IN RE: Marc SALZ (2018)

Order, Surrogate's Court, New York County (Rita Mella, S.), entered on or about July 21, 2017, which denied the petitions to discover property withheld from the estate of Sam Salz, and dismissed the proceedings, unanimously affirmed, with costs.

The Surrogate correctly determined that petitioner's claims were barred by the statute of limitations for fraud (see Gutkin v. Siegal, 85 A.D.3d 687, 926 N.Y.S.2d 485 [1st Dept. 2011] ).  It is undisputed that the most recent alleged fraud occurred in 1986, when the decedent's widow (his third wife) presented the estate accounting.  By his own account, petitioner's suspicions were aroused in 1999, after his mother (the decedent's second wife) died.  However, he did not seek discovery or appointment as an administrator until 2016, 17 years after he had been placed on inquiry notice of the possibility of fraud, and he failed to account for the delay.

Moreover, the petitions failed to identify property owned by the decedent at the time of his death that may not have been properly accounted for (see Matter of Perelman, 123 A.D.3d 436, 999 N.Y.S.2d 2 [1st Dept. 2014], lv denied 25 N.Y.3d 905, 10 N.Y.S.3d 524, 32 N.E.3d 961 [2015] ).  The allegations in the petitions about various paintings that may at one time have been owned by the decedent are insufficient to permit a conclusion that the decedent still owned those paintings at the time of his death, particularly since he was an active art dealer.