Phew! Veronica Hearst Saves Manalapan Mansion

Thanks to the good deeds and generosity of Billy Blabbermouth, who sent us an excellent link to a very interesting December 12, 2007 article in the Daily Business Review, Your Mama has learned that not only does it appear that the widow and heiress Veronica Hearst will be able to keep her mammoth Manalapan mansion through a complicated finance restructuring scheme that our booze soaked brain can barely comprehend, but we also learned that last year the 28,000 square foot, 52 room ocean front spread cost The Widow Hearst a bone crushing $375,000 in taxes, an additional $205,000 in insurance, and another $44,000 a year in utility expenses. And children, that does not even begin to cover the staffing costs, the vast landscaping bills, or the general maintenance and upkeep on the 3.5 acre estate. Jeezis, Mary, and Joseph, sometimes Your Mama forgets just how much money it really requires to live large in America.

Dubbed Villa Venezio, the 9 bedroom and 12 bathroom estate with detached guest house, which The Widow Hearst scooped up for $29,900,000 just a few months before her fabulously rich newspaper scion huzband Randolph Apperson Hearst met the big banker in the sky in December 2000, had been on the market earlier this year for $27,000,000, three million clams less than the purchase price. Uh oh.

Turns out the property was listed for sale as part of an agreement to keep the property from being foreclosed on. See puppies, there's no need to feel too bad because you can't spare the bucks to pay your overdue credit card bill, even super rich socialites sometimes have cash flow problems.

Anyhoo, the well born, well bred, well married and multi-lingual Miz Hearst, who is apparently a Bible scholar, inherited much of her vast wealth from her dead huzband. However, it would seem from the Daily Business News article that much of her inherited assets are tied up in trusts that do not allow her free and easy access to quite as much paper and coin as a jet setting socialite might require. So, like many asset rich and cash poor folks (i.e. Michael Jackson), Miz Hearst borrows against the assets to pay for her couture lifestyle. Well, unless you're careful, have good attorneys and bankers, and are constantly shifting assets and restructuring debt, that shit can quickly catch up with a ladee and her Louboutin kitten heel mules.

From the sound of things, the debt restructuring is not complete or a fait accompli, which means the possibility still exists that The Widow Hearst could lose Villa Venezio. However, Your Mama suspects that should her attorneys and bankers not be able to force her financial ducks into a row, the couture clad heiress will need to be dragged kicking and screaming from her beloved Palm Beach behemoth. And children, who could blame her?

Miz Hearst, mother of young and social gal about town Fabiola Beracasa and step-mother to former SLA tool Patty Hearst, lives primarily in a plush Fifth Avenue co-operative apartment in New York City. She also reportedly owns another estate in North Castle, NY, which, for those of you who like Your Mama don't know where that is, lies in ritzy Westchester County just north of New York City.