Melva Bucksbaum’s Son Slams Stepfather on Facebook as Inheritance Battle Continues

Bucksbaum's son called his stepfather a cad.

Raymond Learsy and Melva Bucksbaum.
Photo: PatrickMcMullan.

In their ongoing battle over her $200 million estate, the family of art collector and patron Melva Bucksbaum has taken to Facebook, posting vitriol-filled personal attacks on the social network, reports Page Six.

Bucksbaum, a longtime board member at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, died in August at age 82. In January, it was reported that her husband, Raymond Learsy, had contested her will.

Melva Bucksbaum.<br>Photo: © 2014 Patrick McMullan Company, Inc.

Melva Bucksbaum.
Photo: © 2014 Patrick McMullan Company, Inc.

As the will is written, Learsy, who married the twice-widowed Bucksbaum in 2001, stands to inherit $10 million as well as her $30 million Connecticut estate. He maintains, however, that he, rather than her adult children Gene and Glenn Bucksbaum and Mary Bucksbaum Scanlan, should inherit half of her fortune.

After Page Six reported on the dispute, Glenn Bucksbaum shared the article on his Facebook page with some choice words for his stepfather.

“Raymond Learsy . . . This name should be known,” wrote Glenn. “Full definition of cad. 1: An omnibus conductor 2: a man who acts with deliberate disregard for another’s feelings or rights.”

The art world is no stranger to inheritance battles. Other recent examples include the family feud following the death of Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman and the lawsuit by Lucian Freud’s illegitimate children‘s over their exclusion from his will.

Glenn Bucksbaum's Facebook post about his stepfather, Raymond Learsy. Photo: via Facebook.

Glenn Bucksbaum’s Facebook post about his stepfather, Raymond Learsy.
Photo: via Facebook.

Bucksbaum’s fortune includes a blue chip art collection with works by Henri Matisse, Peter Paul Rubens, Andy Warhol, and Robert Mapplethorpe, among other artists, as well as property in Aspen, Colorado, and New York’s Tribeca neighborhood.

Bucksbaum’s children aren’t the only ones decrying Learsy’s actions. Page Six quotes an anonymous friend as criticizing his planned April 7 memorial for his late wife at the Upper East Side’s Union Club. “It’s distasteful. He’s acting like the grieving husband around New York while challenging her will in Aspen.”


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