The Astor Couch — Did She or Didn’t She?

Earlier on this blog, I reported on allegations that Anthony Marshall has been mistreating his mother, Brooke Astor, and how the case settled.

Debate is now swirling around the status of her couch as detailed in Serge F. Kovaleski, Cleaned or Not? Mrs. Astor’s Sofa Isn’t Telling, NY Times, Dec. 12, 2006, from which the following excerpts are taken:

At the center of a legal dispute over Brooke Astor’s care and finances were allegations that she had been forced to sleep on a urine-soiled couch in the television room of her Park Avenue duplex during the winter because her bedroom was too cold.

But when lawyers for the parties in the case first inspected the apartment in early August, they found that the couch and just about everything else in Mrs. Astor’s home appeared to be well kept and clean. They even smelled the couch to make sure that Mrs. Astor’s two dogs, Boysie and Girlsie, had not soiled it.

Had someone scrubbed the couch, thus destroying evidence, or had it never been sodden in the first place?

As the report explains, the answer is uncertain.

Special thanks to Neil E. Hendershot of the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania law firm of Goldberg Katzman, P.C., who also authors the PA Elder, Estate & Fiduciary Law Blog, for bringing this article to my attention.