![]() I am extremely troubled by the realization that Chandi Heffner may use my 1988 adoption of her to attempt to benefit financially under the terms of either of the trusts created by my father. On April 5, 1993, one week after Heffner had sued her, Duke signed her last will, cutting off her adopted daughter in brutally explicit terms: She had just been through three days of depositions in New Jersey, where her lawsuit was filed, and had two more days to go before she could fly back to Hawaii, where she lives on an isolated 300-acre horse ranch, which Duke had bought for her on the Big Island for about $1.5 million before their rupture, and where she keeps a loaded pistol beside her bed. As she spoke, she leaned forward like a child who is eager to please, but when she sat back and let her lawyers take over, her face lost its animation and she seemed older, harder, drained. She was wearing a dark-blue turtleneck, old Levi's, cotton socks, and scruffy moccasins. Thick black eyebrows set off her striking indigo-colored eyes. (After Duke's death, the trustees of her estate became defendants in this lawsuit.)Ĭhandi Heffner is a small, sturdy woman with thick black shoulder-length hair and bone-white skin. Nine months earlier, she had sued her adoptive mother for breach of contract, claiming that she had promised to maintain her in the Duke lifestyle for the rest of Heffner's life and to make her the principal heir of her estate. ![]() Heffner was sitting in the Manhattan apartment of one of her lawyers on a Saturday afternoon late last December. This whole thing is such a shock." Heffner almost broke down again. "When we were together," Heffner continued, "when things were really great, Doris was in wonderful shape. ![]() Duke died last October, leaving an estate reported to be between $750 million and $1.3 billion and lengthy obituaries which focused on her husbands and lovers, her houses in New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Hawaii, her collections of Oriental and Islamic art, her $5 million bailout of Imelda Marcos, and her perplexing relationship with Chandi Heffner. It's so hard for me still, so hard." Chandi Heffner choked back tears as she talked about Doris Duke, the worldly and restless tobacco heiress who legally adopted her in 1988, when Heffner was 35 and Duke was 75, and cast her out less than three years later. ![]()
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