The jilted heir of storied Lazard Freres investment banker Andre Meyer, who advised Jackie Onassis, LBJ and William Paley, is making a desperate grab for his mother’s spent estate by invoking French probate law in a Manhattan court.
Patrick Gerschel, 61, the grandson of Meyer, who helmed the famed firm for 35 years, alleges that a cabal of his socialite mother’s friends siphoned $32 million of her estate.
The Manhattan Surrogate’s Court dismissed the claims, finding that Francine Meyer was not considered a domiciliary of France.
As today’s NYLJ reports, the Appellate Division upheld the dismissal in a written decision yesterday, but noted that the case was litigated on the incorrect premise that French law applied at all. Rather, New York has a public policy of “encouraging foreign persons to place assets in New York,” a principle illustrated by earlier decisions holding that Totten Trusts and bank accounts held by foreigners as joint tenants pass according to New York law, not the law of account holder’s domicile. Likewise,
forced heirship provisions of a civil law jurisdiction like France are inapplicable to inter vivos transfers of property executed in New York, irrespective of whether the transferor’s domicile was New York or France. This is because the validity and effect of these transfers, as well as the capacity to effect them, are governed by the law of the state where the property was situated at the time of the transfer.
SE
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