Fight Over House in Moscow

In a soap-opera like case, a long fight continues in Moscow over the Constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov’s house.

Here are just a few excerpts from Christopher Mason, In Moscow, a Battle for a Modernist Landmark, NY Times, Aug. 17, 2006:

A few hours after Viktor Melnikov died of cancer at 91 on Feb. 5, his estranged younger daughter and nephew appeared on his doorstep with a retinue of lawyers and bodyguards to try to seize control of his house in the center of this city.

“My father’s body was still warm,” Ekaterina Karinskaya, Mr. Melnikov’s elder daughter, recalled bitterly. Ms. Karinskaya, the executor of her father’s estate, refused to surrender the house, and her relatives eventually left, but a mysterious car remained outside for two days, she said. According to Ms. Karinskaya, the three men inside it photographed everyone going in and out of the house, but would not disclose who had hired them. * * *

The grim soap opera of litigation began in 1988, when Viktor Melnikov’s sister, Lyudmila, demanded that it be subdivided to allow her to move in. He refused and she initiated a lawsuit that dragged on for eight years. A Moscow court awarded her a half-ownership of the house, but not the right to inhabit it. And last year, in a lawsuit initiated by Mr. Melnikov, in a King Lear-like twist, a Moscow judge ruled that his younger daughter, Yelena Melnikova, had deceived her blind father into signing a document giving her ownership of his share of the building. She appealed and lost, but the squabbles continue. Ms. Melnikova is currently disputing the accounting methods used to calculate the compensation that she and her sister are entitled to receive from their father’s estate.

Special thanks to Prof. Alfred Brophy of the University of Alabama School of Law for bringing this article to my attention.