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The long-running feud among heirs to Sol Goldman’s massive New York property fortune is heating up in court again – and now the accusations include talk of hiring a hit man.
In legal filings that could reshape control of a family empire spanning some of Manhattan’s most prized addresses, Amy Goldman Fowler and her nephew, Steven Gurney-Goldman, submitted explosive petitions to New York’s Surrogate’s Court last week.
The court filing alleged that Jane Goldman, the youngest of Sol and Lillian’s children and a co-executor of the family estate, once told her daughter she “wanted to kill [her nephew Steven] or else hire a contract killer.”
The court motions are seeking to remove Jane Goldman and Diane Goldman Kemper as executors of the estate of their late mother and grandmother, Lillian Goldman.
The family’s firm, Solil Management, controls more than 400 properties throughout New York City, ranging from retail and office buildings near Madison Avenue to cooperative apartments uptown.
The family’s holdings include ground leases beneath prestigious properties such as the Peninsula New York and the Mark Hotel.
In their filings, Amy and Steven, a businessman and former professional poker player who competes in Catan board game tournaments, accuse Jane of blocking the distribution of more than $100 million in cash assets and manipulating Diane — who they say is no longer mentally fit to serve.
“Sadly, Diane suffers from substantial health issues that have diminished her mental capacity to the point that she can no longer serve as co-executor of the Estate,” Steven wrote in the court filing.
He added that Diane is “currently unaware” of her role and that Jane has taken advantage of the situation “to the detriment of other beneficiaries.”
The explosive “contract killer” claim, made public in a May 28 legal filing, cites an alleged conversation in September 2023 between Amy Goldman Fowler and her niece, Solina Goldman, Jane’s daughter.
According to court papers, Solina told her aunt Amy that her mother made the violent remark amid rising tensions over control of the family’s property empire. Amy recorded the allegation in her diary, legal filings allege.
Jane has not publicly responded to the specific allegation. The Post has sought comment.
Jane’s attorney, Jason Cyrulnik, strongly denied other claims in the filings that were earlier reported on by Bloomberg News, with the lawyer framing them as a rehash of arguments that had already failed in court.
“Steven and Amy’s latest filing in Surrogate’s Court attempts to revive claims that were a part of that baseless scheme and that the New York Supreme Court dismissed last year for having been filed in the wrong forum, over Steven and Amy’s strong objection,” Cyrulnik told the outlet.
“We look forward to further exposing their leverage scheme and defeating it in due course.”
Jane, who once said that her late father was her “idol” and that her world “became gray” after he died, has pushed back strongly against other allegations against her in the case, calling them “works of fiction” and claiming that Amy and Steven are seeking to “extract disproportionate benefits for themselves.”
Jane — who once told New York magazine that she no longer loved her late mother and that she believed Lillian was “emotionally ill” — is Amy’s sister and Steven’s aunt.
This latest legal skirmish is just the newest episode in a family conflict that dates back to the early 1980s.
In 1983, Lillian Goldman left her husband, Sol Goldman — the owner of what was at the time New York City’s largest private real estate portfolio — accusing him of infidelity and physical abuse. She demanded half of his estimated $1 billion in assets.
Sol, who bought his first real estate property during the Great Depression at the age of 16, persuaded her to return by promising several million dollars up front and a third of his estate upon his death — regardless of whether they remained married, according to the New York Times.
Though Lillian initially agreed, their reconciliation quickly unraveled, leading to a contentious legal fight over the agreement’s validity. Lillian argued it had been fraudulently obtained; Sol claimed it was binding.
A judge ultimately sided with Sol in September 1987. Less than a month later, he died at the age of 70 after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer — prompting Lillian to embrace the very deal she had spent years trying to nullify.
His children then challenged her claim to the estate. They argued that Lillian’s refusal to accept an initial payment as well as her declining his offer to return to live with him meant she had forfeited her claim.
The dispute over Sol’s estate set the stage for what would become a prolonged and increasingly bitter battle among his heirs.
When Lillian passed away in 2002, her four children — Amy, Jane, Diane, and Allan — were named executors of her estate. That estate was valued at $656 million in 2022, while the marital trust is now worth more than $1 billion.
Tensions within the family escalated further after Allan’s death in 2022.
Allan, the eldest child of Sol and Lillian, died in January 2022 at age 78 from multiple organ failure in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he had been taken by his caretaker, Natalia Vostrikova.
He had battled Parkinson’s disease for years and spent the last two decades of his life working remotely for the family’s real estate business.
Though Allan had cycled in and out of the business over the years, he served as co-executor of Sol’s estate alongside his sister Jane and played a stabilizing role within the family.
He regularly consulted his sister Amy on business matters, and the two had discussed how to integrate the next generation into the company. His death left a power vacuum that helped trigger the ongoing legal war over control of the family’s multibillion-dollar empire.
After Allan’s death, Steven took over as executor of his father’s estate and aligned with Amy, a horticulturist and successful author, to challenge Jane’s leadership over the trust and its associated assets.
In court, they have accused Jane of seizing control following Allan’s passing and undervaluing the real estate portfolio.
Amy and Steven did win a recent ruling in Delaware, where a judge ordered Jane to share control of SG Windsor, a central family holding company, with other relatives. Jane is appealing that decision.
Meanwhile, litigation in New York, centered on how the estate’s assets have been valued, remains unresolved.
