Ruling: Heir to fortune can leave $184M to charity
Court settles dispute over funding trust to help paralyzed people
DARIEN — A state Supreme Court ruling this week could pave the way for millions of dollars in a Darien family’s vast trusts, a fortune first started in the baking soda industry, to help paralyzed people and their caregivers.
At the heart of the case were trusts set up by William Ziegler III to benefit his six children. The magnate of the Swisher International Cigar Company died in 2008, leaving behind a fortune once valued by Forbes at around $2.8 billion.
The Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that allowed one of the heirs, Peter Ziegler, to fund his charitable trust through the sale of stock in the family company after he died in 2017.
William Ziegler’s grandfather made his fortune in the baking soda industry and was a notable financier of Arctic expeditions, the New York Times reported at the time of his death in 1905.
In 2015, Peter Ziegler, one of the six heirs, suffered an accident that left him paralyzed, according to court filings. About a year after the accident, Peter Ziegler created Peter’s Yellow Submarine Trust, which would provide money for
A Connecticut Supreme Court ruling this week will allow the funding of a charitable trust established by one of the heirs to the Ziegler family fortune.
the housing and care for people who are quadriplegic while also supporting their caregivers, and contributing to research on treatment.
However, Peter Ziegler never funded the trust before he died in 2017 at the age of 60. In his will, he directed that the proceeds from the sale of his shares of stock in a Ziegler family company, Hay Island Holding Corporation, go to the trust.
The stock was sold in 2018, yielding about $184 million in cash and promissory notes, according to court documents.
The family’s descendants also put Great Island, a 63-acre ancestral estate on the market. The Darien home had been in the family for more than a century, after William Ziegler purchased the property in 1902 as a summer estate. The family initially listed the private island, complete with a deep water dock, at $175 million before dropping the price to $120 million years later.
But Peter Ziegler’s sister, Helen Benjamin, filed an appeal in state Superior Court opposing a probate court’s order to allow the stock’s money to go to the trust “because Peter’s Yellow Submarine Trust was not funded prior to his death,” court documents state.
The other siblings, their descendants and the state attorney general at the time all opposed the appeal and sought to have the charitable trust funded by the sale of Peter Ziegler’s stock fortune. The probate court’s decision was upheld in a two-day bench trial, which Benjamin then appealed.
But on Monday, the state’s Supreme Court upheld Peter Ziegler “validly and effectively” used his powers of appointment in his will to direct the money from the sale of his stock after his death to the charitable trust.