Isaac Stern’s kin win probate case

A Connecticut probate judge has ordered the former executor of violinist Isaac Stern’s estate to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to Stern’s three grown children.

Stern’s children, from his second marriage, had gone to probate court asking former executor William Moorhead III for more than $2 million, claiming he improperly calculated the estate’s value and transferred assets to Stern’s third wife, Linda Reynolds Stern.

They also had claimed that when there was not enough money to pay off the musician’s debts, his personal items were auctioned, a move they say would not have been necessary had Moorhead accounted for the value of Stern’s New York apartment.

Probate Court Judge Martin Landgrebe said Wednesday that the decision to exclude the apartment from the estate was wrong and that the selling of personal items caused the Stern children to suffer “incalculable personal loss.” The judge also criticized Moorhead for paying himself $313,000.

Landgrebe ruled Moorhead must pay back the $313,000, plus $250,000 he spent on the Central Park West apartment he used as the office from which he managed the estate. Stern died in 2001 at age 81.