Rockefeller’s Kin Contest Mother’s Will
The two children of John D. Rockefeller’s most favored granddaughter went to court today to overturn a will in which she left millions to a husband almost half her age.
The children of Margaret de Cuevas, who died in 1985 at the age of 88 in Madrid, say she was not of sound mind when she left her fortune estimated at between $16 million and $60 million to her second husband, Raymundo de Larrain, now 52.
The children accuse De Larrain of a “massive fraud on an aging, physically ill, trusting lady.”
The couple married when De Cuevas was 80 and De Larrain 42. His wedding gift to her was a wheelchair and a new set of false teeth, according to court papers.
‘Children Neglected Her’
In an affidavit, De Larrain swears that his wife was competent, that she wanted him to have her property and that “she did this because her children neglected her. . . . “
The children, from her first marriage to the Marquis George de Cuevas, are Elizabeth, 58, of Manhattan and John, 56, who teaches at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. They maintain that the valid will is a torn-apart, but now taped-together June 11, 1968, document favoring them.
De Cuevas, cousin of former Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, had been an eccentric figure in international society. Some described her as a millionaire bag lady.
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