Virginia Giuffre’s family is readying for a courtroom showdown over her multimillion-dollar estate.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s sex abuse accuser took her own life in April but died “intestate” – without a formal will.
Her closest relatives are now preparing to contest her legacy, with a case management hearing scheduled at the Supreme Court of Western Australia in Perth on Friday.
Giuffre, who was 41, amassed a fortune through victim compensation funds and civil lawsuit settlements relating to the years of abuse she suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein.
This includes the bulk of an estimated $12m (£9m) payment she received from the former Duke of York to settle the claim brought against him in 2022. Andrew has always vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Under Australian law, her husband, Robert Giuffre, who filed for divorce two months before she died, could be entitled to up to a third of her estate.
But at about the same time that he began divorce proceedings, Ms Giuffre is said to have sent an email to her lawyer stating that she did not want him to have any of her money.
Her younger brother, Sky Roberts, and her half-brother Danny Wilson, have hired a lawyer to challenge his right to the funds.
Ms Giuffre’s paternal aunt, Kimberley Roberts, told The Telegraph that the brothers were seeking a sizeable chunk of the estate.
“We don’t believe they have a right to it,” she said. “The estate should go to her children only.”
The brothers are also said to want to assume control of Ms Giuffre’s charity, Speak Out, Act, Reclaim, which she did not manage to get off the ground before she died.
Up to $3m of the settlement paid by Andrew was ring-fenced for the charity and is still being held in an escrow account managed by a third party.
But other family members are against the brothers’ involvement and would rather it was run by experts in the charity sector.
In June, it emerged that Ms Giuffre’s two elder children, Christian, 19, and Noah, 18, who live with their father, had successfully applied to the court to be appointed administrators of the estate.
The pair published a public notice in the Western Australian Government Gazette calling for creditors to apply.
The split in the family ranks stretches to disagreement about how Ms Giuffre died, with sources on both sides expressing frustration over the tearful television interviews given by various family members “seeking pity”.
‘He wants the whole family to say it’s suicide’
“I know they’re trying to get as much press as they can get,” one source said of Ms Giuffre’s brother, Sky.
“I’m not really happy about what he’s doing, and I’m not really happy about any of this stuff that’s happening.
“He wants the whole family to say it’s suicide, without question.”
As well as the settlement from Andrew, Ms Giuffre received $500,000 from Epstein in 2009, when she settled her sex-trafficking and sexual abuse claims against him.
She also received an undisclosed payment after settling a civil case settlement with Ghislaine Maxwell in 2017. Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021 and is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence.
Ms Giuffre also owned four properties including a six-bedroom seafront home in Ocean Reef, Perth, and a ranch in the nearby town of Neergabby, where she died.
She met Mr Giuffre, a martial arts instructor, in Thailand in 2002, during a trip funded by Epstein to undergo professional massage training.
The pair married just 10 days later and she told Epstein she was not coming home, instead moving to Australia to start a family.
But before she died, Ms Giuffre had become estranged from her husband of 22 years, who she alleged had become “emotionally and physically controlling”.
In January, Ms Giuffre was admitted to hospital following an alleged assault.
Her PR team said later that Mr Giuffre had “brutally assaulted” her.
But it was Mr Giuffre who was granted a restraining order and temporary custody of their two younger children, then aged 16 and 15, who Ms Giuffre was banned from seeing.
Her mental health deteriorated and she had been due to appear before a Perth magistrate for the alleged breach of the order.
In March, three weeks before she died, Ms Giuffre published a photograph of her bruised face on social media, saying that she had only days to live after her car was hit by a school bus.
The local police said they were unable to locate any records of such a crash and many interpreted the post as a desperate plea for help.
In October, Ms Giuffre’s posthumous memoir was published describing years of sexual abuse by her father, Sky Roberts, and a family friend. In a note to Ms Giuffre’s collaborator, Sky Roberts strenuously denied the claims.
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