The Duke of Segorbe, son of the well-remembered Mimi de Medinaceli, is litigating with the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of his mother for a multimillion-dollar inheritance in palaces and properties.
When Mimi de Medinaceli died on August 18, 2013, in the Pilate's Palace, little could she imagine that her poisoned inheritance would end up turning into a pitched battle with media significance. On one side are his only living son, the Duke of Segorbe, and in front of him his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who have appealed to the courts.
Victoria Eugenia Fernández de Córdoba and Fernández de Henestrosala, the second aristocrat with the most titles in Spain after the Duchess of Alba (50 and 11 times grandee of Spain), took a transcendental step for the conservation of family heritage with the creation in 1978 of the Casa Ducal Foundation de Medinaceli, who is now chaired by his only living son, Ignacio Medina, and Fernández de Córdoba.
The Duke of Segorbe has been married twice, the first one to the Bilbao designer María de las Mercedes Maier y Allende (a short-lived marriage, they married and separated in 1976). The second, with his current wife, Princess María de la Gloria de Orleans-Braganza, who in turn was married to Alejandro of Yugoslavia, father of her three children, Princes Pedro, Felipe, and Alejandro of Serbia. She with the Duke of Segorbe has been the mother of Sol y Luna de Medina, Countess of Ampurias, and Countess of Ricla respectively.
On the death of his mother, the Duke of Segorbe found himself with a will created in 2003 and ratified in 2012, in which he wanted to leave his four children equally equal and, therefore, since they were not alive, their descendants, with whom he is now faced in court.
Who claims the millionaire Medinaceli inheritance from the Duke of Segorbe
Thus we meet two of his great-grandchildren, Vitoria and Alexander de Hohenlohe. Their father, Marco de Hohenlohe, who died on August 18, 2016, was Duke of Medinaceli, receiving his grandmother's title, Mimí de Medinaceli. However, she could not hold this title as he would have liked, due to the physical conditions in which she found herself.
In 1996 he suffered a very serious motorcycle accident in Estepona for which he was in a coma for several days, leaving him with serious consequences. Only three months had passed since his wedding in Ronda with Sandra, the mother of his two children. A very hard period began: his marriage dissolved, his children lived far from him and it was difficult for him to adapt to this new reality.
After his death, the heir to the title was his eldest daughter, Victoria de Hohenlohe, who is going to marry this October in Jerez de la Frontera Maxime Corneille, of French-Argentine descent. As is well known, she will not be able to celebrate her wedding at Casa de Pilatos, where Sol de Medina, daughter of the Duke of Segorbe, did so last weekend, as the palace is under the control of the Casa Ducal de Medinaceli Foundation, which The Duke of Segorbe presides, and from whose patronage the litigants against him were expelled.
His younger brother, Alexander de Hohenlohe, is the XIV Marquis of Navahermosa, and this is how it was published in the BOE: «By the provisions of the Royal Decree of May 27, 1912, this Ministry, on behalf of S.M. The King has seen fit to order that, after payment of the corresponding tax, the Royal Letter of Succession to the title of Marquis of Navahermosa be issued, without prejudice to a third party with better rights, in favor of Mr. Alexander-Gonzalo von Hohenlohe-Langenburg, due to the death of his grandmother, Mrs. Ana Medina Fernández de Córdoba ».
The best known of the litigants against the Duke of Segorbe are the two sons of the unfortunate Duke of Feria, Rafael, who has inherited the title from his father, and Luis. The first is married to Laura Vecino, who wore the same tiara that Sol de Medina used at the wedding at her ceremony, while the youngest of Naty Abascal's children has been linked in recent months to a nurse who has occasionally been a model.
Victoria Francisca de Medina Conradi, Duchess of Santisteban del Puerto, is the daughter of Luis de Medina y Fernández de Córdoba, Duke of Santisteban and Marquis of Cogolludo, who died in Seville on February 9, 2011, at the age of 69. She was the eldest son of Mimi de Medinaceli and left behind a wife, Mercedes Conradi, and two daughters, the aforementioned Victoria and her younger sister, Casilda.
The trial of the Medinaceli family against the Duke of Segorbe
These are the six relatives of the Duke of Segorbe who brought the distribution of the inheritance to court, for the moment, successfully. The titular judge of the Court of First Instance number 12 of Seville partially upheld the lawsuit against the Casa Ducal Medinaceli Foundation, presided over by the aristocrat.
The magistrate estimated in the sentence, in December 2021, that Mimí de Medinaceli disposed of more assets and resources than she owed in favor of the aforementioned foundation, which "diminished the strict legitimate that her heirs have the right to receive." However, the six heirs did not get the other claim, a third of improvement, which would have meant the contribution of assets worth close to 20 million euros.
The ruling stated that the plaintiffs were each entitled to receive a quota of 12.5% of the legitimate one-third of the estate in the case of the four grandchildren and 4.17% in the case of the great-grandchildren. Thus, the grandchildren should receive 4,119,095 euros, and the great-grandchildren 1,373,031, each. This sentence is appealed to the Provincial Court of Seville and at the moment no date has been set for the trial.
