Family fighting over the estate of late celebrity designer Oleg Cassini has now turned toward his $15 million Gramercy Park townhouse.
Cassini’s grandson, Alexandre Cassini Belmont, filed papers in Nassau County Court Thursday demanding that the four-story, single family home at 135 East 19th Street be sold off by the sheriff’s office and nearly $770,000 of the proceeds go to the estate of his late mother, the New York Post reported.
Cassini, who at one point had been engaged to Grace Kelly and styled Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis while she was First Lady, died from a stroke in 2006.
Belmont’s mother, Christina, was Cassini’s only living child at the time. She was entitled to half of his $55 million fortune under a divorce decree dating back to 1953, but battled over control of the estate with Cassini’s widow, Marianne Nestor Cassini.
A Nassau County judge in 2014 removed Marianne Nestor as executrix of the estate, but a year later Christina died penniless in Paris. Now her son, who is based in Spain, is getting into the battle.
The fight over Cassini’s estate has also focused on a five-story building he owned at 15 East 63rd Street, which was valued at $6 million. [NYP] — Rich Bockmann