The caretaker for a businessman who married him in his final days forfeited her statutory share of his estate because she knowingly married him while he was mentally incapacitated, a Surrogate’s Court judge found.
The ruling was handed down just before the July Fourth holiday, following a 37-day trial in a 12-year-old court battle over the estate of Irving Berk, a successful businessman who founded the Berk Trade and Business School and who was 100 when he died in 2006, leaving behind an estate of more than $5 million.
