Widow seeks Sandy Heller’s records on $29.6M drop in late husband’s art collection

Maurice Amon’s widow is asking a Manhattan federal judge to force New York art advisor Sandy Heller to turn over records behind a 2019 valuation her lawyers said cut about $29.6 million from his art collection.

Tracey Amon filed the request July 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, court documents show. She wants the records for an inheritance battle in Switzerland over an estate she said was worth more than $600 million.

The inheritance fight comes after an already fraught divorce battle before Maurice’s 2019 death.

Heller and his firm, The Heller Group, formerly Sanford Heller Fine Art, have asked the court to reject the request. Their attorney, Judd B. Grossman, called it “a premature fishing expedition meant to bypass normal procedures for obtaining this discovery abroad from the parties there” in a September 1 letter to the judge.

In a sworn declaration filed September 2, Tracey accused Heller of helping remove artworks from her New York home.

“On October 6 and October 11, Heller was appointed by my late husband to remove 20 pieces of artwork worth more than $25 million from my solely owned New York residence without my knowledge, under the pretext that they had been removed for insurance valuation,” Amon said in the declaration.

She said the same thing happened at “other residences worldwide.”

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Tracey Amon’s bid for Sandy Heller’s Artmon valuation records

Documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

Urgent MatterAdam Schrader

The declaration places those events between two key dates in 2015. Maurice secretly filed for divorce in Monaco on September 29, Tracey said. She said she was told of the filing by email on October 14.

Her lawyers’ July memorandum said her husband removed the works and did not name Heller. The Heller side’s letter, filed the day before the declaration, does not address the removals.

Grossman’s letter noted that Tracey’s application referred to a declaration that had not been filed. The declaration is dated July 22.

The request centers on Artmon Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands that Maurice Amon used to hold most of his art. Tracey said Heller advised Artmon since mid-2012, under a contract that took effect January 1, 2013.

Heller’s work under that contract included finding art to buy, judging its quality and condition, negotiating prices, keeping a database of the collection and advising on insurance, her lawyers wrote. They said Artmon paid him a yearly retainer plus fees on art bought at auction.

The estate’s court-appointed administrator in Switzerland, Olivier Weniger, issued an inventory on December 19, 2025. Among its attachments were Artmon’s financial statements and a KPMG “Limited Review Report” dated January 15, 2025.

The KPMG report, as quoted in Amon’s application, said Artmon hired outside experts, including Heller, to value the full collection at market for 2019. The report said Heller’s valuation showed over €33.4 million in unrealized losses and €7.5 million in unrealized gains.

Tracey’s lawyers put the net loss at about €25.96 million, roughly $29.6 million. They said the report includes no list of works Heller examined, an explanation of his method or a valuation date.

She is asking for Heller’s full valuation report as of December 31, 2019, along with the list of works he examined, comparable works he considered, his calculations, and any related correspondence.

She also wants every document on Heller’s dealings with Artmon or the estate since her husband died on July 26, 2019. That covers sales, purchases, consignments, transfers, storage, inventories and invoices.

“Presumably, Heller has made millions of dollars from the Decedent and Artmon over the past 13 years, and it should therefore not balk at being asked to ‘show its work,’” Tracey’s attorney Jonathan D. Plaut wrote.

Tracey and Maurice married December 22, 2008, and never signed a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, she said. She called Artmon an “alter ego company” and the art “matrimonial property” in which she holds an interest.

On July 24, 2018, with the divorce still pending, Maurice Amon signed a will naming Albert Amon, his son from an earlier marriage, as his sole heir. The will named Silvio Venturi as executor. The application describes Venturi as Maurice’s assistant, while Tracey’s declaration calls him his attorney.

A codicil signed in Singapore on or about March 17, 2019, added more beneficiaries, her lawyers wrote.

After his death, Tracey sued Albert Amon and Venturi in Thun, Switzerland, seeking to throw out the disinheritance and divide the marital assets. She also sued Venturi separately in Lausanne. She filed both cases on February 3, 2020.

Albert Amon and Venturi brought a third case in Lausanne to settle the estate, with Tracey as the defendant.

A Lausanne justice of the peace placed the estate under official administration on December 17, 2024. Tracey said the same order suspended Venturi as executor over a conflict of interest. Weniger was appointed administrator February 26, 2025.

“As my husband’s surviving spouse and virtual heir, I have legal rights to the estate information, accounting, location, valuation, and any disposition,” Tracey said in the declaration.

Tracey filed the application without notifying Heller. Her lawyers argued this was allowed because Heller could later challenge any subpoena. They said they sent a copy to the estate administrator in Switzerland.

Grossman wrote that the Heller side learned of the application “through publicly available press reporting.”

He argued that Tracey has not shown she has any right to the art, because the Swiss courts have not ruled on whether her disinheritance stands.

“At this point, it is speculative that she will ever be able to ‘use’ the requested discovery, and certainly cannot do so at this point,” Grossman wrote.

Grossman said one Swiss court is still sorting out where the case belongs and which law applies, and a second case is on hold until that court rules. He said the third is a “non-judicial” proceeding focused on taking stock of the estate. He cited a memo from Tracey’s Swiss lawyer, Fanette Sardet, for those descriptions.

He also argued that the records belong to Artmon, not Heller. He cited the advisory contract, which says Artmon “remains at all times the exclusive owner of all information and documentation, including reports, collected, assembled and maintained in the database and [Artmon’s] file by the [Heller Group].”

Grossman said the contract’s confidentiality clause makes no exception for court-ordered disclosure. He said handing over Heller’s work would expose “the strategies and methodology behind their art advisory practices.”

Grossman also wrote that the Heller side understands a court in Monaco has ruled against Tracey on at least some of her marriage and inheritance claims.

He pointed to a lawsuit Tracey filed in New York state court in 2015, a little more than a month after the Monaco divorce filing. That suit named her husband, Artmon and the Heller side and claimed they interfered with her interest in the art. Grossman said she admitted she never held title to the works.

The state judge dismissed every claim, finding that the Monaco divorce would decide how the couple’s property was divided, Grossman wrote. He said the judge called Tracey’s bid “premature at best, and misplaced at worst.” An appeals court upheld the dismissal in 2018.

Grossman wrote that the same judge said the court had “allowed itself to be bamboozled” when it first granted Tracey a temporary order without hearing from both sides. A separate divorce case Tracey filed in New York was dismissed because the couple did not meet the state’s residency rules, he wrote.

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