Who Inherited Jackie Kennedy Onassis' $43m Estate? One Major Person Was Left Out

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There's nothing quite like a deceased person's will to tell you how they really felt about you, and this was certainly the case with Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy's testament, which left a certain family member completely out in the cold with not a single penny granted to them from her estate. Jackie Kennedy's life was undoubtedly tragic, but a lack of money is not what made it so. She was very well off, and when she died in 1994 from cancer, she left her millions to her children, Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. Her will also stipulated that $125,000 should be used to fund the charitable trust named after her children — the C&J Foundation (though this didn't really pan out, thanks to the astronomical amount of taxes that needed to be deducted). One notable person was left out of the will entirely — Jackie's sister, Lee Radziwill Ross. She was but a footnote, with Jackie specifying she had "great affection" for Lee, but she had "already [provided for her] during my lifetime," per People. 

Lee's children, Tina and Anthony Radziwill, were notably not snubbed in the same manner. Their aunt bequeathed a whopping $500,000 to each of them. The controversial will was a very likely indication of how Jackie really felt about JFK's infidelity. Lee was reportedly one of the former president's many mistresses, and her first husband, Michael Canfield, confirmed that his wife had had an affair with Jackie's husband. Not only that, but he alleged that she wanted him to know, making no secret of it, according to J. Randy Taraborrelli's book, "Jackie, Janet, & Lee." A distant relative noted that Lee told them the same story, and the affair actually started after Caroline was born. Perhaps Jackie never quite forgave her sister for that one. 

It's common for siblings to be at loggerheads every now and then, but Jackie Kennedy and her sister, Lee Radziwill Ross, had a rocky relationship that became increasingly obvious to the public as well as their closest friends and family as time wore on. In her 2000 book, "Happy Times," Lee confesssed that it was "very clear" to her that her father "favored Jackie." She claimed she wasn't jealous of her sister because of it, though. "I understood he had reason to [...] She was not only named after him [...] but she actually looked almost exactly like him, which was a source of great pride to my father," Lee penned. 

But resentment did grow between them regardless, and they had trouble communicating properly, according to biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli. "There were times when they were very close," he explained to People, adding, "[They could never] just sit down and have a really good talk and really be vulnerable with each other and really put their feelings out there as sisters." The author pointed out that Jackie leaving Lee out of her will wasn't a coincidence — she was sending a message. "Of all people Jackie knew that anything she put in writing was going to end up in the public domain eventually," he asserted. 

And indeed, Lee's affair with JFK probably had something to do with it. But it's worth noting Jackie had hurt her sister in a similar manner, marrying Aristotle Onassis even though she knew Lee was in love with him and they had previously been in a relationship. Those who knew the sisters well have admitted that the iconic first lady omitting Lee from her will didn't come as a shock to them, given the sisters' complicated relationship.