Doris Duke
The richest girl in the world died in 1993 leaving roughly $1.2 billion, almost all of it to charity — and named as executor the butler she had hired six years earlier. Three years of Manhattan Surrogate's Court litigation followed, and it produced a rule that still governs how easily a court may fire the person a will chose.
Doris Duke inherited most of her father's tobacco and hydroelectric fortune at twelve, in 1925, and was described by the newspapers of the day as the richest girl in the world. She spent the next sixty-eight years being extremely private in a very public way: Rough Point in Newport, Shangri La in Honolulu, Duke Farms in New Jersey, and a run of houses, marriages, and philanthropies that filled the gossip columns for six decades.
She died on October 28, 1993, at Falcon Lair in Beverly Hills, aged 80. Her will left virtually the entire estate — reported at roughly $1.2 billion — to charitable foundations. That part was never seriously in dispute.
The dispute was about who would carry it out. Her will, signed in April 1993, about six months before her death, named as executor Bernard Lafferty, the Irish-born butler she had hired in 1987, alongside United States Trust Company as corporate co-executor. The will also gave Lafferty $5 million outright and $500,000 a year for life.
Two fights, running at once
The first came from Chandi Heffner, whom Duke had adopted in 1988 as an adult and later fell out with. The final will spoke about her in blunt terms and left her out. Heffner sued, both to claim as a child of the decedent and for breach of an alleged promise of lifetime support.
In December 1995, she settled for $65 million, dropping her claims to the estate and agreeing not to write or speak publicly about the relationship.
The second fight was over the executors. Dr Harry Demopoulos, named an alternate executor in an earlier will, petitioned to displace Lafferty, alleging in substance that Lafferty and his lawyers had obtained control of the estate from a gravely ill woman. Separately, a nurse alleged that Lafferty and a physician had hastened Duke's death. The Los Angeles District Attorney investigated and concluded in 1996 that there was no firm evidence of foul play. No charges were ever brought against anyone. That belongs in this account as prominently as the allegation.
The estate accounting produced its own set of complaints: that Lafferty had used estate funds for personal expenses, and that U.S. Trust had not stopped him.
Fired without a hearing, and reinstated
In May 1995, Manhattan Surrogate Eve Preminger removed both executors — Lafferty for using estate funds for his own support, U.S. Trust for failing to intervene. She did it summarily, on the papers.
The Court of Appeals reversed. Matter of Duke, 87 N.Y.2d 465 (1996), decided January 11, 1996, held that the Surrogate had abused her discretion by removing fiduciaries without an evidentiary hearing where the underlying facts were disputed. Summary removal, the Court held, requires undisputed facts or concessions; otherwise the fiduciary is entitled to an opportunity to be heard and to contest the evidence. And the standard itself is demanding: courts must exercise the power of removal sparingly, and nullify a testator's choice of executor only upon a clear showing of serious misconduct.
That is the durable contribution of this case, and it is a rule that protects testators more than fiduciaries. You are allowed to pick an unconventional executor. A court that dislikes your choice cannot simply substitute its own.
May 1996: everyone goes home
With a hearing now required, the parties settled instead. In May 1996, Surrogate Preminger approved an agreement under which Lafferty resigned as co-executor and received $4.5 million plus $500,000 a year for life — slightly less cash than the will had given him, and the same annuity.
The rest of the settlement restructured the charity. The board of what became the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation was expanded to seven trustees, and each trustee's annual fee was cut roughly in half, to about $128,000.
Bernard Lafferty died of a heart attack on November 4, 1996, aged 51, six months after the settlement.
The foundation he was fighting over has since given away well over a billion dollars, which is the outcome the will actually asked for. It simply took three years, two courts, and a Court of Appeals opinion to get there.
Timeline
- 1925Doris Duke inherits the bulk of her father's fortune at age twelve.
- 1987Bernard Lafferty is hired as her butler.
- 1988Duke adopts Chandi Heffner, then an adult, as her daughter. They later fall out.
- Apr 1993Duke signs the will that names Lafferty executor with U.S. Trust as corporate co-executor, gives him $5M and $500,000 a year for life, and leaves the estate to charity.
- Oct 28, 1993Duke dies at Falcon Lair, Beverly Hills, aged 80. A nurse later alleges her death was hastened; the Los Angeles District Attorney finds no firm evidence of foul play and no charges are brought.
- May 1995Surrogate Eve Preminger summarily removes both executors, without an evidentiary hearing.
- Dec 1995Chandi Heffner settles her claims for $65 million.
- Jan 11, 1996Matter of Duke, 87 N.Y.2d 465: the Court of Appeals reverses the removals, holding that fiduciaries may not be removed summarily where the facts are disputed, and that removal power must be used sparingly.
- May 1996Settlement approved. Lafferty resigns for $4.5M plus $500,000 a year for life; the foundation board expands to seven trustees at roughly $128,000 each.
- Nov 4, 1996Lafferty dies at 51.
What actually went wrong
- The executor was also a beneficiary of the instrument he administered. Lafferty took $5 million and a lifetime annuity under the same will that put him in charge of policing it. That is a conflict the drafter should have neutralised, not a scandal in itself — but left unmanaged it guarantees an accounting fight.
- A major fiduciary change six months before death. Timing is evidence. A new executor named in the final months, replacing the alternate named in an earlier will, is the single most common trigger for a removal petition.
- A corporate co-executor that was expected to supervise but had no separate mandate. Naming a bank alongside an individual is a good instinct. It only works if the instrument says which one has custody of the assets, who signs cheques, and what the corporate fiduciary is supposed to do when it disagrees.
- An adult adoption used as an estate-planning device, then regretted. Duke adopted Chandi Heffner as an adult in 1988 and disinherited her by 1993. The adoption could not be undone; the $65 million settlement was the price of that.
- No contemporaneous record of why the plan changed. A file note or physician's letter explaining the April 1993 decisions would have cost almost nothing and answered most of what the litigation spent three years asking.
Would it have gone that way in Florida?
Florida would reach a similar place, and by a clearer route — its removal statute lists the grounds and its fee statute prices the job, so the two things litigated hardest here are already written down.
Take the appointment first. Fla. Stat. §733.301 sets the order of preference for who serves as personal representative, and in a testate estate the very first preference is the person the will names. But Florida also has a hard eligibility rule that most states do not. §733.304 provides that a person not domiciled in Florida cannot qualify as personal representative unless they are an adopted child or adoptive parent of the decedent, related by lineal consanguinity, a spouse, sibling, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece (or someone related by lineal consanguinity to one of those), or the spouse of a person otherwise qualified. That rule would have mattered here. A butler living outside Florida and unrelated to the decedent could not have served at all — not because of any suspicion, but because Florida limits out-of-state individual personal representatives to family.
That is a genuine planning trap for people who move here. The trusted friend in Connecticut, the lawyer in New York, the child's spouse in Ohio: none of them qualify. A Florida-licensed trust company or bank does, and so does any Florida resident.
On removal, Florida does not need a common-law standard because it has a list. §733.504 sets out the causes: adjudication of incapacity, physical or mental incapacity rendering the representative incapable of discharging duties, failure to comply with a court order, failure to account, wasting or maladministration of the estate, failure to give bond or security, conviction of a felony, insolvency of a corporate representative, holding conflicting or adverse interests that will or may interfere with administration, revocation of probate of the will, and removal of domicile from Florida where domicile was required. §733.505 fixes the court's jurisdiction over removal; §733.506 governs the proceeding, including who may petition.
The New York rule from Matter of Duke — remove sparingly, only for serious misconduct, and not without a hearing where the facts are disputed — is consistent with Florida practice, where removal is a contested proceeding governed by the Probate Rules and a party is entitled to notice and to be heard. Neither state lets a court fire the testator's choice on suspicion.
On the money, Florida is unusually specific and it removes most of the argument. §733.617 sets a presumptively reasonable commission for a personal representative: 3% of the first $1 million of the estate value plus income earned, sliding down through 2.5%, 2%, and 1.5% on larger tiers, with additional compensation available for extraordinary services such as running a business, handling litigation, or selling real property. On an estate of this size a court has both a formula and a discretion. §733.106(4) then allows the court to direct which part of the estate bears the cost, including charging a specific beneficiary's share — the provision that makes a losing objector think twice.
The practical instruction: name a personal representative who is legally eligible in Florida, name at least two successors, say in the instrument how the representative is compensated, and — if your chosen fiduciary is also a beneficiary — say that too, in writing, in the document. A conflict disclosed in the will is a term. The same conflict discovered in an accounting is a lawsuit.
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Further reading
Third-party sites. Not ours, not endorsed, not kept current by us — just the places worth going next.
Sources
- Matter of Duke, 87 N.Y.2d 465 (1996) — New York Court of Appeals, Jan 11 1996
- Duke butler gains millions but loses co-executor post — Deseret News / AP, May 16 1996
- Duke's adopted daughter settles for $65 million — Deseret News / AP, Dec 30 1995
- Heiress's daughter gets $65 million — The Washington Post, Jan 1 1996
- Doris Duke Foundation — history — Doris Duke Foundation
- Fla. Stat. §733.504 — Causes of removal of personal representative — The Florida Senate
- Fla. Stat. §733.617 — Compensation of personal representative — The Florida Senate
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Nearly every case in this archive turned on something ordinary — an unwitnessed page, a stale beneficiary line, a document nobody could find. Those are cheap to fix while you're alive and expensive to fix afterward.