The manager of the building where Beatriz Sarlo lived filed a will and claims her apartment.

The doorman of the building on Hidalgo Street in the Caballito neighborhood, where essayist and academic Beatriz Sarlo lived since 2004, appeared in court to claim the apartment belonging to the intellectual who died last December. He presented two handwritten notes as evidence of Sarlo's desire to leave them to him as an inheritance.

The man, named Melanio Alberto Meza López , claimed that the academic had bequeathed him custody of her pet, a cat named Niní, and the property , as can be seen from two dubious notes that he submitted to the 91st Civil Court, in a case being investigated by Judge Carlos Hugo Goggi.

One of those two texts, dated June 9, reads: “I, Beatriz Sarlo […] wish to certify my wishes that, in the event of my disappearance or other accident, my cat Nini must remain in the care of Alberto Meza […]. I certify this with my signature.”

Furthermore, a second handwritten text, dated two months later, on August 2, 2024, adds the custody of the apartment to the cat: “ Alberto Meza, you are in charge of my apartment after my death and you are also in charge of my cat Nini, who appreciates you as much as I appreciate and value you. Beatriz Sarlo.”

Both papers appear signed , and the court will analyze whether or not that writing belongs to the essayist.

The dispute, in any case, does not extend to Sarlo's library and her work materials, which the academic entrusted to the writer and researcher Sylvia Saítta, the executor of her work . However, it does complicate a series of plans that Sarlo's ex-husband, the architect Alberto Sato Kotani, had drawn up for the disposition of her assets .

Both the apartment and the essayist's studio would serve to create a "cultural trust" to finance a foundation overseen by a group of intellectuals very close to her: Saítta, Adrián Gorelik, David Oubiña, Adriana Amante, Hugo Vezzetti, Ada Solari, and Graciela Silvestri, among others.

Although Alberto Sato Kotani married Sarlo in 1966, the couple had been separated for several decades . The architect was in Argentina in December to say goodbye to his ex-wife and authorize the cremation of her remains. As her next of kin, he was designated her heir.

Now, Meza López's presentation, processed by his representative, attorney Carlos Félix Somaglia, challenges Sato as a legatee and opens a legal dispute.