Heiress' will to set up arts foundation

Huguette Clark, the reclusive heiress who died last month at the age of 104 in Manhattan, left an estate valued at over $400 million, with large chunks of it going to her personal nurse and toward the formation of a foundation for the arts, her attorney said Wednesday.

The 10-page will, which Clark executed in 2005 when she was 98 years old, directed that the "Bellosguardo Foundation" be created for fostering and promoting the arts. A key source of funding for the foundation is to be Clark's home in Santa Barbara, Calif., known as Bellosguardo, and all her property there, including artwork and rare books, according to the will filed in Manhattan Surrogate's Court.

Clark, whose father William A. Clark built a fortune in copper, timber and railroad investments, also left amounts ranging from $25,000 to $500,000 to personal assistants, physicians and household staff. Clark also left a gift of $1 million to Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, where she reportedly lived for the last 20 years. She left a rarely viewed Claude Monet painting entitled "Water Lillies" to The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.

"Despite her substantial wealth stemming from the same gilded age that produced the Rockefellers, Astors and Vanderbilts, Huguette Clark lived a remarkably quiet and understated life," John Dadakis, the estate attorney who filed the will, said in a prepared statement. "Her final will reflects that modesty, as well as her great generosity and empathy for those who took care of her in her later decades."

Clark directed that 60 percent of the residue of her estate be given to her "loyal nurse, friend and companion" Hadassah Peri or to Peri's children, said officials at Dadakis's law firm of Holland & Knight. Clark's goddaughter Wanda Styka is to receive 25 percent, according to the will.

Also named as beneficiary in the will for $500,000 was Clark's longtime attorney Wallace Bock, who some of Clark's distant relatives alleged in court had taken advantage of her financially. In his own court papers filed last year, Bock denied any wrongdoing. He couldn't be reached Wednesday.