Disinherited Stepdaughter Sues for Riches

A daughter’s chilly disowning and her mother’s wealth are at the center of a bitter legal struggle now roiling Orange County’s Segerstrom family, the dynasty that built South Coast Plaza and bankrolled many of the county’s cultural centers.

In a lawsuit that has generated much chatter in such rarefied institutions as the private, wood-paneled Pacific Club and the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, the stepdaughter of Henry T. Segerstrom has accused the developer of refusing to account for and surrender valuables that belonged to his deceased wife, patron of the arts Renee Mary Segerstrom.

The dispute provides a rare public look at a feud involving one of Orange County’s most prominent families and could affect the Segerstroms’ hefty charity contributions.

Lawyers for both parties in the dispute declined to speak publicly about the case, as did family members. However, court documents in Orange County probate and superior courts reveal that the battle is one of several conflicts concerning Renee Segerstrom’s inheritance.

The suit, which was filed by her daughter, Mikette Von Issenberg, maintains that well over $2 million in cash, furniture, artwork and jewelry that should rightfully pass on to her and her brother, Michael Von Issenberg, remain in the possession of their stepfather. The exact value of all the items is unknown, the stepdaughter says.

Henry Segerstrom says in court papers that his stepchildren signed away their rights to any of their mother’s possessions more than 10 years ago; Mikette Von Issenberg says that she and her brother were tricked into signing fraudulent agreements and that the documents should be torn up.

In addition to exposing tensions within the family, the trust dispute has the potential to affect a $40-million gift that Henry Segerstrom made to the Orange County Performing Arts Center two months after his wife’s death in June 2000.

The gift was intended to spur the center’s ambitious expansion plan, and it is unclear whether a portion of that gift came from Renee Segerstrom’s estate. The developer’s lawyer insists that that is not the case, and that the two matters are separate. Court documents, however, list the Arts Center and the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art as beneficiaries of the Renee Segerstrom Trust.

Officials at both institutions say they are unconcerned.

“The center considers this matter to be a personal, family issue and . . . it would be inappropriate for us to comment on it,” said Performing Arts Center spokesman Tim Dunn in a prepared statement. “We have received no indication that there should be concern for recent gifts made to the center in the name of the Segerstrom family or any of its members.”

The Segerstrom family is perhaps best known for building South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. The swanky mega-mall stands on what used to be the family’s lima bean field.

The wealth of Henry Segerstrom, 77, is believed to amount to several hundred million dollars.

He married Renee Segerstrom, his second wife, almost 20 years ago. She was considered one of Orange County’s most successful art fund-raisers, compared in some quarters to arts patron Dorothy Buffum Chandler of Los Angeles. She was also an accomplished oil painter and had a formidable collection of modern art. She died last year at 72.

In making out her will in 1989, Renee Segerstrom bequeathed to her daughter $2.5 million and an assortment of rare furniture and artwork, including a Chinese opium bed, a Ming vase, a Louis Philippe marquetry table, a Hans Hoffman painting, a Ferdinand Leger tapestry, and a collection of crystal.

The will, however, underwent nine revisions, and in 1998, Renee Segerstrom decided to withhold those gifts entirely and said essentially that she considered her now 53-year-old daughter to be dead. “For purposes of said instrument,” Renee Segerstrom said in her revised will, “my daughter Mikette Von Issenberg shall be treated as having predeceased me. I deliberately omit to provide in this instrument for Mikette Von Issenberg.”

But it is another agreement that Renee Segerstrom made more than 20 years ago with her former and now deceased husband, Albert Von Issenberg, that is the main issue in the current dispute.

In that 1979 agreement, Renee Segerstrom and her husband agreed that upon both their deaths, all of their community property would be divided equally between their two children, “share and share alike.”

That pact has now been called into question, though, because of agreements that both children signed in 1989. In those agreements, which they now say they were tricked in to signing, the children were each paid $25,000 for the rights to what the documents describe as “property notes.”

In a follow-up letter to the agreement, Renee Segerstrom wrote her son a curt, businesslike note.

“By cashing this check, you will confirm our agreement . . . that you have sold to me all your right, title and interest in the notes,” she wrote. “I am glad we have been able to conclude this matter. Love, Mother.”