What is Jocelyn Wildenstein's net worth? 'Catwoman' claims she's broke after ex husband's family stopped $100M annual payments
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Jocelyn Wildenstein recently claimed that she is broke ahead of a forthcoming HBO documentary on her life. The Swiss-born socialite, who is widely known as ‘Catwoman’ due to her feline features, asserted that she has had zero income source for the past eight years as her late ex-husband's former family has ceased paying her the $100 million annual divorce settlement.
The reclusive socialite said she decided to make the two-part documentary and potential television show because she had run out of all her money. "I have a huge problem with my settlement. For eight years, they have completely cut me," she told The Telegraph at the luxurious Maybourne Hotel in Los Angeles. Wildenstein’s docuseries and TV show are apparently produced by the team, who created 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians'.
What is Jocelyn Wildenstein's net worth?
In the past, Wildenstein's projected net worth was $500 million, but by 2023, that figure is expected to drop to just $10 million, according to Freshers Live. The 82-year-old socialite gained notoriety in the 1990s as a result of her public divorce from her art dealer husband, Alec Wildenstein, in which she was awarded an astounding $2.5 billion as part of the settlement plus an additional $100 million per year following. However, Wildenstein claimed that the yearly payments were discontinued by the former husband's family in 2015 after his death from prostate cancer in 2008.
After her payments ceased, the socialite filed for bankruptcy in May 2018. Although Wildenstein had "$0" in her bank account at the time, she still possessed millions of dollars worth of assets, largely in the form of real estate. In her filing, she revealed that she had an outstanding $25,000 in unpaid property taxes that the city owed. Now, Wildenstein told the Telegraph that today she still has no income at all. “Zero — nothing in eight years,” she said.
Why Jocelyn Wildenstein ended her marriage with Alec?
Her longstanding partner, French-Canadian designer Lloyd Klein told the newspaper that the documentary "is her reply" to the public, who have scrutinized Wildenstein's ups and downs in life as well as her infamous plastic surgery. “Jocelyn wants to tell the story with her own voice,” he said. Klein further asserted that he has much larger media ambitions for Wildenstein. “I want to have a movie series on Jocelyn’s life, and I would like to have Jennifer Lawrence as a young Jocelyn,” he said, adding that he would pick Remi Malik to portray Alec Wildenstein.
Previously, Wildenstein opened up about her high-publicized divorce and revealed that she called for an end to her 20-year marriage with Alec when he started flaunting his extramarital affairs in public. “It was getting too obvious. It was young girls going to the same restaurants we went to. It was no discretion, nothing,” she said. Now, the socialite told the Telegraph that her former husband fabricated the rumors about her surgeries in order to "win the divorce," and even "hired a publicist and paid a plastic surgeon to certify that I completely changed my face." “He couldn’t say I betrayed him; I never betrayed him,” she continued.