The Daughters of Catherine Youssef Kassenoff

Hello. I am Cynthia Monaco, one of Catherine's close friends. She and I were colleagues in the United States Atorney's Office in Brooklyn and in the the Governor's Special Counsel's Program for New York State. I knew Catherine for 25 years and spent many days with her and her three beautiful daughters before her divorce fight began. I write on behalf of Catherine's friends to create a legacy for her girls.

This fundraiser is to set up a fund with a trustee (custodian) so that Catherine' girls may have an inheritance from their Mom. For those seeking details, we would establish a custodial account under the Unified Gift to Minors Act (UGMA) with a professional friend of Catherine's acting as custodian. The money would be invested likely in an S&P 500 Index Fund and each of the girls would take her share at age 21 as New York law requires. Catherine would really like it if we helped her girls after the financial carnage of this four-year divorce battle. Let me tell you something about those girls and their Mom.

Catherine was fighting breast cancer when she started an adoption search. So many ads were placed. So much disappointment, But then I remember Catherine's excitement when Alexandra was born to her birth mother and Catherine boarded a flight to bring her home. We were afraid the birth mother would change her mind so we called the soon-to-be-born baby "the guppy" not to jinx the adoption. She'd say "the guppy is coming next week!" And that guppy was her beautiful first born daughter Allie.

As soon as she was clear of the breast cancer she started on a pregnancy journey. I was with Catherine when she had her scariest medical test done while carrying Charlotte (Charley) and they made her do it twice. She called me giggling with joy when the results were good.

I remember her holding Josephina in a baby's blanket crying because baby JoJo was so stunningly beautiful.

It is Catherine's example in having children after breast cancer and all her research and attempts that convinced me to try as Catherine urged. Without Catherine telling me where to go and how to do it, I would not have given birth to my two sons. I owe her everything.

She risked and sacrificed so much for those girls. I was standing next to Catherine on vacation in Hampton Bays when she got bad medical news for JoJo and decided on the spot to quit her job as Chief of Litigation for Boehringer Ingelheim an international pharmaceutical company so she could spend more time taking care of Josephina and her sisters. I went with her when she took Charlotte to multiple appointments as she finally found a pediatric dental specialist who could help Charley after an accident without mouth surgery. She sent me the reports to read when Allie was having some trouble in school. It seemed certain she would be there to help them grow into young women.

If you knew Catherine, you knew that what she cared about above all was bringing those girls into the world and giving them a great life. When everyone urged her to leave an explosive marriage, she said her children had a beautiful life and she did not want to disrupt it. She was so proud of her talented daughters and had me come up to Scarsdale to watch Charley play violin telling me it would be worth the drive from Brooklyn. She asked me to come to watch JoJo play soccer and Allie sing with a choir at a local Church.

Catherine's four-year fight to see her girls cost her all her money, She liquidated her retirement savings and was sleeping on couches for much of the time after she was evicted from her home with only twenty minutes to take personal items before leaving. Her judge would not even order her husband to give her back her clothes and she told me that she had heard another woman was wearing them and living in her home. She liquidated the last of her retirement account to pay her half of Charley's tuition at the French American School and was devastated that her daughter was taken out of that school anyway. The financial situation was dire. Catherine grew thin from stress.

Although the law requires legal fees and court costs to be shared between divorcing spouses, a judge has to order the wealthier spouse to "advance fees," and Catherine's judge did not. Recently, her newly-assigned judge ordered some but it was insufficient to cover her expenditures. The sale of the Kassenoffs' first home in New Rochelle produced some money; and as far as I know, its all she received. And her legal bills kept mounting. And she was fired by New York State at some point after she was arrested on her husband's complaint although those charges were dismissed when examined.

One month before her death, she bought a modest house near the family home she was evicted from with a contribution from her family. She bought bedroom furniture for the girls and looked forward to the girls sleeping over for the first time. Shortly afterward, a new forensic evaluation came out paid for by her husband and it mirrored the narrative of the first one by the now-disgraced and debarred evaluator; and the judge discontinued visits.

She left that house with whatever equity was in it and her remaining cash to her daughters and appointed another friend from the US Attorney's Office to serve as executor.

Because Catherine died before her divorce was granted, her estate will not take any part of the marital assets. And under the law of New York State, the husband responsible for her pain can demand $50,000 plus 1/3 of the remainder of her estate before her daughters take their inheritance. And her husband still has a legal case pending against her in Manhattan federal court that he may pursue against her estate.

This is all by way of saying, we do not think there will be much (if anything) to leave the girls and would like to ask for contributions to give them something from their Mom to help them into their adult years.

Thank you for reading this.

The Friends of Catherine "Cathy Youssef" Kassenoff

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