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July 16, 2007

One of the feuding sisters faces a contempt hearing

PROVIDENCE -- A Superior Court judge today scheduled a hearing for Aug. 7 to determine whether Laurette Borduas Eifrig’s Virginia daughter will be held in contempt.

The daughter, Francine Ardito, is accused of taking steps to tie up her mother’s trust funds so a court-appointed guardian can’t use the money for Eifrig’s care in Rhode Island.

But Ardito, reached by telephone at her home in Reston, said “that is not a date I can make” so she will not show up for the hearing. She said she made plans a long time ago to be on vacation the first two weeks in August and that she notified Judge Alice B. Gibney weeks ago that she would not be available to come to Rhode Island until the end of next month.

“But they just go ahead and do whatever they feel like doing,’’ Ardito complained.

Her mother’s guardian, lawyer Paula M. Cuculo, needs money from Eifrig’s trust to pay for her 90-year-old ward’s assisted-living at Capitol Ridge on Smith Street. But Ardito wants to move her mother, who suffers from blindness and dementia, back to Virginia, where she lived for 13 years until May 2006.

Last month, Ardito filed a lawsuit in Virginia to undo orders issued by Gibney -- including one that removed her as co-trustee of her mother’s trust and her power of attorney. She is asking a Virginia judge to make her sole trustee of the Eifrig trust and to block Cuculo from receiving any more disbursements.

Gibney scheduled the Aug. 7 contempt hearing at the request of Providence lawyer Richard Boren who represents Eifrig. In a previous hearing, the judge rejected Ardito’s request for a nine-week postponement.

Boren contends that Ardito’s legal maneuvering is harming her mother, a retired school teacher.

Eifrig’s July bills at Capitol Ridge remain unpaid. Smith/Barney, the brokerage that holds most of Eifrig’s $400,000 trust fund, has told Cuculo that it plans to send the rent but Ardito has instructed it not to forward any money to Cuculo and to release all of the funds to her instead.

Today, Boren received permission from Gibney to add Smith/Barney as a defendant in the case here in Rhode Island. He says he is suing the brokerage in an effort to force it to turn over all of Eifrig’s money to Cuculo -- so that neither of Eifrig’s daughters can try to assert control over the trust funds.

Gibney appointed Cuculo as Eifrig’s guardian last month after finding that neither of her grown daughters -- Ardito or Suzette Gebhard, of Warren, was fit to assume that role. For more than a year now, the sisters, who don’t speak to each other, have been engaged in a bitter tug-of-war over their mother’s residence and money.

-- Journal staff writer Tracy Breton

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 4:34 PM | Permalink

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