Perelman family feud takes a new legal turn

Firing the latest salvo in a philanthropist-family feud, Raymond Perelman on Tuesday accused his son Jeffrey of illegally altering the elder Perelman's wife's death certificate last year.

In a complaint to Montgomery County prosecutors, the elder Perelman said his son and a lawyer persuaded a funeral director last summer to change Ruth C. Perelman's primary residence on the document from their Palm Beach, Fla., home to a Rittenhouse Square address he calls a second home.

Raymond Perelman claims the change amounts to record-tampering and document deception, crimes that could cause him "significant financial harm."

A spokeswoman for Jeffrey Perelman, Anne Gordon, said the Philadelphia register of wills had already ruled that Ruth Perelman lived in Philadelphia at the time of her death in July 2011.

As to the complaint, Gordon said, "Raymond is upset that Ruth named Jeffrey as executor and personal representative of her will."

It was unclear whether prosecutors would pursue the private complaint. Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman could not be reached for comment.

But the claim signaled that no end is looming in the saga pitting the 95-year-old socially active businessman against his 63-year-old equally prominent and civic-minded offspring.

The Perelmans - the family includes another son, billionaire investor Ronald - have long been generous donors and active figures in the region's arts, culture, medical, and business communities. (Both father and son also have been involved in various bids to buy The Inquirer, and Gordon is a former managing editor of the newspaper.)

The dispute over the family fortune moved into federal courts in 2010. A suit filed there by Jeffrey Perelman against his father is pending.

Ruth Perelman was 90 when she died last summer. She and Raymond Perelman had been married 70 years and, her husband claims, considered Florida their home.

"Mrs. Perelman was an active citizen of Florida, where she voted in 19 elections since the mid-1990s," his complaint states. It also says the couple received property-tax abatements in Florida by stating they were domiciled there.

Reached at his Rittenhouse Square home, Raymond Perelman dismissed as irrelevant the register of wills' ruling. He said a Florida court had declared his late wife a resident there.

Perelman said he first explored bringing a private criminal complaint against his son in Philadelphia, but city prosecutors would not take the case. He then went to Montgomery County because Jeffrey Perelman lives in Wynnewood.

The complaint includes an affidavit from Joseph Levine, the Bucks County funeral director who changed Ruth Perelman's address on the death certificate.

Raymond Perelman was the informant on the death certificate - the person recognized as supplying the information.

According to his statement, Levine amended the address last August after a request from Jeffrey Perelman, who described himself as the executor of his mother's estate, and lawyer John T. Boxer.

Levine said he did so because it was "consistent with my long-term practice to rely on verbal statements made by an attorney."

Boxer, of the Morgan Lewis firm, said Tuesday he had not seen the complaint and declined to comment.