Tudor Hearing To Go Forward

August 27, 2008
Barre Times
Susan Smallheer

BRATTLEBORO - A hearing on the contested $2 million will of acclaimed illustrator Tasha Tudor will go on as planned, slated for today.

The attorney for one of Tudor's estranged sons had asked the court late last week to delay today's scheduled hearing on Tudor's contested will.

The attorney for Thomas Tudor of Fairfax Station, Va., filed a motion for a continuance in Marlboro District Probate Court, asking for a month's delay in the hearing.

But the attorney for another son, Seth Tudor of Marlboro, who is seeking to be named executor of his mother's estate, filed a counter motion Tuesday, asking that today's hearing go ahead as planned, according to a spokeswoman at the Marlboro District Probate Court.

Attorney Richard Coutant of Bellows Falls filed the motion, according to court clerk Susan Dunham.

Attorney Stephen Phillips of Brattleboro, an attorney for Thomas Tudor, said in court papers that the extra time was needed to do discovery and exchange information in the case, and to interview the attorney who wrote Tudor's 2001 will, as well as the 2002 codicil. Phillips is acting as local attorney, aiding Tudor's Pennsylvania lawyer, Mark Schwartz of Brynn Mawr, Pa.

Thomas Tudor, as well as his two sisters, Bethany Tudor of Brattleboro and Efner Tudor Holmes of Contoocook, N.H., have all filed objections in court to the appointment of their brother Seth Tudor of Marlboro to be the executor of their mother's $2 million estate, which is largely comprised of the copyrights to Tudor's books and illustrations.

Before she died in June at the age of 92 at her Marlboro home, Tudor was the author and illustrator of close to 100 books, many of them featuring life in 19th century New England.

Thomas Tudor, 62, and his brother Seth Tudor, 65, had originally been named as the primary beneficiaries of their elderly mother's will, but a 2002 codicil cut Thomas Tudor out of the will. In both the 2001 will and the codicil, each of Tudor's daughters only received $1,000 each.

Thomas Tudor, the associate general counsel for international affairs at the U.S. Air Force, has also raised issues of neglect of his mother in the final years of her life. The three siblings have also questioned whether their brother Seth exercised &quo;undue influence&quo; on their mother when she wrote and then changed her will.