Rich Bitch, cont.
The legal battle over trust funds for pets.
Jeffrey Toobin
September 29, 2008
The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/29/080929fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=all

But how many years would Trouble likely live? To answer this question, the trustees sought an affidavit from Dr. E. F. Thomas, Jr., Trouble’s veterinarian. Trouble was nine years old in early 2008 and had, according to Thomas, “several ongoing medical problems,” including hypothyroidism and compromised kidney function. In the light of her medical issues, and the patterns of Maltese generally, Thomas estimated that Trouble was likely to live only three to five more years. In all, then, Lekic and the trustees concluded, only two million dollars of the trust’s principal would suffice to cover all of Trouble’s needs. On April 30, 2008, Judge Renee Roth, the New York surrogate who is supervising the Helmsley will, approved the reduction of ten million dollars in the trust. (If there is any leftover money in Trouble’s trust following her demise, it goes to the Helmsley charitable trust.)

The local tabloids responded to Roth’s ruling with feigned sympathy for Trouble’s loss of ten million dollars. But some in the legal world of pet trusts saw the surrogate’s decision as a substantial victory for their cause. “One of the greatest moments in my life was when the judge awarded two million in the Helmsley case,” said Rachel Hirschfeld, a New York trusts-and-estates lawyer and the operator of petriarch.com, a Web site for pet owners. “It’s not the reduction that’s important; it’s that the judge said two million was appropriate. It’s a landmark case, for a judge to be able to say that we have a case for that amount of money.”

The amount of money for Trouble, while substantial, pales compared with the sums at issue in the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. According to the estimate submitted in court by the trustees, the proceeds are between three and eight billion dollars. In the final years of her life, Leona appears to have given considerable thought to the trust, and to have reordered her priorities in a dog-focussed way.

To make her intentions clear for the trust, she signed two mission statements, which have not previously been made public. (The documents are available at newyorker.com.) On September 16, 2003, Leona signed a document that listed three goals for the planned expenditures. The money was to go first “to the provision of care for dogs.” The second was more conventional: “the provision of medical and health care services for indigent people, with emphasis on providing care to children.” A third category covered “such other charitable activities as the Trustee shall determine.” About six months later, however, Helmsley changed her mind. On March 1, 2004, she signed a new mission statement that revoked the previous one, and made one significant change. She now omitted the second purpose—medical care for the indigent, especially children—and left only the purpose of caring for dogs and the catch-all third category.

What this means for how the trust will operate is far from clear. “A mission statement is really just guidance to the trustees,” Victoria Bjorklund, of Simpson Thacher, said. “It’s not binding on them. It would only be binding if it was in the will itself.” Still, the mission statement should have an influence on how the trustees allocate the funds. “The fact that she took out the care of children means to me that she probably experienced a change in her priorities that she expressed that way,” Bjorklund went on. “And there is a general-purposes clause that says the trustees can use the funds for anything that would be charitable. So they don’t have to use the money only for the care of dogs, but she is certainly indicating that it’s a priority.” The trust is not yet operating or making grants, and people familiar with the work of the trustees say that they are still trying to figure out what to do.

The animal-rights movement in New York is, however, already gathering proposals for how to use the money. The most detailed ideas so far come from Jane Hoffman. In 2002, the former corporate lawyer founded the group now known as the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals, a not-for-profit organization that works as a public-private partnership with more than a hundred and forty animal-rescue groups and shelters around the city. “We are committed to making New York ‘no-kill,’ one community at a time,” she told me, using the movement’s term for eliminating euthanasia as a means of population control for any kind of animal.

To run the operations of the alliance, Hoffman secured a $25.4-million grant over seven years from Maddie’s Fund, the largest-endowed dog-and-cat-centered foundation in America, which was created in 1999 by the founder of PeopleSoft software, Dave Duffield, and his wife, Cheryl. The Duffields have endowed the foundation with more than three hundred million dollars and made grants of more than seventy-one million dollars. According to the fund’s Web site, “The Foundation makes good on a promise the Duffields made to their beloved Miniature Schnauzer, Maddie, to give back to her kind in dollars that which Maddie gave to them in companionship and love.”

Hoffman and other animal-rights supporters have been nursing a grudge for years against the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Duke, the tobacco heiress, died in 1993 and left much of her wealth to a foundation that now has assets of about two billion dollars. In her will, Duke spoke of her interest in the “prevention of cruelty to children or to animals” and in “promoting anti-vivisectionism.” (Duke’s pets included two camels and a leopard, as well as several dogs.) The Duke foundation has a program to combat child abuse, but it has never invested in an animal-welfare program. Claire Baralt, a communications officer for the foundation, points out that the will says that support of animal rights was optional, not mandatory. According to Hoffman, however, “Doris Duke is a good example of how a testator’s intent has been thwarted. You know that person was extremely attached to her animals, but, at the end of the day, the trustees have made sure that very little has gone from that estate to animals. If you judge animal need against human need, human need is going to win most of the time, because we are human. We want to make sure the same mistakes are not made with Helmsley.

“The thing that I’m trying to get people to realize is this is not bling for dogs,” Hoffman went on. “When you think about it, five to eight billion dollars isn’t that much. Foundations are required to give out at least five per cent of their assets every year, so we’re talking about two hundred and fifty million to four hundred million dollars.” This vast sum, which would dwarf the proceeds of Maddie’s Fund, could finance a great deal of medical research on or about dogs, but most of the ideas so far involve establishing no-kill policies for strays. Thanks in part to the efforts of the members of Hoffman’s alliance to foster adoptions and spaying and neutering, the percentage of animals killed in New York City shelters has dropped from seventy-four per cent, in 2002, to forty-three per cent, in 2007. Hoffman would like to use the Helmsley money to buy more spay-neuter vans, at two hundred thousand dollars each, and windowed vans for adoption events, at a hundred and seventy thousand dollars apiece; and to establish a “special Leona Helmsley Memorial Veterinary Hospital for needy pets,” at twenty million dollars a year, “providing medical treatment, inoculations, and training to help low-income families care for their dogs and create safer and more humane communities.” Hoffman wants to take these ideas nationwide. “A Leona Helmsley Trust dedicated to helping make the U.S. ‘no kill’ could actually achieve its goal in a remarkably short amount of time,” she said.

Hoffman’s enthusiasm obscures the fundamental moral question about how Helmsley hoped to dispose of her fortune. The way Leona altered her mission statement places the issue in especially stark terms. Version one proposed helping dogs and ailing poor children; version two—the final version—cut out the children and gave everything to the dogs. Is there any justification for such a calculation? Or does Helmsley’s change, along with the broader vogue for pet bequests, reflect a decadent moment in our history?

“In the nineteenth century, when the robber barons started modern American philanthropy, there were no tax deductions, no incentives from the government to give, just the growing idea that with wealth comes social and moral obligation,” Vartan Gregorian, the president of the Carnegie Corporation and a veteran of the New York philanthropic scene, said. “They could spend their money any way they wanted, but, once we started giving tax deductions, which amounted to a publicly approved subsidy, you had to prove that the money was going for a philanthropic purpose, but that is so broad that you can give to almost anything.

“When you see a gift like Leona’s, it’s individualism carried to iconography,” Gregorian went on. “The whole idea that individuals can do whatever they want is part of the American psyche. It’s left to individual decision-making. That you can give to this sector of society, which is animals, as opposed to the other sector, which is human beings, tells you something about her and about the times in which we live.”

The specific nature of Leona’s gift appears consistent with the pervasive misanthropy of her life and her will. This was a woman, after all, who at her trial was quoted as saying about a contractor who was owed thirteen thousand dollars for installing a custom-made barbecue pit at the Helmsley estate and wanted to be paid because he had six children, “Why doesn’t he keep his pants on? He wouldn’t have so many problems.” (In his opening statement at the trial, her defense attorney said, “I don’t believe Mrs. Helmsley is charged in the indictment with being a tough bitch.”) In the light of her vast wealth, the bequests to her relatives were grudging, small, and controlling, particularly the insistence that two of Jay Panzirer’s children visit his grave each year. As in life, Leona’s disdain for others contrasted with her nearly fetishistic obsession with her husband. (While Harry was alive, she held an annual ball to celebrate his birthday, known as the “I’m Just Wild About Harry” party.) The transfer of this kind of obsessive affection from Harry to Trouble seems apparent. The twelve-million-dollar trust for the dog is bigger than any other single bequest in the will. On the whole, the will reflects contempt for humanity as much as love of dogs.

Under the law, certainly, it was Helmsley’s right to divvy up her money any way she wanted. And she is not the first wealthy person to use a will to show a preference for dogs over humans. Rumors abound about major bequests to pets, although facts are difficult to pin down. Natalie Schafer, the actress who played Lovey, the millionaire’s wife, on “Gilligan’s Island,” is said to have left her estate for the care of her dog. (“It is still getting residuals,” Rachel Hirschfeld said.) Toby Rimes, a New York dog, is said to have inherited about eighty million dollars, and Kalu, a pet chimpanzee in Australia, may have received a bequest of a hundred and nine million dollars. (A widely reported story that a German dog named Gunther IV inherited more than a hundred million dollars appears to be a hoax.)

Is it right to give so much money to a dog—or to dogs generally? And what is the limit of such dispensations to pets? Will there come a time when dogs can sue for a new guardian—or to avoid being put to sleep? One philosopher draws a distinction between the needs of Trouble and those of dogs as a whole. Helmsley “did a disservice to the people in the dog world and to dogs generally by leaving such an enormous amount of money for her own dog,” Jeff McMahan, who teaches philosophy at Rutgers University, said. “To give even two million dollars to a single little dog is like setting the money on fire in front of a group of poor people. To bestow that amount of money is contemptuous of the poor, and that may be one reason she did it.

“But to give such a large sum of money to dogs generally is not frivolous,” McMahan went on. “I think it shows some misplaced priorities, but many bequests do. In a world where there is starvation and poverty, you can say that it’s wrong to give money to universities, or museums, or, worst of all, to divide it up for your children and heirs who are already rich. Welfare for dogs is better than more pampering of the rich. It may indicate misplaced moral priorities, but it’s not frivolous or silly. It’s disgraced by the context, but the two bequests should be separately evaluated.”

Throughout her life, Leona Helmsley demonstrated not just a lack of affection for her fellow-humans but an absence of understanding as well. The irony is that, for all that her will purports to show her love for Trouble, Leona didn’t seem to understand dogs very well, either. “What is funny about giving all this money to one dog is that it doesn’t deal with the fact that the dog is going to be sad that Leona died,” Elizabeth Harman, who teaches philosophy at Princeton, said. “What would make this dog happy is for a loving family to take it in. The dog doesn’t want the money. The money will just make everyone who deals with the dog strange.”

Leona Helmsley estate, part 1