Robin Williams‘ suicide last year was tragic enough on its own and his battle with depression was heartbreaking to hear about. He left behind children who loved him and a widow who did, as well. However, things have just gotten much worse since Robin’s kids and widow seem to be at odds over his estate.
You see, Robin’s widow, Susan Schneider, was only married to the actor for three years prior to his death, but she seems to think she’s entitled to a pretty large chunk of Williams’ fortune, despite his will explicitly stating that everything he has should go to his three children.
From The New York Times:
Court documents filed in December and January outline a bitter disagreement over money and property between the widow, Susan Schneider Williams, who was Mr. Williams’s third wife, and Zak, Zelda and Cody Williams, the comedian’s children from two previous marriages that ended in divorce.
At stake is not only a portion of the wealth that Mr. Williams accumulated in a film, television and stage career of some 40 years, but also cherished belongings that include his clothing, collectibles and personal photographs.
In their court papers, both sides display keen interest in such memorabilia — everything from Mr. Williams’s bicycles to his collections of fossils and toys — as tangible, deeply personal reminders of the irrepressible, manic imagination that drove his performances as a comedian and actor.
In legal papers filed just before Christmas in San Francisco, lawyers for Mrs. Williams presented her view as to what she is entitled to from the estate. This petition complained that some property was “unilaterally removed” from their home “days after Mr. Williams’s untimely death.”
Then, when she sought legal representation, “certain home-related services were canceled,” like newspaper delivery, according to the papers filed in California Superior Court.
Allan Mayer, a spokesman for the Williams children, said Monday in an email, “Notwithstanding Ms. Schneider Williams’s insinuations, the fact is that neither the Williams children nor any representative of theirs has been in the house or had anything taken from it since Robin Williams’s tragic death.”
The papers filed by Mrs. Williams assert that, since she lost “her husband through a shocking and emotionally charged event,” she has not been “given time to grieve her loss free from the frenetic efforts to interfere with her domestic tranquillity.
This whole thing is an absolute mess. Frankly, why should his wife of 3 years be entitled to pieces of memorabilia and money he earned well before they were ever together? What kind of woman would even want to take that from her husband’s children? I get that Schneider is probably shitting herself because she was being kept by him and now has no money, so she wants some of the pie for herself. What a mess. I hope she comes to her senses and Robin’s children get what their father left to them.