Trusts and Estates

Stepkids Sue Lawyer's Widow Over Alleged $1.4M Trust Investment with Bernard Madoff

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The widow of a prominent New York City lawyer has been sued by two of his children over the way she allegedly invested the $1.4 million trust fund Howard Squadron established for his family under his estate plan.

Anne Squadron put all of the money into a single account—with Bernard Madoff, the now-convicted architect of a massive Ponzi scheme, according to the lawsuit filed by Diane and Seth Squadron. Their other siblings, who include a state senator from Brooklyn, aren’t parties to the litigation, reports the New York Daily News.

As detailed in earlier ABAJournal.com posts, Madoff is now serving a 150-year federal prison term for a massive $20 billion investment swindle that reportedly left a number of his once-wealthy victims virtually penniless. The situation is still being sorted out by a bankruptcy court-appointed trustee.

Assets recovered by the trustee are expected to fall far short of reimbursing victims of the scheme, and a wide range of litigation has been targeting third parties. Among the latest filings are a claim by two investors that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was grossly negligent in its oversight role and a filing by the bankruptcy trustee seeking to recover from Madoff relatives who allegedly were negligent in the work they did for the purported investment firm they treated as a “family piggy bank.”

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