Ric Ocasek cut estranged wife Paulina Porizkova from his will, claiming she 'abandoned' him: report
While Paulina Porizkova said she remained close to Ric Ocasek after their surprise separation — and was the one to find the Cars singer after his unexpected death — he made a point of her cutting her from his will.
Page Six obtained a copy of the legal document and reports that Ocasek, 75, said in it, “I have made no provision for my wife Paulina Porizkova (“Paulina”) as we are in the process of divorcing... Even if I should die before our divorce is final … Paulina is not entitled to any elective share … because she has abandoned me.”
The document reportedly stated that Ocasek signed it on Aug. 28 — weeks before his death.
Porizkova met Ocasek in 1984 while making the video for the Cars’s hit “Drive.” They were married in 1989 and had two sons, Jonathan and Oliver. In May 2018, Porizkova confirmed that they had separated a year earlier — despite still hitting the red carpet together, including at the 2018 Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, at which he was honored. She categorized the split as peaceful and said they were still a “happy family” but “no longer a couple.”
Despite their split, the 54-year-old supermodel has said they remained close. She shared on social media that she found her estranged husband, who had been recovering from surgery, deceased at the NYC townhouse they once shared on Sept. 15. According to the medical examiner’s office, Ocasek died naturally of heart disease with pulmonary emphysema, a type of lung disease, a contributing factor.
In an essay for Rolling Stone, Porizkova — who called Ocasek’s death “the end of my world as I knew it” — detailed the last time she saw him alive.
“I stopped and got some cookies for Ric,” Porizkova wrote. “When I got there, he was sitting in his usual chair and I said, ‘I got some gooey cookies,’ and he said, ‘OK, thanks, hon — I had some terrible cookies because I was in the mood for cookies, but I’ll have your gooey cookies tomorrow. I think I’m going to bed early since I’m feeling a little sore. And that was the last time I saw him alive.”
When she returned to his home the next morning, she made coffee and waited for him to wake up. She went to check on him and thought he was sleeping, but an hour later he was in the same position and she “knew.” She recalled how his cheek felt like cold marble. Before calling 911, because she knew he was gone, she gathered Ocasek’s sons — he had six in total — for goodbyes.
Porizkova noted that because of Ocasek’s surgery, their family of four “had two weeks together every day. In the weirdest of ways, the surgery was a blessing. We had two weeks of just the four of us watching our favorite TV shows and me cooking or ordering in and hanging out. In this cloud of awfulness, that was a silver lining.”
Page Six reports that Ocasek’s will filing listed his assets as $5 million in “copyrights,” with $100,000 in “tangible personal property” and $15,000 in cash. Four of his six sons — including the two with Porizkova — were included in the will, but two weren’t.
That isn’t necessarily a huge red flag, as celebrities tend to have private trusts — the details of which aren’t made public — so the sons may have been covered there. And Ocasek’s NYC home was on the market earlier this year for $15.25 million (he bought it for $2.5 million in 1989), so that alone would make his net worth likely much higher.
The executer of Ocasek’s will is his “friend and business manager,” Mario Testani, whom Ocasek thanked for “watching our chips,” slang for money, in his Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame speech in 2018.
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