Steven Gurney-Goldman is trying to have his aunt Diane removed as executor of the family’s estate as the trial nears over Sol Goldman’s multibillion-dollar real estate empire.
Steven filed a petition in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court last year asking a judge to remove Diane Goldman Kemper as executor of the Estate of Lillian Goldman, Sol’s ex-wife. He argues that Diane is unwell and doesn’t understand what she’s doing.
That has allowed Jane Goldman to turn Diane into her pawn, Steven claims. Jane is the head of Solil Management, and Steven and his aunt Amy Goldman Fowler are locked in a power struggle with her over the company.
“Armed with the knowledge that Diane is not capable of making decisions regarding the Estate … Jane has turned her sister into her proxy for decisions as co-executor and co-manager,” he wrote.
The estate holds about one-third of the properties in the Goldman family real estate empire. Those properties were supposed to be distributed among Lillian’s four children (Diane, Jane, Amy and Allan, Steven’s deceased father) after she died in 2002. But Steven and Amy claim that Jane has refused to do so in order to keep control over the family fortune.
Steven and Amy also filed several other motions seeking to remove Jane, Diane and company employee Louisa Little from leadership positions at other family trusts and LLCs on grounds that they violated their fiduciary duties.
It’s part of their ongoing power struggle over Solil Management, which has included other legal actions in New York and Delaware.
Diane is the second oldest of Sol and Lillian’s four children and suffers from multiple sclerosis and a disorder called macular degeneration that affects her eyesight so much she can’t read documents. Since 2021 she’s lived with Jane in her Upper East Side mansion so she can receive 24-hour care.
Steven said in court papers that Diane is unaware that she’s co-executor of Lillian’s estate and of an entity called Lighthouse Plaza LLC that controls a portion of the Goldman family empire (23 properties) that was valued at $274 million in 2022.
Diane, he claimed, has been heavily medicated and confused during depositions, didn’t know she was executor of Lillian’s estate and lacked virtually any knowledge of the family business.
“I don’t know all the entities. There are too many,” Diane said in answer to a question during a deposition.
Steven quoted Diane’s own attorney, who in a previous instance said she shouldn’t be deposed because “she is a very sick woman … who can hardly talk or understand” and is “heavily medicated.”
Steven said she isn’t up to the job of overseeing the family’s affairs.
“As co-executor of the Estate, Diane has substantial responsibilities, obligations, and authority over assets worth more than $600 million. As a result of her condition, she is not capable of understanding such responsibilities, obligations, and authority. Nevertheless, as long as she serves as co-executor, Jane will continue to exploit Diane’s authority for Jane’s benefit,” he wrote.
Diane and Jane’s attorneys responded in court in August, saying the estate has run smoothly and that’s proof that Steven’s claims are wrong. They say he hasn’t cited any evidence that Diane has harmed the estate.
They point out that he didn’t take any issue with Diane’s fitness when she approved more than $15 million in distributions to him in the past two years.
“Notably, Steven has never questioned the propriety of those distributions. By accepting them, he implicitly conceded that Diane was fit to make those distributions,” they wrote.
Steven and Amy filed a separate lawsuit in New York against Jane and Solil in 2023 seeking to challenge an appraisal that they claimed undervalued their shares in the company. The suit also challenged Jane’s claim to be the sole manager of the Solil empire.
The judge overseeing the case ruled in October against Jane’s motion to compel summary judgment, setting the stage for the impending trial.
It’s all part of a long-running saga over the empire of Sol Goldman, who once owned a vast portfolio that included the Chrysler Building and the land under the Peninsula Hotel.
Sol and Lillian’s marriage broke down, and in 1983 she moved out of their home into the Waldorf Astoria and filed for divorce. Sol promised that if she came back he would give her a third of his fortune when he died, scribbling out an agreement on a yellow legal notepad.
But this contradicted his will, and after he died in 1987 his children contested their mother’s claim to the one-third of the portfolio; the surrogate’s court famously ruled that the agreement on the yellow pad held up.
In response to Steven’s motion, Diane and Jane’s attorneys pointed out that while Amy teamed up with Steven to petition the removal of the trustees based on fiduciary grounds, she did not participate in the one challenging Diane’s mental fitness.
“Amy did not join Steven as a petitioner; apparently even she could not tolerate the depths to which Steven has sunk in attacking his family,” they said.
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