As reported in today’sWall Street Journal , the hundred million dollar estate of socialite Brooke Astor, who died in 2007, has finally been settled after what can only be seen as a "long strange trip". Ms. Astor’s case first hit national headlines when her son Anthony Marshall was accused of the most egregious acts of elder abuse after it was found that he literally kept his mother in abject squalor on her Westchester  County estate. Later events ultimately led to the conviction of both Marshall and his lawyer Frank X Morrissey on multiple felony charges for their scheme to loot her estate. Most of the estate has been left to various charities including the New York Public Library, New York University, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art among others.

A signature part of Ms. Astor’s legacy was designed by her to improve education in New York. This consists of a   thirty million dollar fund to be administered by the estate as the Brooke Astor Fund  For New York City Education. Meanwhile, her son Anthony Marshall, who is now eighty eight, will still receive approximately fourteen million dollars from his mother’s estate as part of a settlement  which cut his inheritance in half.