Reading some of the documents, basically when Daddy Eichenwald died he left a trust (actually, it's three, but the nitty-gritty isn't particularly relevant to anybody but tax attorneys). I haven't found an exact dollar figure in there, but it's millions.
Stepmom Eichenwald, along with another party, were the trustees of the trust. Stepmom Eichenwald and the other trustee decided to allocate some of the Trust towards demolishing and rebuilding her house, and used upwards of a million dollars in doing so. The new house was apparently fairly tricked out. As the original petition puts it:
Amenities include a hidden office located in an interior wall, a panic room, an elevator, an art studio, an outdoor fireplace on a chiseled stone patio from which multiple fountains can be observed, an overhead deck, a gourmet kitchen with marble counters and all top-of-the-line built-in appliances, a butler's pantry, a built-in sound system, six bedrooms for one individual, and a bedroom fireplace. Such a home is a significant outlier from the current makeup of the neighborhood. As such, the house would have been an inappropriate investment for the Trust on its own, even without the improper distribution.
The non-trustee beneficiaries were rather upset at this expenditure and wanted the money back in the trusts and for the co-trustee (a company called TIAA) to resign, and of course "alternatively" for the dissolution of the trust and disbursement of the funds (i.e. "give us the money now already, you old hag").
It went to the usual mandatory mediation and they came out of it with a settlement. The trusts got dissolved and people got theirs, and Stepmom had to pay the attorney's fees and for some other things related to the disbursement of funds. Fair enough, it's an expense of the estate after all.
