The court filings provide a comprehensive view of a blended family torn apart by disputes over the division of Feinstein and her late husband’s assets.
Feinstein and Blum tied the knot in 1980, during her tenure as San Francisco mayor and well before her election to the Senate in 1992. Both individuals were prominent members of the Bay Area elite with significant wealth – Feinstein hailing from an affluent family, and Blum carving out his own success as an investment broker.
Blum had three daughters – Annette, Heidi, and Eileen – from a previous marriage. Feinstein had one daughter named Katherine, also from a previous marriage.
Katherine Feinstein, a retired San Francisco Superior Court judge, has become central to the estate conflict. She claims that Blum’s trustees were wrongly appointed and are scheming to increase the inheritance of her stepsisters. In a series of lawsuits, she accuses the trustees of committing “financial elder abuse” by withholding the senator’s required annual disbursements and medical bill reimbursements.
The 66-year-old Katherine Feinstein has not responded to requests for comments. In previous interviews, she has opened up about the challenges of growing up as the daughter of an iconic politician. She stated, “As a teenager, I probably resented my mother for not being like every other mother,” during a 2014 interview with NBC Bay Area. However, she also mentioned that over time, their relationship has grown stronger.
The relationship between Katherine Feinstein and her stepsisters seems strained. The Blum sisters have remained publicly silent regarding the estate dispute, as they are set to inherit a substantial portion of their father’s wealth, including jointly owned properties, upon the senator’s passing. Financial analysts estimate that Blum’s net worth exceeded $1 billion.
Katherine Feinstein also alleges that the trustees have made inappropriate payments for gifts to Blum’s daughters and forgiven debts, while neglecting to pay the millions that Feinstein is rightfully entitled to from her husband’s estate. Blum’s trust documents reveal that he granted over $20 million in loans to his daughters during his lifetime, which were meant to be forgiven upon his death. Each of the sisters stands to inherit tens of millions of dollars or more.
The primary trustees, Michael Klein and Marc Scholvinck, had longstanding business partnerships with the senator’s late husband. Klein served Blum as his lawyer for many years, while Scholvinck worked as the CFO at Blum Capital, the private equity firm. Both Klein, Scholvinck, and Blum’s daughters declined interview requests through their attorney.
In their recent filing, the trustees state that the senator has an annual income of approximately $1 million, including quarterly payments of $125,000 from another Blum trust. They estimate her net worth to be over $50 million.
The trustees explain that Feinstein submitted a request for reimbursement of $169,055 in medical expenses in early June, along with a request for her marital trust to cover the $9,166 monthly salary of her security guard and caretaker. However, they did not make the payments due to Feinstein’s other income, which led them to believe that the payments were not necessary according to the trust’s terms, as stated in court documents.
Steven P. Braccini, an attorney representing the Blum trustees, recently issued a press statement criticizing Katherine Feinstein and highlighting that the case does not revolve around Feinstein’s everyday needs, but rather her daughter’s excessive greed. He also emphasized that the process of resolving Blum’s estate taxes is complex and has caused delays in distributing the assets.
In another statement to the media, Braccini expressed that the trustees have not seen any evidence proving that Katherine Feinstein possesses power of attorney over her mother, which he alluded to in Wednesday’s filing.
The other key figure involved in the dispute is Mariano, Katherine Feinstein’s husband and a real estate investor in the Bay Area who previously worked for Blum’s firm. The dispute over the beach house, valued at approximately $5.6 million, also focuses on Mariano. Nestled in an exclusive gated community in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, the house overlooks a tidal lagoon and is situated near the Pacific.
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