Deal Close in $300-Million Huguette Clark Estate Dispute

The main parties in the court fight over reclusive mining heiress Huguette Clark’s $300-million estate have tentatively agreed to a settlement that would keep a proposed California arts charity as her main beneficiary, reports NBC News.

The deal could be formalized before Tuesday’s scheduled resumption of the trial over Ms. Clark’s disputed 2005 will. It would give Bellosguardo, Ms. Clark’s $85-million summer home in Santa Barbara, Calif.; $4.5-million in cash; and her $1.7-million doll collection to the Bellosguardo Foundation, a charity Ms. Clark sought to establish with the 2005 will.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., of which Ms. Clark was a longtime benefactor, would get at least $10-million. Although the 2005 will would have left the museum a Monet painting valued at $25-million, it sided with members of Ms. Clark’s family in opposing that will, which left nothing to the relatives.

The settlement would give $34.5-million to 19 great- and great-great-grandchildren of Ms. Clark’s father, Gilded Age copper baron William Andrews Clark. Ms. Clark, who died in 2011 at the age of 104, had no children. The deal also leaves intact a $1-million bequest to New York’s Beth Israel Medical Center but gives other beneficiaries the right to try to recover some of the millions Ms. Clark gave the hospital while living there for her last 20 years.