'Everybody wanted a piece of Peter Ustinov'

If it were a character drama, Sir Peter Ustinov would be playing a lead role – the blustering barrister, perhaps, the aggrieved son, or the High Court judge. Maybe he would even turn detective in his classic part, as Agatha Christie’s magnificent Hercule Poirot, ready to crack this mystery involving a pencil-written will, an elderly stepmother and legions of lawyers.

As it is, the late actor is merely a bit part in the sorry saga. For he is surely turning in his grave at the news that his family may have squandered his fortune on legal squabbles over his estate.

This week, the battle over his money reached the High Court in London, having been played out in skirmishes in the Swiss courts for nearly a decade.

The double Oscar-winner, one of Britain’s most respected actors who starred in films including Spartacus, Death on the Nile and Lorenzo’s Oil, died in 2004, aged 82. It is estimated that he was then worth tens of millions of pounds. His estate includes a Renoir and a country estate in Switzerland, complete with a vineyard. Now it seems that little of his vast fortune is left.

So what has happened to Sir Peter’s legacy? Who has benefited from his wealth? And why have his family turned on each other?

The celebrated actor, director and raconteur – who was married three times and had four children – wrote his last will, in pencil, 36 years before his death.

This led judges in Switzerland, where he lived, to rule that he died intestate, with money passing to his dignified widow, Helene, who is in her mid-eighties and lives in Paris.

But Igor Cloutier von Ustinov, Sir Peter’s son by his second wife, Suzanne Cloutier, has tried to prove that trusts were set up by his father in Lichtenstein and Switzerland that would mean much of his estate should be handed to his offspring. The sculptor believes his father created a lifetime trust, into which various rights and royalties were transferred.

Intriguingly, he argues that the whereabouts of these trusts are known only by two retired Swiss lawyers whom he claims are the trustees. These men vehemently deny his claim.

His position is complicated by his separate, outlandish and unproven theory that the tax haven’s banks and institutions contrive to “screw” the families of wealthy foreigners.

He sees his personal legal battle as part of a crusade against this “Swiss trick”, saying: “I can’t accept that my father’s life efforts profit [the Swiss system]. I feel obliged to straighten this out for him.”

This week, von Ustinov brought proceedings at the High Court in London. He asserted that the trusts are governed by English law, had survived the revocation of the will, and ought to pass to him and his sisters.

Sir Peter’s other three children – his actress daughter Tamara Ustinov, by his first marriage to Isolde Denham, and daughters Andrea and Pavla Ustinov, sisters to Igor – have all been involved in the legal battle.

So far, so mysterious. In dramatic scenes in London on Friday, Mrs Justice Proudman said that Sir Peter, before his death, had set up “tax efficient structures” for his royalties.

Rejecting von Ustinov’s claim, she said: “The allegation is that a trust must have been set up, but there is no evidence of any actual trust.

“Mr von Ustinov can’t say who are its beneficiaries and what are its terms. His claim is the most fragile claim imaginable. Nor is there any evidence of any trust governed by English law.”

What also emerged, however, is just how much of the estate has been squandered on the ongoing legal battle.

Mrs Justice Proudman said she was “appalled” by the amount of money the family had spent on proceedings – which are ongoing in Switzerland.

Outside the court, Sir Peter’s son-in-law conceded that there is little left to fight for. Actor Malcolm Rennie, who is married to Tamara Ustinov, said: “Peter was a wonderful man, but being successful at such a high level as he was, everybody wanted a piece of him.

“I would be surprised if there is anything left in the estate – it has probably all gone to the lawyers.”

Indeed, speaking to The Daily Telegraph from his home in Switzerland yesterday, von Ustinov, 56, says he is close to bankruptcy.

“It’s a horrible situation,” he says. “My father gave me power of attorney on his deathbed and asked me to put things right for him. I think he knew the banks and lawyers were going to act like this. He said 'thank you’. But I didn’t know what that 'thank you’ meant. It has been very hard.

“Now I’m close to bankruptcy, and I don’t know what to do. Nine years I’ve been fighting and I haven’t inherited a penny yet. I have suffered enormously for this, and am ready to give up my inheritance. But I feel I have to make a stand against the Swiss institutions. At least we will make a point.”

He adds: “This action was not against my stepmother or my sisters, it was about the fact that my father saved up money and rights for years, and now they are not available to the family. These trusts contained the rights and royalties to everything he wrote, his film rights and everything. It’s a very sad story.”

But how has the family managed to self-destruct so dramatically? Speaking from her home in Hove, Tamara explains how the bitter legal fight came about.

“It is a big mix of personalities, as with any family, and people having different points of view,” she says.

“An old will turned up, written in pencil. It seemed to favour Igor very highly, but it was actually written when my father was in the middle of a divorce, and it was more biased in that favour than it would have been normally.”

This was Sir Peter’s divorce from Suzanne, the mother of Igor, Andrea and Pavla, in the late Sixties. Tamara says: “I think he did it… as part of a divorce settlement. Latterly he would have written a completely different one, especially as he got married again to my stepmother Helene in the early 1970s.”

Her father failed to write another will, however. “He never wanted to face up to mortality,” she says.

“I think if he’d known this would go on… and particularly for his widow, what she has had to put up with. I think it would have helped if he had gritted his teeth and done a proper will.”

The battle has “polarised” the family, she says. She is close to Helene and her half-sister, Andrea, who lives in Majorca. But she no longer has much contact with Pavla, who lives in California. She professes to remain “fond” of Igor.

Tellingly, she says: “They [Igor, Andrea and Pavla] had a difficult childhood. The divorce was very tricky, and their mother was a volatile lady, to put it politely. So they all had to put up with that.

“I think it has affected them and made them more difficult as adults.”

Tamara says she does not know the value of Sir Peter’s estate, adding: “He wasn’t terribly good with money, he lived life to the full.

“When we went out for a meal, he’d pour the money for the bill out on to the table, there’d be all these notes and currencies from places he’d been to that week. That’s how he lived.”

She speaks of her stepmother with admiration, describing her as “a very feisty lady, very smart, always beautifully turned out, she is terrific”.

She adds: “One of the reasons that I got involved was because I felt that my stepmother was being rather hard done by, and that she needed moral support. I didn’t want her to be rode roughshod over.

“She lived very well up to my father’s death, it must have been a bit of a shock to her suddenly to be thrown into this situation.”

Helene had believed her interests were safeguarded by marriage, “but Igor found some other little loophole about trusts, and he’s gone for that angle”.

Of the trusts, she says: “Igor’s always been certain about this, and the rest of us don’t know anything about it, really.

“It’s fairly nebulous stuff. What we want is the tangible things to be sold, like the house and art collection. Then we will be able to get on with our lives.

“Hopefully there will be enough for us to pay our lawyers and have something left as well. Obviously, the longer it goes on, the less there will be.”

The legal battle has been gruelling for all concerned. “We are all pretty exhausted; we are all reeling. We are so relieved by this judgment.

“Hopefully, it will be sorted out in a year or so, barring people bringing up other obstacles, which I hope won’t happen.”

Igor says of his sister: “Tamara is not very familiar with Swiss law. She was expecting to inherit what was on the list of assets. My fight is not against her, it is against the lawyers.”

Whatever the case, Sir Peter Ustinov would surely regret having left his family in such a convoluted web, one that even Poirot might struggle to untangle.

Additional reporting: Tom Rowley

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