An 80-year-old member of one of New York’s wealthiest real estate families has filed suit in New York County Supreme Court against her own brother and two daughters, accusing them of cutting off her monthly payments and trying to seize $2.5 million held in her name.
Constance Milstein, known as “Connie,” granddaughter of family patriarch Morris Milstein, alleges in court papers that her brother Philip L. Milstein and her daughters, Abigail Black Elbaum and Joanna M. Milstein, worked to strip her of control over family trusts and assets while she was serving as U.S. ambassador to Malta under the Biden administration.
According to the petition, Peter Grossman and James Sligar, co-trustees of a trust set up in the name of Vivian Milstein, the widow of Connie’s uncle Seymour, told Connie in the summer of 2025 that they had decided to stop making what had been regular monthly distributions of $125,000. Her lawyers argue the two men knew she depended on the payments to cover her expenses and used the cutoff as leverage to push her into settlement talks with Philip and her daughters.
“Given their intimate familiarity with Connie’s finances – and, in particular, her lack of liquidity – the Faithless Fiduciaries were well aware that Connie relied on those distributions to be able to pay her expenses,” Connie’s lawyers wrote.
Connie is asking the court to remove Grossman and Sligar as trustees, alleging they have aligned themselves with Philip and her daughters in broader disputes over the family’s multibillion-dollar real estate holdings. Around the same time as the payment cutoff, Philip issued a notice demanding Connie’s trust contribute $2.5 million to the family business by September 2025, which her lawyers describe as another pressure tactic.
Family members push back
A spokesperson for Philip and his family rejected the allegations. “It is regrettable that a private family matter has come to litigation,” the spokesperson told The Post. “The petition itself is full of hyperbole and innuendo but has no merit and lacks any legal or factual basis.”
Lawyers for Grossman and Sligar filed a memorandum seeking dismissal, arguing the trust was created primarily for the benefit of Connie’s two children and that Connie was only a “discretionary beneficiary,” with the power to remove and replace trustees belonging instead to Abigail and Joanna as primary beneficiaries.
The memo also disputes Connie’s claim of financial hardship, alleging she is “far from cash poor,” having spent roughly $23.5 million over the past few years, including about $7 million on a Montreal residence, more than $8 million on two New Hampshire homes, over $5 million on jewelry and other personal items, and $3 million on a private aviation contract. The filing also notes she recently auctioned jewelry for $7.5 million, suggesting she could readily liquidate assets.
“Connie’s papers paint a picture of Connie as a devoted and honorable public servant betrayed by ‘faithless’ fiduciaries bound and determined to take advantage of her for their own benefit,” lawyers for Grossman and Sligar wrote. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Attorneys for Connie called the countersuit “a pathetic attempt at distraction” and maintained that Philip and Abigail were trying to “bludgeon [Connie] in settlement negotiations.” Abigail, Joanna, Sligar and Grossman did not respond to requests for comment, and a spokesperson for Philip declined to say why the daughters sought to stop Connie’s payments.
A dynasty with a history of infighting
The Milstein family, with an estimated $3.1 billion in assets, built its fortune after Seymour and Paul Milstein took over their father’s flooring business and turned it into a real estate empire, developing neighborhoods including Times Square and East Harlem and acquiring Emigrant Bank for $90 million in the 1980s. The family has since developed 50,000 apartments, 8,000 hotel rooms and 20 million square feet of office space, according to Forbes, and owns buildings including One Lincoln Plaza and The Jefferson hotel in Washington, D.C.
A previous generational feud split Seymour and Paul’s branches of the family after a dispute over succession, settled in 2003 following Seymour’s death in 2001. Philip, Seymour’s eldest son, sued cousins Howard and Edward Milstein in 1999 over management of Douglas Elliman, while Paul and Howard sued to remove Philip as head of Emigrant Bank in 2000, alleging he had assumed “dictatorial control” of family businesses. Howard eventually kept control of Milford Management and Milstein Properties, while Philip co-founded Ogden Cap Properties with Connie and her daughter Abigail to manage their share of the holdings.
Connie once alluded to the strain of working within the family enterprise. Speaking on a panel for women in real estate, she said, “It’s difficult to work in a family business. In order to get along, you have to go along. You sometimes have to put your sensitivities behind you and smile a lot.”
It remains unclear what specifically triggered the current rift between Connie and her daughters. Abigail, a co-founder and principal at Ogden who began her career at JPMorgan, sits on Columbia University’s board of trustees. Joanna, who once worked as an art historian in Florence, has more recently published short stories and poems in digital journals.
