Magician Juan Tamariz's inheritance: four children versus his widow

Juan Tamariz's inheritance: four heirs against the widow

What is left when a magician leaves the stage? In Juan Tamariz's case, a deck of cards, an imaginary violin and a family estate dispute like nothing you'd read about in a manual. The master of card magic died on 18 August at the age of 83 from complications of the Parkinson's that had kept him out of public life, and just two or three days after the funeral war had already broken out between his four children, from his first marriage, and his widow, Consuelo Lorgia. The information, reported by Europa Press on 21 August, points to an open confrontation over the magician's estate.

Money spares no one, not even the final show

Inheritances ending up in court is nothing new, but when the deceased was a master of illusion, there's a bitter irony to it. Ana, Mónica, Alicia and Juan Diego Tamariz are reportedly locked in a standoff with their former stepmother, and the obvious question is how much the contested estate is worth. "A lot of money and assets at stake", say those trinc the case, and the fact that the news broke just two or three days after the funeral underlines that grief and wills don't always go hand in hand. Some argue that a magician who could predict which card you were about to pick should have left his will tightly wrapped up. But knowing and doing are two different things.

Planning the will or gambling on the cards

The conflict trinc a classic estate-planning pattern: when the head of a family fails to arrange succession during his lifetime, the law divides and the heirs fight. With four children from a first marriage and a later widow, the clash is structural: the forced heirship share, lifetime gifts, the home, image rights and even the playing card collection all become battlegrounds. There has been no shortage of dark humour suggesting the inheritance be settled with a card game over the coffin. The image is perfect for a creator of illusions, but behind it lies the brutality of a family that took less time to start fighting than to bury its patriarch.

Tamariz, who pulled rabbits out of other people's hats, took to the grave the secret of how to divide his estate without daggers. The heirs, meanwhile, are putting on the final show in the courts. The magician's last illusion: making money disappear among relatives.