Birgit Muller: 80-year-old baroness with no insurance or relatives owes NY hospital $600k in unpaid bills
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: A Manhattan hospital is requesting the release of Birgit Thyssen-Bornemisza, also known as Birgit Muller, 80, into rehabilitation care after she was admitted six months ago. Muller, allegedly a member of one of the richest families in Europe, was discovered on April 4 inside her rent-controlled studio apartment in Central Park South after suffering an evident stroke.
Unless a nursing home or rehab facility takes Muller, who is currently kept alive by a feeding tube in a shared ward of Mount Sinai West, relocation is not an option. The hospital has racked up over $600,000 in debt since Muller has "no Social Security number, no insurance, no identifiable source of income, no immediate relatives." Her finances and inheritance, if any, are being sorted out by a court-appointed guardian in preparation for sending her to rehab, where she can hopefully be taught to swallow and walk once more.
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Judge Lisa Ann Sokoloff appointed a guardian in August for temporary control over the baroness's assets and conduct. Muller, despite her weakness, fought the guardian's attempts to get her a social security number and Medicaid in order for her to be released from the hospital. Judge Sokoloff stated, "We really are in the dark about her finances. She may have money squirreled away, she may not," as reported by the New York Times.
When Muller, a German citizen born in Hanover, was four years old, her mother Ingeborg wed Stephan Thyssen-Bornemisza. He was Heinrich Thyssen's eldest child and the descendant of a long-established family in Germany. The family, though, led a nomadic lifestyle, spending time in Monte Carlo and Havana before settling in New York City in 1961 and moving into the Plaza Hotel.
Stephan, who later distanced himself from his siblings, "settled" in 1952 for a sum of $20 million from the family, or what the NY Times determined to be almost $224 million in today's value. The family of three eventually drained most of its funds and started depending on a family foundation-funded monthly stipend of several thousand dollars.
Stephan died in 1981, without a will, obituary, or death notice. None of his three siblings showed up for the funeral. Muller's mother passed away in 2002 after suffering a stroke. She had no health insurance and had declined offers to secure coverage, and the hospitalization had exhausted any assets she had. Muller, who was then close to 60, allegedly could not afford the cremation, according to her attorney Stanley Cohen.
"They didn't want anything to do with government," Cohen told the NY Times. "They were happy being completely anonymous. They didn't trust anybody." Muller's housekeeper claimed that in September, she informed her that she had $10,000 in cash hidden in the residence and had access to a storage unit where some artwork was kept. However, these claims remain unverified.
In August, Judge Sokoloff stated that this case was "very sad," and that Muller's "lifelong obsession — and it was an obsession — for keeping her life private" made matters worse. She claimed Muller may "possibly have herself cut off from her only income" because of her concern with avoiding all kinds of scrutiny and her desire to stay away from the global banking system.