Douglas Tompkins | Multimillion Stepmother Battle

When billionaire Douglas Tompkins, the co-founder of two major brands, North Face and Espirit, died in a kayak accident in Chile in December 2015, he left everything in his estate to his second wife, Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, as well as to foundations the couple created to preserve land in Chile and Argentina. His two daughters, including Summer Tompkins Walker, and his five grandchildren who live in the Bay Area, were all disinherited. This is yet another case of the widowed stepmother getting almost everything.
As we've seen over and over, in instances of blended families, especially when wealthy individuals re-marry and the father and stepmother become estranged from children of earlier marriages, inheritance problems invariably happen.
As you might expect when millions of dollars are at stake, Douglas Tompkins' decision to leave nothing to the children of his first marriage did not sit well with his daughter, Summer. According to her, Tompkins was "completely self-absorbed" and "a narcissist," and the two did not get along. "We are all very hardworking, productive people not looking for a handout, and he clearly had no trust of us and no respect," Summer Tompkins Walker said to the San Francisco Chronicle, "so I take (his will) at face value. It's definitely an insult. But he is dead, rotting in the ground as we speak."
Image Credit: www.flickr.com/people/2858540...
Read more: www.hackardlaw.com/blog/2018/...

[@NikoBustos]

very informative. thank you.