Word: auctioning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Despite the excitement over the auction of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' belongings [ARTS & MEDIA, May 6], I own the most valuable piece of the Kennedy legacy, and it cost me absolutely nothing. President John Kennedy offered young people compassion for others, hope for a more just world and the belief that we could make things better. I bought this dream, and even now, years later, I think it is the most precious thing a man can give any generation. NAOMI CATCHING Carp, Canada...
...that John F. Kennedy Jr. and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg will need to pinch pennies. They have seen the value of the estate they inherited two years ago jump as much as two-thirds in four days, with the auction producing something for them that their mother's will did not: millions in ready cash. Alexander Forger, a lawyer and co-executor, told the Washington Post that the value of the Jackie O. estate was $45 million to $50 million before the auction. But most of that was in trusts that must give their income to charity and the principal, eventually...
Besides stated bequests of $250,000 each, J.F.K. Jr. and Caroline got the furniture, books, paintings, jewelry and other items auctioned last week by Sotheby's. The auction catalog listed them at $3.3 million to $4.6 million, representing Sotheby's best guess at the fair market value they would command if not imbued with the magic of Camelot. But when the final gavel came down Friday, the items had brought in $34.5 million...
Enter the IRS. It presumably already has collected 55% (New York State probably took another 5%) in estate taxes on the fair market value of the auctioned items. Presuming that value was stated to be somewhere around the Sotheby's catalog figures, the tax collectors can argue that the auction results proved it to be a wild underestimate and press for 60% of a far higher figure, though perhaps not the whole $34.5 million (which in any case will be reduced some 12% by the buyers' premiums and sales commissions for Sotheby's). Alternately, the Kennedys might pay capital-gains...
Until the auction, Caroline and John may have got a bigger cash inheritance from family patriarch Joseph Kennedy than from their parents. For anyone outside the inner family circle, and possibly to some inside, Kennedy family finances can only be guesswork. This much is known: through speculation in movies, liquor importing, the stock market, oil and real estate, Joseph Kennedy had amassed an estimated $300 million by 1963. Guesses as to the total Kennedy family wealth that this fortune has blossomed into today run anywhere from $1.5 billion to $3 billion. True, it has been divided among swarms of children...