Enjoy this article from Daily Mail:
“A Long Island mom has been accused of selling the properties bequeathed to her daughter in order to fund a lavish lifestyle, including buying expensive cars and a Hamptons mansion.
Elizabeth Marcus was left the huge portfolio by her father, real-estate investor Alan J Marcus, when he died in 1994.
But according to a case in Bronx Surrogate’s Court, mom Geraldine Lettieri has been frittering it away.
Elizabeth claims in court papers that her mom is ‘irrational, self-involved, and solely motivated by money and greed’ and only married her dad for the money.
Lettieri, formerly a Queens schoolteacher, and Alan Marcus through a singles ad in New York magazine in the summer of 1983, when he was 51 and she was 34.
She was pregnant by November, and they married the following spring.
But their relationship lasted just five years, and the couple divorced because Lettieri refused to sleep with her husband after having Elizabeth, according to documents filed by the daughter.
Alan Marcus passed away five years after that, and said in his will that he wanted his $30 million estate to be split between Elizabeth and her half-sister, Pamela.
He demanded that Lettieri get ‘no portion of my estate… either directly or indirectly.’
Elizabeth’s trusts was overseen by Citibank as she was just nine, but in 2003 – after nine years of fighting – Lettieri gained control of the holdings.
Since then, Elizabeth alleges, Lettieri has sold seven co-ops at 201 E. 15th St. in Manhattan, and an 87-unit apartment building in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn building sold for $13 million. The Manhattan co-op apartments sell for up to $1 million each.
She has spent the money on ‘several failing investment corporations,’ a BMW 325i, a Mini Cooper convertible and a $5.92 million mansion next to Gwyneth Paltrow’s pad in Amagansett in East Hampton, the suit claims.
Elizabeth alleges that Lettieri forced her to maintain a shared bank account and was ‘outraged’ when – aged 30 – the daughter decided to open her own.
She says Lettieri also opened her mail and attempted to impersonate her on more than one occasion in order to access her cash.
Lettieri used some of the money to buy Elizabeth an apartment on East 72nd Street but kept it under her own name to keep control over her daughter, leaving the girl in fear of homelessness, the suit claims.
Lettieri denies the claims, calling them ‘absurd’ and saying that many of the properties in the portfolio were ‘losers’ that had cost more than they brought in.
The Brooklyn apartment building lost a ‘huge’ amount every month, she claimed in court papers.
And the Manhattan apartments ‘ran heavy monthly deficits from the first day they went into the trust,’ because they were rent-stabilized, she claims.
‘Far from the sinister spin the petition seeks to put on events, the truth is the trustee held the trust afloat,’ she said.”
