Former Broadway Star at Center of a Bitter Family Feud

Celeste Holm, a 94 year old woman best known for her Broadway and screen acting, is at the center of bitter family feud. Holm, who has been treated for memory loss for the last nine years, met her current husband, 48 year old Frank Basile, in 1999 during a fund-raiser. The couple currently reside in Holm’s apartment, though they have resorted to borrowing money to pay for its cost.

The family legal battles began in 1999 when Holm introduced her two adult sons to Basile. Three years later, in 2002, Holm’s youngest son, Daniel Dunning, arranged for the transfer of a limited partnership holding Holm’s apartment and almost $2 million of her assets into an irrevocable trust. The trust named Dunning as trustee and his son as the successor trustee. According to the trust instrument, Holm’s would receive about $300,000 a year. Dunning, his brother, and Dunning’s children have borrowed $533,000 from the trust since its creation. Dunning claims the trust was created for tax purposes, though Basile claims the trust was created to keep him from Holm’s money.

In April of 2004, after spending years arguing with Holm’s sons over finances, the couple announced their marriage at Holm’s eighty-seventh birthday party. The couple then sued to overturn the irrevocable trust. The suit lasted for five years and cost the couple millions of dollars.

According to David Dunning, Holm’s grandson, two settlements were offered to the couple, and Basile turned down both. Basile maintains that the settlement offers were unreasonable. Eventually, both sides did settle, and Basile is now set to inherit one-third of his wife’s estate, though neither Holms nor Basile gained control of the trust.

The couple was later sued by the co-op building for $51,000 owed in overdue maintenance and legal fees. According to Basile, he raised the money to pay the fees and is currently attempting to refinance the apartment to gain access to more money.

The couple will receive $12,000 a month under Holm’s pension and Social Security. However, Holm’s trust has stopped paying for her expenses because of the enormous legal debts it incurred as a result of paying for both sides’ legal expenses during the five-year litigation. In the end, the family’s drawn out fight over the trust money ended up dwindling the trust down to a fraction of its previous worth.

See John Leland, Love and Inheritance: A Family Feud, The New York Times, Jul. 2, 2011.

Special thanks to Karen E. Boxx (Associate Professor, University of Washington School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.