(CN) - The daughter of a famous architect who was killed in March does not have to share her father's estate with a woman who claimed to be the deceased's concubine in Mexico, an appeals court ruled.
Joan Waltemath objected to the letters of administration filed by Una Katrina Abraham on behalf of the estate of the deceased, Raimund Johann Abraham.
Raimund was killed in Los Angeles at the age of 76 after crashing his car into a bus, according to his obituary. The Austrian-born architect designed the Austrian Cultural Forum building in New York, which the Los Angeles Times called one of "the most forceful pieces of architecture built in the last decade."
"Abraham, based for most of his career in New York, was well known in the profession as a theorist and, perhaps most of all, a teacher who struck his students by turns as deeply passionate, gruff and quixotic," according to the L.A. Times obituary.
The newspaper reported that Una was the architect's sole surviving relative, and that Raimund had been splitting the last years of his life among New York, Los Angeles and Mazunte, "a small beach town in the Mexican state of Oaxaca where he lived in a house he designed for himself."
The first department appellate in Manhattan rejected the so-called concubine's claim to the estate on Tuesday.
"Even if objectant could prove that she was the deceased's concubine under the law of Oaxaca, Mexico, her relationship with the deceased would not be recognized as a marriage in New York because concubinage is not considered marriage in Oaxaca," the unsigned order states.
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