Community Chat

[Somertime]

Her two oldest sons, Stan and Chris were the heir's to their father's estate which was plentiful at the time of Stowoksi's death.  It is because of that inheritance that Chris has been able to live his life.  Leopold Stowoski died in 1977 and I have no doubt that those boys were well taken care of by him.  Also, we do not know if trust funds were established for Stan and Chris at the time of their birth.

I have no doubt that all her sons are well taken care of.

Thank you @sidsmom for including the article that states clearly she had reconciled with her son Chris.  The media seems to continually leave this out and wishes to make it seems they were still estranged.

Anderson was the only one who lived in NY, close to her.  Stan lives in a beautiful house, south of the highway in East Hampton and has a landscape business which is very successful.  Chris lives in Vermont or did at one time.

[Lipstickdiva]

No one knows what goes on within a family and why things happen the way they do.

There are several reasons why a parent may not leave everything to their children equally and it has nothing to do with punishing a child.  

[Puppy Lips]

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@chrystaltree wrote:

Sadly, people do use their wills to punish relatives, even their children.  I can't imaging the circumstances under which I would leave one of my children out of my will, even if we were astranged and never spoke.  I can understand why a person might leave one child more than the other but in a situation where I had such great wealth, I'd leave my children equal shares.  There's always the option of a trustee if you believe a child can't responsibly handle the money.  I only know of one case in which a grandparent left a grandson out of her will.  They were far from wealth but there was a home and some money.  To their credit; the two who did inherit, shared a substantial amount with the brother because they didn't want to endanger their relationship with their brother.  

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I agree.  If you have the children inherit everything equally, there should be no guilty feelings on the part of the deceased (in this life or the next.)  However, the kids could still squabble if one feels like they deserved more for some reason.  That would be for them to work out.

[stevieb]

While it goes without saying that Vanderbilt had the 'right' to do whatever she chose with her estate and that we'll likely never know the nature of her relationships with her sons, I guess I'm of the opinion that the woman gave birth to four children. One is deceased, but the other three should have had some validity in her life. Unless the one who was completely disinherited did something truly heinous, which wouldn't appear to be the case, validating the parent-child connection, even in the absense of any real relationship, would, to me, have been appropriate. It wouldn't be necessary to remember all her sons 'equally' but remembering them all in some significant fashion would have seemed the way to go. Just as it couldn't have always been easy growing up as 'the poor little rich girl', one suspects it wasn't always easy, to say the least, growing up as one of her children either...

[sunshine45]

i wonder what type of relationship she had with her grandchildren?

i wonder if anderson is close with his nieces and nephew?

[Brisky]

Gloria did what she wanted. It's her will of course.
Anderson Cooper seems like a good person. If his brother is in need, I think he would help him out.

[NickNack]

Did Anderson grow up in the same house as his brothers?  I wasn't sure if there was a big age difference or if they lived with their father.

[SahmIam]

I have been cut out of my mothers' will; so have my children. I am her only child; they are her only grandchildren. Who will receive everything? I have no idea but it won't be us. 

I have cousins who waited till their parents died in order to get the money and property. I've told (in other posts) how a few have fought it out in court. IMHO, parents know exactly what they are doing with their wills; it's the last dagger they can insert and do so from beyond the grave. Like everything else, it's about politics, revenge, pay-back and control.

[bikerbabe]

This article is totally to what I have read earlier:

She did indeed reconcile with her son before her death.

The older step-brothers already inherited money when their father died.

[CelticCrafter]

Just because there's no trust fund doesn't mean there won't be any inheritance of any kind.