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A woman allegedly married her landlord while the older man was on his deathbed, according to a lawsuit. J.C. Rice<\/p>\nThis union was a grave mistake.<\/p>\n
A twisted Upper West Side woman allegedly secretly married her mentally ill landlord on his death bed so she could inherit his estate \u2014 and then boasted about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barbara Seidel, who rented a room at 574 West End Ave. from Albert Lerner for years, tied the knot with the \u201cincapacitated\u201d 78-year-old shortly before his Feb. 21 death, Albert\u2019s older brother Stefan said in a lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Seidel, 63, \u201cnot only bragged that she \u2018married a dead man\u2019 but also taunted [Stefan] by stating that her marriage with Albert put her \u2018ahead\u2019\u201d in the will, he claimed in the Manhattan Supreme Court filing.<\/p>\n
A woman allegedly married her landlord while the older man was on his deathbed, according to a lawsuit. J.C. Rice<\/p>\n
Albert Lerner suffered with delusions since he was a teenager, said his brother, who wants the union annulled. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe believed that there was a monitoring device constantly observing [him], which in turn was being monitored by a gang in lower Manhattan,\u201d Stefan Lerner said.<\/p>\n
The isolated Albert, who once worked as a cabbie but received an inheritance from an aunt, only had regular contact with the people who sublet rooms in his large apartment in the 12-story building, where four and five bedroom pads rent for as much as $15,000 a month.<\/p>\n
Lerner lived in a large, rent-controlled pad, \u201ca huge apartment, about four or five bedrooms,\u201d a source at the building told The Post.<\/p>\n
Seidel was the last in a long line of caregivers, and would come each morning to care for Albert \u2014 but once he died, she began living in the unit, the source noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had been living here forever,\u201d the source said. \u201cHe always lived alone. . . . He was quiet, a very nice man.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Albert was alive she came and left every day. She never stayed there. After he died she started staying there,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe married him a week before he died.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The woman allegedly bragged about marrying a \u201cdead man.\u201d chokniti \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
He received hospice care at Mount Sinai Morningside before his death there of heart failure. He suffered from \u201cintense and unquenchable itching,\u201d and struggled with a colostomy bag, his brother said in court papers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Albert and Seidel had \u201ca completely platonic and non-romantic relationship\u201d and never consummated the union, Stefan alleged. <\/p>\n
She \u201ccoerced the mentally ill and physically frail Albert to sign a marriage license only a couple of days before his death,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n
As evidence of the sham marriage, Stefan pointed to a lawyer who allegedly returned a $2,500 retainer he\u2019d collected from the pair \u201cbecause he could not go along with \u2018the marriage issue,\u2019 \u201d according to court papers. <\/p>\n
The lawyer, who was not identified, told Stefan the marriage \u201cwas clearly a \u2018set-up\u2019 to gain access to Albert\u2019s funds as his \u2018spouse,\u201d\u201d the suit claimed.<\/p>\n
Annulling the marriage would make Stefan Lerner the sole heir of his brother\u2019s estate, he said in court papers which did not specify how much was at stake.<\/p>\n
Seidel did not return messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This union was a grave mistake. A twisted Upper West Side woman allegedly secretly married her mentally ill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9974,2850,75,4327,57,9,56,63,65,64,62,58],"class_list":["post-40677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-estates","tag-lawsuits","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-supreme-court","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-upper-west-side","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}