Bardot Inheritance Row Deepens as Private Letter to Former Partner Goes Public

A hand-written letter opening with the words "Bernard, it's a failure!" has now become a piece of evidence in the fight over Brigitte Bardot's estate. Dated November 2022, three years before the actress died at her home in Saint Tropez, the note appears to show her ending her relationship with Bernard de Chiara, the companion she had lived with for more than thirty years.

In it, Bardot says she gave "everything" in the hope of finding a partner who would return her love, share her joys and her deep sorrows, and be content with the life she was offering him. She ends by saying she has reached the end-point of her distress. She writes that she badly needs a shoulder, a support, a tenderness, a presence, and that he is "incapable" of providing them. Elsewhere she accuses him of "patiently destroying me day after day."

The letter's release helps the other side in the dispute: the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, the animal rights charity that carries her name. De Chiara accuses the Foundation of hurrying to dispose of her estate with no regard for her friends and those closest to her.

The human stakes are plain. De Chiara is 85. A week ago he was made to leave La Madrague, the seaside house he shared with Bardot from the early 1990s. After years of being supported financially by her, he is reported to have neither a bank account nor a social security card. For now he lives in an apartment rented from the town hall of Saint Tropez.

His anger sharpened over a sale the Foundation organised in September of household objects, mostly from Bardot's Paris flat. It raised nearly €1m (£835,000), split between the Foundation and Bardot's only son, Nicolas Charrier. "I found it extraordinary that just a few months after Brigitte's death, they already wanted to make a souvenir out of her," de Chiara said. "I did not appreciate that one bit."

The legal position appears to be against him. When Bardot's will was read after her death last December, it divided the estate between the Foundation and her son, who lives discreetly in Oslo. De Chiara was not mentioned, and the will required La Madrague to be empty within six months of her death. The Foundation says his only legal claim is to a share of the Paris flat, which is now for sale. Friends describe the couple's relationship as up and down. They were never married under French law, though French media report a ceremony in Norway that was never registered in France. He was living with her to the end and cared for her as she was dying. He is widely known by the adopted name d'Ormale, a pun on the French for "sleeps badly," and was a businessman and one-time associate of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

As lawyers compile a definitive list of her assets, the Foundation has accused him of removing items from La Madrague, including her Mini Moke jeep. Foundation President Max Guazzani said on Tuesday: "I am not accusing him of theft, but it's gone and that's a problem." He added that on a human level de Chiara's reluctance to leave is understandable, but that the law and Bardot's wishes are clear. "It's not our fault that she did not leave him the right to live there. What else are we supposed to do?"

The Foundation says it must make the properties pay. La Madrague and her second home, La Garrigue, in the hills behind the Mediterranean coast, were both in poor condition when she died, and now need round-the-clock security. A museum idea has been dropped because La Madrague cannot be reached by car. Guided tours, fashion displays and film shoots are the alternatives. Bardot left cinema in 1973 and devoted herself to animal welfare; her Foundation says it now cares for 13,000 animals.

Still to come are the final asset list, the sale of the Paris flat, and decisions on how La Madrague and La Garrigue will be used.