Huguette Clark's second will cut out her relatives and left her nurse about $30 million, and the relatives settled for $34.5 million

Huguette Clark, a painter, was the youngest daughter of William A. Clark, a Montana senator whose fortune came from copper mining. She died on 24 May 2011 at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, aged 104, leaving an estate of about $300 million. In 2005, aged 98, she had signed 2 wills 6 weeks apart. The first left $5 million to her nurse, Hadassah Peri, and the rest to the relatives who would inherit without a will. The second cut out the family. It left Peri about $30 million before taxes, $500,000 each to her lawyer, Wallace Bock, and her accountant, Irving Kamsler, $1 million to Beth Israel, a Monet "Water Lilies" painting valued at $25 million to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and her Santa Barbara estate, Bellosguardo, to a new arts foundation. Peri received $31 million in gifts from Clark during Clark's lifetime. Her 19 relatives, descendants of her father's first marriage, contested the second will in Manhattan Surrogate's Court and accused Peri, Bock and Kamsler of defrauding her. A district attorney's investigation ended with no charges. On 24 September 2013, before the trial began, Surrogate Nora S. Anderson accepted a settlement. The relatives received $34.5 million. Peri received nothing under the will and agreed to repay $5 million. Bock and Kamsler received nothing and lost their roles as executors. A new Bellosguardo Foundation, formed in New York, was to receive the house, valued at $85 million, her doll collection and $4.5 million in cash, and the Corcoran at least $10 million. Clark had died owing $82 million in gift taxes. After a settlement with the Internal Revenue Service, the deed transferring Bellosguardo to the foundation was recorded on 5 March 2018. The house has been open for public tours since December 2022, and on 11 December 2025 the Santa Barbara Planning Commission approved permits for tours and events there.