Anderson Cooper to inherit less than $1.5 million from mother Gloria Vanderbilt after initial estimates of $200 million
When news broke that actress, fashion designer, and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, who died in New York on June 17, had left almost all of her estate to her youngest son Anderson Cooper, it was being speculated that he could inherit nearly $200 million from his heiress mother.
However, latest reports state that Cooper will actually receive less than $1.5 million.
Vanderbilt's will, filed last Monday in the Manhattan surrogate court, stated that the fashion icon's eldest son, Leopold 'Stan' Stokowski, is set to get her Midtown pad in a co-op at 30 Beekman Place. "All the rest" of her property is set to go to the popular CNN host Cooper. The estimation of her properties was rounded up to $200 million.
However, probate documents filed after Vanderbilt's death in June have revealed that the total value of her estate at the time of her death was less than $1.5 million.
Cooper, during a radio interview with Howard Stern in 2014, had said that he did not expect to inherit his mother's fortune. "My mom’s made clear to me that there’s no trust fund. There’s none of that,” Cooper told Stern. "I don’t believe in inheriting money… I think it’s an initiative sucker. I think it’s a curse. Who’s inherited a lot of money that has gone on to do things in their life? From the time I was growing up, if I felt like there was some pot of gold waiting for me, I don’t know if I would have been so motivated."
Vanderbilt, 95, was the great-great-great-granddaughter of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. She was born into one of the wealthiest families in the United States, with a $2.5 million trust fund, equivalent to $35 million today.
The heiress then went on to work as a model, an actress, a writer and launched a denim fashion empire in the 1970s that was reportedly worth $100 million.
Her business, however, gradually faded as she continued to spend lavishly on philanthropic and personal pursuits. Vanderbilt, in 1993, also sued her lawyer and psychiatrist for stealing millions of dollars and selling off her business interests without her permission. Reports state that she sold at least two of her homes in the 1990s to pay back taxes owed to IRS.
Herbert E. Nass, a prominent NYC lawyer, while talking to Page Six, said: "It is noteworthy that Gloria didn’t leave hardly anything to Anderson, when it was assumed he would get most of her estate. Her eldest son inherited her biggest asset, her apartment, and there does not appear to be much else left, according to the probate document."
Cooper, in a tribute to her mother, said that she "desperately craved" love and family. She married four times - Hollywood agent Pat DiCicco when she was just 17 years old; 63-year-old Leopold Stokowski when she was 21; Hollywood director Sidney Lumet; and, then, Wyatt Cooper (Cooper's father).