How long does your right to a West Palm Beach inheritance last? Have you heard about the return of a Matisse painting and other valuables after it went missing for almost one hundred years? Your entitlements to stolen property may not extinguish as quickly as you thought.
Stolen Inheritance
- Palm Beach probate litigators know that sometimes-family heirlooms and assets can be stolen.
- Sometimes a guardian will take advantage of their trusted position to pilfer an estate.
- Other times elderly individuals may be the subject of scams.
- Check out what happened when a cache of Nazi Art was returned to its rightful owners dating back before the Nazi riots that looted it.
- Included was an original Matisse!
Two Nazi Looted Paintings Set for Return to Heirs of Original Owners
- During World War II there was an art dealer by the name o f Hildebrand Gurlitt who was tasked by Adolf Hitler with amassing a collection for a “Fuhrer Museum” in Austria – that was never built.
- How did he get all that art work in the midst of war torn Europe?
- The heirs and an estate lawyer overseeing the transfer both said yesterday that the families who claimed ownership of “Woman with a Fan,” a 1923 oil painting by Henri Matisse and “Two Riders on a Beach,” painted in 1901 by Max Liebermann, could now retrieve them.
- In early 2012, German tax investigators confiscated the paintings, which were part of a cache of 1,200 works held by Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Hildebrand. He passed away late last year with the paintings still in legal limbo.
- These paintings are the first example of returned inheritance of this cache, whereby looted art was returned to the original owners. Experts expect few to follow this route as many rightful heirs died in World War II or since then.
- Sadly most of the time these expensive pieces are sold to recover legal fees.
- The rigorous art restitution laws of Germany, which can cost millions, exasperate these fees.