Nicolas Puech may be 80, but he has apparently decided that's not too old to adopt a son. The problem is, the "boy" that the Hermes heir would like to welcome into the family fold is his 51-year-old "former gardener and handyman," per Swiss newspaper Tribune de Geneve. Entrepreneur calls it a "Hollywood-like plot" that resembles "Succession meets Knives Out." The tale comes complete with a sudden upheaval in the original plan to have the unmarried, childless mogul—a fifth-generation heir of Hermes founder Thierry Hermes and one of Switzerland's wealthiest residents—leave his 5% to 6% of the company (worth about $11 billion) to his Isocrates Foundation, per Fortune.
Puech, who quit the Hermes advisory board in 2014 and has long feuded with his other family members, sent a "handwritten note" to the foundation earlier this year noting he'd changed his mind about where to leave his fortune, per Entrepreneur. Italian outlet Sky TG24 notes that Puech has already given access to the gardener—described by Tribune de Geneve as hailing from "a modest Moroccan family" and having a Spanish wife and two kids—to a property in Marrakech, as well as to a villa in the Swiss resort town of Montreux.
Leaving his assets to the gardener may be easier said than done, however, as adopting an adult in Switzerland is somewhat of an "unusual undertaking," reports Euronews. It's also a "complex" process, per Fortune, which cites ch.ch in noting that "an adult can adopt another adult if they lived with them for at least a year when the adoptee was still a minor." It's not clear if that's the case with the gardener. Puech will likely have a fight on his hands from the Isocrates Foundation for breaking his pact with them. Sky TG24 notes that some see Puech's adoption attempts as an effort to keep the foundation from contesting his will. (More strange stuff stories.)
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