R142
Answers are contained in above linked NYT piece:
"The rules of the co-op dictate that an estate without an heir who is an immediate family member must sell the apartment as soon as possible. Ms. Burton asked for some time before selling, so she could unwind the estate, and Mr. Phufas was fine with that."
Furthermore:
"“Estates from notable people and with complicated trusts often take years to settle,” he said.
But patience began to dwindle a few months ago when Ms. Burton told Mr. Phufas that she wanted the trust to continue to own the apartment.
“That is a wish,” he said. “Wishes are one thing and legal obligations are another.” He later added: “We told them they have to sell it ASAP. Our common courtesy commitment has been fully fulfilled.”
Ms. Burton initially said of the board, “We are in a battle with them to let us keep it.” She later attributed the delay at least in part to renovation on the building’s facade and tower. “We couldn’t sell it because the roof was leaky,” she said.
“Ideally you want that to be done before you put it on the market,” Mr. Phufas said, “but it took less than one year. It’s been three years.”
William D. Zabel, a lawyer in New York who is uninvolved in the estate but has represented the estates of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and many others, found the situation unusual.
“This is a strange, strange story,” he said. “There is no good reason for keeping that apartment for more than six months. These things can take time when you are negotiating estate taxes but when it’s all going to charity, there are no taxes,” he said.
Moreover, a trustee should not subject an asset to possible devaluation in a fluctuating market, said William Josephson, a retired partner at the law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, who was the head of the New York’s attorney general’s Charities Bureau. “A trustee is obligated to sell an illiquid asset as soon as possible,” he said."
end quote
Trust of Mrs. Brown's estate was seeking to use that apartment as some sort of museum or for meetings and events, not as residential living. That alone would tick off many co-op boards white glove buildings or not. You move into a co-op to live; not have all sorts of people tramping in for "events".
Nearly all co-ops have rules or otherwise specify in proprietary lease outlining conditions for sale or transfer of shares to heirs, trusts, etc... In other words what is and is not allowed and rules that must be followed.
Longer a building allows things to go on unsettled with a deceased person's shares/apartment things can come back to bite them in behind legally later. More so giving the liberal left leaning of NYS court system. If trustee of HRB's estate had been allowed to carry on with their events or other uses of that apartment for two, three or more years what happens when someone else wants to do the same? If matter went to court a judge may say (and rightly so) a precedent was set and that could be that.
There is a process to transfer shares of co-op to a revocable trust, but it is complicate, costly and subject to building's rules.
