Family fight will that leaves $50m to children of Panama
David Usborne/New York
July 11, 2008
Independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/family-fight-will-that-leaves-50m-to-children-of-panama-865073.html
It was a gift of historic kindness to the poor children of Panama left by an eccentric American millionaire not previously known for his tenderness towards the young. Nor was Wilson Lucom famous for naivety. So perhaps he should have guessed that the sequel to his death would be a probate battle for the ages.

In theory, the will and testament of Mr Lucom, a former American diplomat who became thoroughly rich through successive marriages, contained the biggest charitable donation ever seen in the country of Panama. He had directed that tens of millions of dollars be spent combating child malnutrition.

But two years after his passing at the age of 88, not a dime of the money has yet gone to the youngsters. Instead, the entire fortune has become locked in a legal tug-of-war that has reached courts in Panama as well as in the United States and the islands of St Kitts and Nevis.

Mr Lucom’s mistake may have been to have acted so out of character. Or at least that is how it seemed. While he might have been expected to have left the bulk of his money to his third wife, Hilda, and her grown-up children, he did not. With them he was entirely stingy.

It should be said that Hilda is the matriarch of a clan not short of comforts or cash. She is an Arias, a family which over time has given the country not one but two presidents and is symbolic of Panama’s white elite. These are powerful folk who do not take perceived insults lightly.

What seems incontrovertible is that in his last years of life, Mr Lucom, who had no children of his own, re-crafted his will in secret to make sure it was less the Arias family who benefited and more the youngsters of Panama. Hunger remains a serious challenge, particularly in rural areas. At stake is at least $50m (£25m) or more and the old man’s idea was for the money to go towards the purchase of seeds to grow food in the poorest regions.

He did for a while consider another option: leaving all his fortune as a bounty for the capture of Osama bin Laden. He often told friends that catching Bin Laden had always only been a question of cash.

But Hilda, who is frail at 88, her children and their lawyers did not just gape when they heard the will, they acted fast, targeting in particular a Florida-based tax lawyer, Richard Lehman, who was hired by Mr Lucom as his executor. They have argued that Mr Lehman took control of the fortune too quickly, even before Mr Lucom’s death, and that he has used his position to benefit himself.

So far, two lower courts in Panama have ruled against the Arias position. Late last year, however, the case was propelled up to the country’s Supreme Court where it may languish for months if not years. And Mr Lehman as well as the charities waiting for the Lucom funds, fear that its ruling, whenever it may come, will be tainted by political pressures.

Mr Lehman, who created a trust to hold the Lucom funds in St Kitts & Nevis, a Caribbean tax haven, is afraid even to return to Panama today for fear he may be arrested. The Arias family were even claiming that he euthanised Mr Lucom – an allegation already knocked down by the courts. But his determination to defend what he insists were the legitimate wishes of the old man seems undiminished. “I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror if I gave up this case,” he said recently.

In one legal memo, he voiced his opinion of the Arias family slightly more frankly. “Since the death of Lucom, Hilda and the Arias family have understood that I am the only obstacle to their greed.”

Not that Hilda’s lawyers have been any kinder. “In this story, the only poor child is Lehman,” one of her representatives anonymously told a Miami newspaper.

“This is the worst example of a coffin-chaser that we know of. He is a gentleman that has nearly invented a will that tries to place him as the sole heir.”

Mr Lucom once served as an assistant to the US Secretary of State in Franklin Roosevelt’s White House and was in San Francisco at the founding of the United Nations. He acquired part of his fortune through his second wife, the daughter of a car-making tycoon in Ohio.

In 1992, he famously sold his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, for $14.3m to a relative of the King of Saudi Arabia.

If in writing his will, he was demonstrating a belated conversion to philanthropic largesse, Mr Lucom may of course have been responding to another impulse: spite against his in-laws.

“One day he told me, ‘Ha ha ha, they will soon see my will’”, Mr Lehman recalled of his client.

A Curmudgeon Leaves Millions to Poor Children of Panama, and the Battles Begin
Marc Lace
June 25, 2008
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/world/americas/25panama.html?_r=1&n=Top/News/World/Countries%20and%20Territories/Panama&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
PANAMA — In life, Wilson C. Lucom was not exactly child friendly. The gruff octogenarian never had children himself and was not especially close to the offspring of his third wife, Hilda, either. When he opened his ample checkbook, friends say, it was more likely to finance a conservative political cause than to help underprivileged youths.

But Mr. Lucom, a native of rural Pennsylvania who spent much of his life in Palm Beach, Fla., surprised everyone in his will, which was revealed upon his death two years ago at the age of 88. After doling out relatively small portions of his tens of millions to survivors, he left the rest to a foundation he had dreamed up in secrecy to aid the poor children of Panama, where he spent the final years of his life.

While the precise value is not clear, it would be one of the largest, if not the largest, charitable donations in Panama’s history. But so far not a single child has had access to the money.

The will has set off a vicious legal battle that is playing out in at least four countries. Criminal charges have been filed, insults traded and threats made. The number of law firms involved exceeds 20. The case is now before Panama’s Supreme Court.

“This is all about greed,” said Héctor Ávila, an advocate for poor children in Panama who organized a demonstration of young people in May outside the court calling for Mr. Lucom’s gift to be honored. Within a week of the protest, Mr. Ávila survived a shooting. No link to the Lucom case has been established.

Mr. Lucom lived a colorful life, serving in his 20s as an aide to Edward R. Stettinius Jr., who was secretary of state under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He repeatedly told the story of how he spent time in Ethiopia during the rule of Haile Selassie and had been in San Francisco when the United Nations was born.

Mr. Lucom married well, amassing a fortune when his second wife, Virginia Willys, whose father had been an Ohio auto tycoon, died in 1981. A year later, Mr. Lucom met and wed Hilda Piza, who had been married previously to Gilberto Arias, son of Harmodio Arias and nephew of Arnulfo Arias, both former presidents of Panama.

Mr. Lucom eventually relocated with his new wife to Panama, selling his Palm Beach mansion in 1990 to a relative of the king of Saudi Arabia for $14.3 million.

Mr. Lucom used his money to bankroll anti-Communist groups, and he helped found the conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media. In his later years, he frequently wrote commentaries that showed his firm opinions, some of them decidedly unconventional, on the ways of the world. Dropping nuclear weapons, for instance, was one of his preferences for making things right in the world.

In his will, he spelled out how he thought the malnutrition facing one-fifth of Panama’s children could be combated. His plan was to buy seeds, supply them to parent volunteers who agreed to donate idle land, and then reap the harvests for hungry children.

Whether his idea had merit may never be known. Mr. Lucom’s widow, Hilda Lucom, 84, is fighting to have his will thrown out.

The controversy begins with a charitable act that may have been at least partly rooted in spite. Friends say that Mr. Lucom was not on particularly good terms with his third wife’s adult children when he died, which is hinted at in the will.

In it, he granted his wife a monthly pension of $20,000 and use of his artwork, grand piano and furniture for as long as she lives. He gave her five children, descendants of the Arias family, one-time payments of $50,000 to $200,000 each. As for the 7,000-acre oceanfront cattle ranch he had bought from the Arias family, he wanted that sold, with the assets going to the poor.

“He’d say to me, ‘Wait until they see my will!’ and then he’d start laughing,” said Richard S. Lehman, who was Mr. Lucom’s longtime attorney and is now firmly enmeshed in the battle. “I don’t know if he was moved more by the disgust of his wife’s children or his concern for poor children. It was probably a mixture of both.”

In interviews, the Arias offspring do not let on that there was any clash between them and the man they alternatively refer to as “Mr. Lucom,” “Chuck” or “Uncle Chuck.”

But Mr. Lucom’s widow is more upfront. “He was a very difficult man,” she said in an interview. “He wanted to be No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3.”

She added, in a frail voice, “He never talked to me about poor children.”

In a court deposition, Ms. Lucom went further. “He didn’t like children,” she declared.

But in the will, prepared a year before his death, Mr. Lucom appeared to leave no doubt about his intentions. Panamanian courts have backed the will so far, but critics say the courts have shown themselves susceptible to political interference in the past.

“If you ask me if I expect to win it in light of all the corruption I’ve seen, I don’t expect to win it,” said Mr. Lehman, who has been suspended by a Panamanian judge as the executor of the will pending a resolution of the legal case.

Arias family lawyers, meanwhile, contend that the will was a scheme concocted by Mr. Lehman to enrich himself.

Just days before Mr. Lucom died, on June 2, 2006, Mr. Lehman created a trust to administer the children’s charity fund. He created it in St. Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean tax haven where Mr. Lucom had gained citizenship to avoid paying American taxes.

To create the trust, Mr. Lehman and Mr. Lucom’s friend and publisher, Christopher W. Ruddy, used the power of attorney that Mr. Lucom had issued to them in case he became incapacitated. But Mr. Lucom was still coherent at the time, according to some of those who saw him in the hospital, and the two men acted before they had obtained the necessary letters from doctors saying that Mr. Lucom could not make such decisions for himself, the Arias family claimed.

Mr. Lehman disputes that Mr. Lucom was lucid in the hospital.

Once the legal battle began, Mr. Lehman removed Mr. Ruddy and Hilda Lucom as trustees, leaving only himself to decide how Mr. Lucom’s money would be spent.

Mr. Lehman said he was only acting to outflank the Ariases, who, he contends, were trying to win the fortune for themselves. Nonetheless, some of Mr. Lehman’s actions have been rebuked in the courts.

In Palm Beach, a court-appointed administrator found irregularities in Mr. Lehman’s handling of a Lucom bank account in Florida. Mr. Lehman had used $650,000, commingling some of the funds with his own office account and spending the money to hire lawyers to defend himself and the will in Panama, the administrator found. In addition, the administrator criticized Mr. Lehman for not disclosing to the court that he owed Mr. Lucom $500,000 at the time of his death.

“I’m not doing this for pleasure,” Mr. Lehman said, scoffing at the notion that he had been the one motivated by greed.

With other charges pending, Mr. Lehman now stays out of Panama for fear he might be arrested. He has countersued the Arias family, accusing them of using the family-run newspaper, El Panamá América, to libel him.

If there is a benefit to all the legal wrangling, it is that the value of Mr. Lucom’s oceanfront cattle ranch has risen significantly since he died, possibly even quadrupling to $80 million. Settlement negotiations have taken place, but have gotten nowhere.

As Mr. Lehman put it in a letter to Hilda Lucom seeking to make a deal, “I believe this is a pie that is so large that it can take into account everyone’s feeling and rights to their entitlement to benefit from Lucom’s fortune.”