The daughter of a prominent fashion editor claims a top cancer doctor and distant relative duped her into signing over her apartment while he was suffering from dementia.
Jo Ann Paganette died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City on April 30, aged 85, six years after a stroke that brought on her condition.
Her daughter Georgia Lee Sarah Andrews expected to inherit her one-bedroom apartment at 152 East 94th Street on NYC’s Upper East Side.
But she discovered Paganette had changed her will to instead give her home to Dr Ann Marie Egloff, an oncologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
The head and neck cancer specialist is distantly related to Paganette, whose mother’s maiden name is Egloff. DNA testing confirmed all three women were related.
Egloff, 58, put the apartment up for sale for $749,000 and Andrews sued her in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday, seeking to block the sale.
Dr Ann Marie Egloff, an oncologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, is accused of duping her relative into signing over her apartment while he was suffering from dementia
Jo Ann Paganette died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City on April 30, aged 85, six years after a stroke that brought on dementia
Paganette gave up her daughter for adoption as a baby in 1966, but Andrews wrote in her lawsuit that she later pursued a relationship with her.
She claimed the pair remained close and Paganette named her as the beneficiary in her will in 1986, leaving her the apartment.
Egloff only got involved last July, Andrews claimed, when was moved to the Upper East Side Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.
Andrews claimed a lawyer for Egloff showed up and tried to get the ailing woman to sign what appeared to be estate planning papers.
Doctors objected because Paganette was ‘under the influence of psychotropic medication’, the lawsuit claimed.
‘Dr Egloff throughout her involvement in the decedent’s affairs took steps to isolate the decedent from the rest of her family,’ the lawsuit claimed.
A trust was eventually set up in March this year and the co-op shares were transferred into it by April 18, less than two weeks before her death, by AKAM Living Services.
Andrews is also suing AKAM, a property management company.
Egloff tried to claim Andrews was not Paganette’s biological daughter soon after her death, according to the lawsuit, but the DNA tests proved otherwise.
The one-bedroom apartment is at 152 East 94th Street on NYC’s Upper East Side
Egloff (far right) with colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston
Paganette was a professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology and was a retail editor for several magazine in NYC, including Neiman Marcus magazine, and a founding member of the Women’s Jewelry Association.
Her obituary detailed that she was born in Detroit to and earned her BA from Marygrove College, then graduate studies at the University of Detroit and Wayne State University, majoring in journalism and English.
After winning the College Board Competition at Mademoiselle magazine, she became a fashion accessories copywriter for Hudson’s in Detroit, before moving to NYC.
‘She was an FIT professor, writer, and frequent judge of national and international advertising competitions. Her books featured the best photographers, artists and writers of the 1970s to 2000s,’ the obit detailed.
She often wrote under the name ‘Paganetti’ and is known by both name variations professionally.
Signs of Paganette’s dementia after her stroke appeared in scathing reviews from her FIT students on Rate My Professor.
Students overwhelmingly portrayed her as rude, stuck in her ways, disorganized, and generally difficult to deal with, and had problems following her lectures.
‘She talks about nonsense and barely explains the material… Her emails are unclear, shes really rude, and condescending,’ one student wrote.
Egloff, 58, put the apartment up for sale for $749,000 and Andrews sued her in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday, seeking to block the sale
Another added: ‘You could tell how unclear and messy she is just by the syllabus.’
A third wrote that Paganette was ‘doing her best’ but ‘just rambles on the entire class’.
‘She seems like she is very knowledgeable if only you could understand and hear the words that are actually coming out of her mouth,’ another added.
A particularly scathing review claimed: ‘I cannot stress this enough, do not take her class. She is very inconsistent, unorganized, condescending, and rude.
‘She is narrow-minded and will not listen to ideas that aren’t hers. The class itself is an easy-A but it is not emotionally worth it.’
Egloff’s ad for the apartment noted it was an ‘estate sale’ and described it as a ‘welcoming Art Deco co-op built in 1937’.
‘This freshly painted, north and west facing, fifth floor co-op apartment looks over the serene tree-lined street of brownstones on East 94th street,’ it read.
The ad spruiked the hardwood floors, five large closets, eight-foot beamed ceilings, a separate dining room, oversized corner windows, and a grand living area with room for dining, custom built-ins.
The was also a windowed kitchen with dishwasher, and the building had two elevators, a bike room, storage, and onsite laundry.
