Top cancer surgeon accused of duping relative with dementia into bequeathing her UES co-op
A top cancer surgeon allegedly duped her Upper East Side relative struggling with dementia into changing her will to inherit her $749,000 Carnegie Hill co-op, according to a lawsuit.
Ann Marie Egloff is trying to sell off Jo Ann Paganetti’s one bedroom pad, despite objections from Paganetti’s daughter, Georgia Lee Sarah Andrews, who sued the Boston doctor Nov. 27 in a bid to stop the sale.
Paganetti began showing signs of severe dementia in 2018, after suffering a stroke, Andrews said in her Manhattan Supreme Court filing.
Despite giving Andrews up for adoption in 1966, Paganetti had long pursued a relationship with her biological daughter, making her the beneficiary of her 1986 will, and left her the East 94th street co-op, Andrews contended in the legal papers.
Egloff 58, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, got involved in July 2023, when Paganetti, a former Fashion Institute of Technology professor, landed in the Upper East Side Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.
That month, a lawyer representing Egloff showed up and tried to get Paganetti to sign what appeared to be estate planning papers — over the objection of her doctors and while the older woman was “under the influence of psychotropic medication,” according to the lawsuit.
“Dr. Egloff throughout her involvement in the decedent’s affairs took steps to isolate the decedent from the rest of her family,” Andrews said in court papers.
A trust was established in March, and the co-op shares were transferred into it by April 18 by AKAM Living Services, a property management firm, who were also named as defendants.
DNA testing showed all three women were related, but it’s unclear how. Egloff was Paganetti’s mother’s maiden name.
Egloff, through her attorney, also challenged whether Andrews was biologically related to Paganetti soon after the woman’s death at 86 on April 30.
Andrews wants a court to stop the sale of her mom’s apartment, which was put on the market last month and in contract by Nov. 8.
Egloff, a neck and head cancer specialist who is also affiliated with Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said she was unaware of the lawsuit before declining further comment.
