RHONY’s Luann De Lesseps Faces Lawsuit After Buying Luxury Home Instead Of Setting Up Trust For Children
Real Housewives of New York star Countess Luann de Lesseps is facing serious legal trouble. The reality star is accused of violating her divorce agreement.
She Didn't Fulfill Her Obligations
De Lesseps stands accused of stealing from her own children, according to a lawsuit lodged by her ex-husband, Alexandre de Lesseps, and their two kids.
The former couple settled their divorce all the way back in 2009, following the dissolution of their 16-year marriage. Under the terms of their agreement, Luann got the family's Bridgehampton, NY mansion.
However, she was supposed to set up a trust for their two kids, Victoria and Noel, that would be funded with half the interest in the home. According to the parties lodging the complaint, that never happened.
The suit was lodged in Suffolk County Supreme Court by Alexandre, Victoria, and Noel. According to the complainants, Luann sold the family home for $8 million in 2014 and bought a $3.1 million property in Sag Harbor from the proceeds.
The RHONY star is now threatening to either sell or heavily mortgage that property so she can buy another luxury home for herself in upstate New York, according to legal documents.
Her children and ex-husband are asking a judge to block Luann from offloading or getting a loan on the property so they can get what they're entitled to.
They Just Want Their Cut
Luann's ex-husband and kids are suing her for violating the original divorce agreement and asking for an injunction on the sale of the Sag Harbor property.
According to the original agreement, the kids should have ownership rights over the marital home, meaning they should benefit from the Sag Harbor property financially in some way.
"This action arises from Defendant's ... failure to create a trust for the benefit of her children, her conversion of the trust's corpus and her present threat to abscond with money derived from the potential sale of the trust corpus and use it to purchase, for herself alone, a luxury home in upstate New York," read the court docs.
According to the settlement, if the marital home was sold, the children were entitled to the profits from same.
"The entire net proceeds of the sale may at any time prior to the termination of the Trust, be reinvested by [Luann] to purchase another residence, provided that the children shall continue to be the owners, in Trust, of an undivided one-half interest in said property," state the documents. The case is ongoing.
Luann has starred on hit Bravo reality show The Real Housewives of New York City since 2008. She and Alexandre married in 1993. Luann remarried in 2016, to Thomas D' Agostino Jr., but the two divorced last year.
