COMEDIAN Joan Rivers generously spread her estimated $A180 million fortune among family, friends, staff and charities — including an organisation that supports guide dogs.
The late performer’s will was filed in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court but it is devoid of extensive details — leaving all the money to the beneficiaries through a blind trust.
Court papers say Rivers’ only child, daughter Melissa, who was named an executor of the estate, will also get all her mother’s tangible property — including a massive New York condo worth an estimated $38 million.
Other family members set to inherit unspecified amounts are Melissa’s son and Joan’s grandson, Edgar Cooper Endicott, and Rivers’ niece and nephew, Caroline Waxler and Andrew Waxler.
Rivers’ close staff, including assistants Jocelyn Pickett and Sabrina Lott Miller and publicist Scott Currie, were also left money.
In addition, Rivers showered funds on her favourites charities — Guide Dogs for the Blind in California, the Queens-based food pantry God’s Love We Deliver, where Joan was a board member, the Jewish Guild for the Blind in Manhattan, the Simon Wisenthal Center, The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, where Joan served as a spokeswoman, and the Jewish Home and Hospital Foundation, also in Manhattan.
The court papers make a brief mention of a forthcoming lawsuit for medical malpractice over Rivers’ death after a procedure on her throat.