Brooke Astor's Revised Will: “There Appear to be Improprieties"

The plot thickens! From today's New York Times:

Beginning in late 2003, the last will and testament of the socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor was amended by a series of documents that redirected millions of dollars to her son, Anthony D. Marshall, and made him sole executor of her estate.

Now the propriety of those documents is being challenged by Mrs. Astor’s legal guardians. They question whether Mrs. Astor, now 104, was mentally competent to understand the changes to her will that she signed. In court papers, they also say that they intend to hire handwriting experts to determine if the signature on the documents is really Mrs. Astor’s.

The papers — and the suggestion that Mrs. Astor’s signature was either forged or procured through deception — indicate a new level of bitterness in the developing legal battle between Anthony Marshall and his son Philip, who has accused his father of neglecting Mrs. Astor’s care while enriching himself.

Mrs. Astor’s court-appointed lawyer, the Times reports, is “asking a judge to order the socialite’s last law firm to turn over the originals of her latest will, the three codicils that amended it and another document that gave Mr. Marshall, 82, the authority to handle her affairs.”