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Monday, February 01, 2010
Courts - "Wealthy Kentucky businessman's heirs fight wife over will"
This long story today in the Louisville Courier Journal, reported by Andrew Wolfson, is but another instance of the children of a wealthy individual vs. the current wife. It begins:
Super salesman Mason C. Rudd made millions of dollars from the heavy-equipment company that bore his name and gave millions away as an equally committed philanthropist.When he died last July at age 90, after a battle with diabetes, Rudd still had a small fortune in stocks, bonds, cash and real estate, including condominiums in Louisville and Florida and a horse farm off Wolf Pen Branch Road.
But now his daughter and four grandchildren say in court documents that after Rudd was “incapacitated” and on the “verge of death,” his “younger second wife” transferred millions of dollars to herself from his accounts and had him recraft his will to her benefit.
As a result, Rudd's “natural offspring” will get little more than mementos and furniture, according to the will contest they filed Jan. 21 in Jefferson Circuit Court.
According to their lawsuit, Peggy Mudd Rudd, who married Mason Rudd in 1999, when she was 59 and he was 81, stands to collect $3million in “liquid assets” plus $2 million that she took before Rudd's death.
“This lawsuit is not about money or condos or farms,” Rudd's grandson, Mason Miller, a Lexington attorney, said in an interview. “It is about doing what is right, because that is what our grandfather always did with his money. He would expect nothing less of us.”
But Peggy Rudd's lawyer said the family's “vitriolic” complaint will fail, because Rudd was competent when he signed his last will on April 16 and friends will vouch that he was lucid in the months before.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 1, 2010 09:16 AM
Posted to Courts in general