Von Bulow Yields Rights to Wife’s Estate, Lawyer Says

Claus von Bulow said today that he has reached an out-of-court settlement with his stepchildren in the fight over his comatose wife’s $50-million estate.

But “part of the settlement is a mutually desired media peace,” he said. He said he could not comment further.

“Claus will give up his rights to his wife’s property, and they’ll divorce,” Fred Parnon, a lawyer for the stepchildren, told USA Today.

The New York Post reported today that, as part of the agreement, Von Bulow’s stepchildren will drop a civil suit that charges he tried to kill their mother.

The settlement also restores the 20-year-old daughter of Claus and Sunny von Bulow, Cosima, as a full heiress to her grandmother’s $100-million estate, according to sources quoted by the Post. She had been dropped for siding with her father.

In 1985, a Rhode Island Superior Court jury acquitted Von Bulow of charges he tried to kill his wife with insulin injections at their Newport mansion in 1979 and 1980. But Sunny von Bulow’s children by a previous marriage, Alex von Auersperg and Annie Laurie Kneissel, insisted that he was culpable and filed a $57-million suit.

The settlement was negotiated by 10 lawyers working since May and must be approved by the courts and by state Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams.

Von Bulow agreed to give up all claims to more than $25 million he would have inherited upon his wife’s death, and to a trust fund that provided him with $120,000 a year, the Post reported.

“All Claus is walking away with is what he came into the marriage with--and not a nickel more,” one observer was quoted as saying.

USA Today reported that Von Bulow has agreed not to write a book about the case.

“I’m moving to Europe, but that’s all I should say,” Von Bulow told the newspaper.

Sunny von Bulow remains unconscious at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, where she has been kept alive by intravenous feeding for almost seven years.