RHODE ISLAND
Providence Journal
BY JOHN HILL
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
jhill@providencejournal.com
PROVIDENCE — A lawyer for the niece of a woman who left $30 million to the disgraced Legion of Christ was before the state Supreme Court Tuesday, asking the justices to find his client has a legal right to challenge her aunt’s bequest.
But lawyers for the Legion were there as well, arguing that under state law the niece doesn’t have the needed legal standing to file a lawsuit against her aunt’s will.
The fight is over the estate of Gabrielle Mee, a North Smithfield widow who died in 2008, leaving an estimated $30 million to organizations and trusts that benefit the Legion of Christ. The Legion, a religious order dedicated to training seminarians for the priesthood, was scandalized by revelations that the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, who founded the order in 1941, molested young seminarians for decades and fathered multiple children.
Bernard A. Jackvony, representing the niece, Mary Lou Dauray, said his client wants to sue the order for unduly influencing her aunt, with the hope of taking the money left the Legion and donating it to other religious charities more deserving of her aunt’s generosity. Dauray has disavowed any claim to the money for herself.
Joseph Avanzato, representing the Legion, said she can’t because, as Superior Court Associate Justice Michael Silverstein found in 2012, state law says only “interested parties” can contest wills. An interested party is someone who has a financial interest in the handling of the will.
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