February 22, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A legal fight has erupted over a bequest of $264-million from a couple who kept quiet about their wealth throughout their lives.
Doris and Hector Guy Di Stefano left their money to eight charities, and said they should divide the money evenly. The Di Stefanos said the charities could use the money to do anything they wanted.
The money in the bequest is primarily in the form of stock in the UPS Company. Mrs. Di Stefano inherited the stock from her father, who was an executive of the company in its earliest days.
Mr. Di Stefano died last year at age 90; his wife died a year earlier, also at age 90.
The Salvation Army has gone to court over the Di Stefano bequest because it says that one of the charities named in the will, Greenpeace International, no longer exists. However, its successor, the Greenpeace Fund, has taken over activities of that charity, and says it is entitled to its share of the money.
The dispute is expected to be considered in a county court next month.
The other recipients, who each stand to receive more if the court sides with the Salvation Army, are the American Humane Association (Englewood, Colo.), Direct Relief International (Santa Barbara, Calif.), the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust (Cold Spring, Ky.), the Santa Barbara Hospice Foundation, the Visiting Nurse & Hospice Care of Santa Barbara (formerly Santa Barbara Visiting Nurse Association), and the World Wildlife Fund (Washington).
The Di Stefanos, who spent most of their lives living in a middle-class neighborhood in Santa Ynez, Calif., took pains not to make the bequests public until their deaths.
“Doris told me that if their neighbors ever knew how much money they had, she’d just die,” said Alan Miller, an accountant for the family.
The bequest was one of the largest gifts of 2006; as a result, the Di Stefanos are No. 6 on the The Chronicle‘s annual list of the 60 most-generous donors.
