Bear Stearns billionaire Paul Hallingby has been dead five years, but the vicious court battle between his widow and one of his five ex-wives is still alive and kicking.
The tycoon’s ex, Mai Hallingby, last week fired the latest legal shot at rival Jo Davis Hallingby in a war that erupted shortly after Paul’s 2005 death over a $930-a-month annuity check.
Mai, 70 — who got nearly $10 million in a 1994 divorce from Hallingby — filed papers last Tuesday in Manhattan federal court appealing a judge’s order that she pay $221,000 to his widow for legal fees.
Jo Hallingby, 65, was awarded the money in an Oct. 1 decision by federal Judge Victor Morerro, records show.
Mai was given 30 days to cough up the dough.
Jo, meanwhile, has appealed a decision that denied her a right to Paul Hallingby’s annuity payouts, which now stand at about $150,000, according to court records.
The fight between the two Mrs. Hallingbys broke out in 2006 after an insurance company began sending Paul Hallingby’s $930-a-month annuity checks to Mai after he died, at 85, of Parkinson’s disease.
As executor of Paul’s estate, Jo — a lawyer who had been married to Hallingby for 10 years — went to court, claiming that socialite Mai specifically waived her rights to the annuity payments in her divorce settlement.
In 2008, a judge ruled that, despite the wording in Mai’s divorce settlement, she was still entitled to the annuity payouts under New York law because, among other things, Paul didn’t remove her as beneficiary before he retired.
Mai and Jo — who were Hallingby’s fifth and sixth wives, respectively — had been at each other for years before the wealthy financier, who helped develop the Javits Center, died.
Paul Hallingby met Jo on a Hampton Jitney about six months before he filed to divorce Mai.
Mai would claim she learned her husband was dumping her when she read it in a Women’s Wear Daily gossip column.