By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Heinz Schwarz was still a teenager when he and his parents arrived in Seattle from Shanghai, China in 1949 with literally nothing. By the time he died in 2005, he had amassed a nest egg of close to $2 million. With no known relatives and no will, however, his entire estate could have gone to the State of Washington. Instead, it is being split evenly by eight organizations and three individuals, according to Schwarz’s wishes.
“If somebody dies without a will and without any relatives at law, the estate will escheat to the State of Washington. It’s like what happens to the unclaimed property — like when you leave your $5 in a passbook savings account and forget about it for 20 years,” explained Gail Mautner, an attorney and shareholder in the Seattle law firm of Lane Powell and the board secretary of Jewish Family Service. Mautner was one of the lawyers that represented the organizations Schwarz had indicated he wanted to leave his money to.
“Heinz emphatically stated that he did not want such a result,” his estate planning attorney, Elizabeth M. Asher, said in a document filed with the Probate Court. “The German government had confiscated everything his family owned before they fled to Shanghai. Heinz was a very, very smart man, and realizing the black irony of such a result, he was immediately determined not to allow this to happen.”
Asher told JTNews that Schwarz had faxed a list of beneficiaries to her and she had drafted his Last Will and Testament. But the day before he was to come in and sign his will, Schwarz suffered a massive cardiovascular event — most likely a heart attack — and never regained consciousness.
“What Elizabeth did was she worked with one of the professional guardians to have a guardian appointed to carry out his wishes,” Mautner said.
Mautner cited a Washington State statute that allows a guardian to make court-approved gifts on behalf of a person who becomes incapacitated.
“With the evidence and information that Elizabeth was able to provide, the guardian was able to get a trust approved and the assets that Mr. Schwarz owned before he passed away,” Mautner said.
“Sometimes, when people describe it in short form, it sounds like, ‘Well, he didn’t sign a will, but the people convinced the court of what he wanted to do so the court did it.’ That’s not exactly [true]. You have to have the transfers made before he died and the dispute was whether or not those transfers had been made, and the court ruled that they had been,” she said. “Our position was that the assets had been moved out of his estate, into a trust whose beneficiaries were individuals identified in his will, and that that had been accomplished before he died. “
The groups Schwarz wanted to have receive his gifts were the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which was instrumental in helping the Schwarz family immigrate to Seattle from Shanghai; Jewish Family Service, which helped the family when it arrived here, penniless; the Kline Galland Home, where Heinz Schwarz’s father was cared for before his death in the early 1950s; Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation, where Schwarz and his mother worshipped; the Jewish Club of Washington, where he met his longtime friend and fellow survivor Klaus Stern, among others; Temple Beth Am, which hosts the Seattle Seniors Group, whose members includes a number of elderly survivors; the University of Washington and City of Hope. He also left shares of his estate to three individuals who had cared for him and for his late mother: Chris McNight, Mary Song and Tram Nguyen.
A lifelong bachelor, Schwarz lived with his mother in Seattle’s Denny Regrade neighborhood. Schwarz was very dedicated to his mother, and after she died he continued to live in the family home until his own death. He had a career as a certified public accountant and opened the Heinz Schwarz Accounting Firm.
“He was very independent,” said Klaus Stern, a friend who remembered Schwarz as someone who cared very much for the other immigrants who had fled Nazi Europe or came here after World War II. “The last few years we lost some members and whenever there was a funeral, Heinz Schwarz closed his office and went to the funeral, no matter whether he’d known the people or not, he always attended anybody’s funeral from the club and I admired him for that.”
Ulla Rychter, another friend, recalled sitting behind the Schwarzes at the old Herzl temple in Seattle and commented on how attentive Heinz was toward his mother. Rychter said they got to know one another then and later became close friends as part of the informal group of survivors who meet at Temple Beth Am. Rychter says she and Heinz would fax each other jokes and puns in German several times a week.
“I was truly fond of this very gentle man,” said Asher, Schwarz’s attorney, whose mother-in-law is also a member of the Seniors Group. “He was a very bright man, very verbal, loved to play Scrabble, loved to pun — and English was not his first language. He was very much alone. He was an only child, as were both his parents and any extended family — there was no contact after the war.”
Asher said that conducting an exhaustive search for relatives in Europe and Israel was one reason it took almost two years for the case to be concluded. None were ever found.
Asher said she was called to the hospital when Schwarz collapsed because he had her business card with him and he had no relatives to be called. She said she acted quickly to have a guardian appointed when she realized how critical his condition was.
“I immediately moved to have the guardianship set up, which took us three days to do because the courts were so supportive — they could see what was happening here. It normally takes three months to do this,” she said. “It was very clear what his intent was, then the issue became legally how we affectuate his intent.
“Getting some of these orders in place, the court was aware of the urgency of this and extended itself to make the court available to us. I think it was clear in everyone’s mind, the unbelievable tragedy of his estate escheating back to the state, because that’s what happened in Germany. I mean, he came here with nothing.”
Asher said she believes it was Mautner’s brief that ultimately carried the day.
“When the court ruled that his estate should be distributed according to his wishes, it was truly a moment of justice and everybody in the court felt that justice was done,” Asher said. “It was an affirmation that this court here could look at justice and ensure that justice was done.”