Virginia Giuffre died without a will, sparking a legal battle between her relatives.
The 41-year-old key accuser of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein ended her own life earlier this year, leaving behind four properties, plus much of the large settlements she had received, including the AUD$24 million she received from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in February 2022.
According to the Telegraph, the mother-of-three died intestate, which means she didn’t leave a formal will behind.
On Monday, the Supreme Court of Western Australia appointed lawyer Ian Torrington Blatchford as the interim administrator to oversee the estate and a case management hearing has been scheduled for Friday at the Supreme Court.
Monday’s court orders note “the administrator is appointed as the legal personal representative of the deceased in any legal proceedings or arbitration in which the deceased was a party prior to her death”.
The fact that Virginia died without a will stalled four high-profile legal proceedings she was involved in, including the defamation case brought against her in October 2021 by Rina Oh, who claims Virginia wrongly portrayed her as an accomplice to Epstein rather than another one of his victims.
And although Virginia had contacted her lawyer Karrie Louden to let her know she didn’t want her estranged husband Robert Giuffre to receive any of the estate, under Australian law he could be entitled to a third of it, as the pair were getting divorced at the time of her death.
Virginia’s brother Sky Roberts, and her half-brother, Danny Wilson, are challenging her ex-husband’s claim to the estate and they’re also fighting take control of her charity, Speak Out, Act, Reclaim.
However, some of Virginia’s other relatives believe her brothers should have no claim to her estate and that everything should go to her daughter and two sons.
“We don’t believe they have a right to it. The estate should go to her children only,” her aunt, Kimberly Roberts, told the Telegraph.
Virginia’s sons — Christian and Noah — previously made a bid to be appointed administrators of the estate, but Louden and her housekeeper, Cheryl Myers, mounted a legal challenge which prevented the sons from taking control of the estate.
Virginia ended her own life in April this year on her property outside of Perth in Western Australia.
Her memoir, Nobody’s Girl, was published posthumously and includes the claims that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor saw having sex with her when she was just 17 years old as his “birthright”.
Andrew has always vehemently denied any allegations of wrongdoing, and the settlement was paid without any admission of liability.
She first reported her allegations to London’s Metropolitan Police in early 2015 but detectives stopped looking into the allegations on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service the following year.
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