman so often ran afoul of on his way to becoming — with his wife, she will remind anyone listening — one of the wealthiest men in the country. Besides the properties, he left about 250 unsettled lawsuits that will also affect the value of the estate. The feud centers on a reconciliation agreement that Mr. Goldman sought in 1984 to avoid a divorce that could have cost him half of his holdings. In it, Mrs. Goldman agreed to drop divorce proceedings she had already begun. In return, she was promised one-third of the estate “outright” on Mr. Goldman’s death, whether they were married at the time or not. She was also to receive $6 million in cash and an expensive apartment, expensively furnished. But Mrs. Goldman later found a letter from the late Roy Cohn, one of the couple’s lawyers, that made her believe that she had been tricked out of seeking the far more lucrative divorce settlement. She went to court to have the reconciliation agreement nullified; Mr. Goldman argued for enforcing it. More : query.nytimes.com |