The children and couple of Isak Andic are finalizing an agreement to end the conflict that remains open regarding the inheritance of the founder of Mango, who died on December 14, 2024 during an excursion to the mountain of Montserrat (Barcelona). The three heirs (Jonathan, Judith and Sarah) resumed negotiations with Estefanía Knuth, the woman who, for the last six years of Isak’s life, was his romantic partner. The children would be willing to increase the amount that Andic gave Estefanía in his inheritance by 22 million euros, by five million, so that the total amount will rise, if the conversations come to fruition, to around 27 million, as EL PAÍS sources familiar with the process explain.
The “principle of agreement”, according to the sources consulted, comes after almost a year of open confrontation between Estefanía and her children which left relations between the two parties very affected. The conflict dates back to the days following the death of the businessman, when it was necessary to understand his last wishes. The last will that Andic signed before a notary, dated July 2023, established an equitable distribution of the inheritance between the three children and included, in addition, a bequest, in which it was indicated that certain sums of money and certain goods were to be given to certain people.
Andic, who, at 71, was the richest man in Catalonia, with a fortune estimated at 4.5 billion euros, according to Forbes— I thought it appropriate to give five million to Estefanía. The woman considers this amount insufficient and demands a much higher figure, i.e. 70 million euros. The parties discussed for the first half of the year until, before the summer, the children arrived to offer 27 million (including five from the inheritance), which now constitutes the figure of what is being negotiated. Negotiations broke down in the fall, but resumed after Estefanía’s lawyers filed a preliminary complaint in civil courts.
The regulations require the activation of a mechanism, the MASC (acronym for Adequate Measure of Dispute Resolution) so that the parties attempt to resolve the disagreement before going to court. And this scenario is now in the parties. In the complaint, the amount requested by Estefanía is very close to that which led her to offer her children, so that everything indicates that in this process an agreement will be reached that will put an end to the dispute, indicate sources with knowledge of these managements.
The equivalent of a widow
Estefanía’s complaint is based on a Catalan inheritance tax figure called the “widowers’ quarter”, which consists of a portion of one’s inheritance sufficient (up to a quarter) to satisfy the widower’s needs or their equivalent. It would be a sort of compensatory pension. Estefanía and Isak were not married, but they were a couple, which is equivalent to a stable couple. To calculate this figure, we take into account the situation of the beneficiary (properties, average standard of living) as well as “the standard of living from which he or she enjoyed during coexistence”.
Estefanía’s previous complaint, and he thought that the figure of his departure had been flexible until much more was revealed that it was offered to him by his children, and this is what allowed him to reactivate the conversations, according to the same sources. Although it is a complex technical issue, by adding these resources the agreement will not be concluded until next year.
Estefanía Knuth is one of the people who declared themselves witnesses before the Catalan police in the investigation that a court in Martorell (Barcelona) held open to clarify the circumstances of the death of Isak Andic. The businessman died during an excursion on a Montserrat mountain trail with his wife Jonathan. Even if the initial hypothesis (the accident) persists, the Mossos consider the firstborn suspect of a crime of homicide.
Knuth’s statement was not incriminating. This couldn’t be the case because, although I was one of the first people Jonathan told about the incident, I hadn’t witnessed it. In his statement, however, he mentioned previous episodes of bad relations between the priest and his mayor wife. Among other things, he said that a decade earlier, in 2015, both had maintained an aggressive confrontation for professional reasons. Isak Andic left Mango with his wife and a group of directors a year ago. But faced with the company’s bad behavior, I had to abandon my plan to travel around the world and regain the momentum of the company to bail it out.
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