27 Years in Litigation

A family feud over a father's will that has raged for more than a quarter-century - pitting two sisters against their brother in a Bronx court - may finally be over.

Diana Sakow and Evelyn Breslaw were naive young women when their father, real estate investor Max Sakow, died of a heart attack in 1956.

Now retired golden-agers, the sisters have been awarded part of their father's holdings, capping one of the longest-running probate battles in the city.

"My father wanted us to have this when we were young," said Breslaw, 69, who was 15 when her father died. "He didn't want us to have to go to court for it."

The fight began in 1983, when the sisters claim they discovered that their older brother, Walter Sakow, had hidden their father's one-page, handwritten will.

"I was told when my father died that we were impoverished," said Diana Sakow, now a retired high school teacher living in New Rochelle.

In fact, the will left a third of their dad's estate - which the sisters say totaled more than 100 properties - to his wife, with the remainder split equally among the kids.

Walter Sakow, with the support of their mother, told the sisters the family was deeply in debt and the properties had to be sold off, they claimed.

A law school grad who never joined the bar, the brother secretly used his father's properties to build up a real estate business for himself, they charged.

There was no bad blood until 1983, when the curious sisters discovered the will in a Bronx courthouse. They confronted their mother at the family's home in Morris Park. When she denied knowing about a will, they drove to the brother's home on Long Island, where he called the cops on them.

They've been in court ever since.

The sisters say they're heartbroken by the family betrayal and frustrated by the slow grinding of the wheels of justice.

"There's no end," Diana Sakow said. "He will litigate until everyone is dead, because the system allows it."

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Family Feud Lasts 27 Years in Court