‘Would Dad Approve?’ Neil Armstrong’s Heirs Divide Over a Lucrative Legacy

Carol Armstrong, who knew her husband had considered the cardiologist a friend, “felt strongly that Neil would not have wanted her to sue the doctors or the hospital — he would not want anyone to take advantage of his name in such a way,” Mr. Hansen said.

Court records show Ms. Armstrong as receiving “zero — not participating,” by her own choice. Neither did her children, the astronaut’s stepchildren, seek any payment.

Mark Armstrong, a 56-year-old retired software engineer, and Rick, 62, a onetime animal trainer who has a software consulting business, got the bulk of the hospital’s payment, about $2.6 million apiece. Neil’s surviving brother and sister got $250,000 each, and the six children of Rick and Mark got $24,000 each.

One court filing in the case, by a lawyer arguing for a greater share for the grandchildren, discussed the uneasy equation between familial relations — even love — and cold cash. While acknowledging that Mr. Armstrong’s siblings might get a larger payment because “they loved him the longest, depended on him the most” and found his loss “most painful,” the lawyer, Bertha G. Helmick, wrote that the “opposite is equally true.”

“The minor grandchildren, having had the least time with Decedent, have suffered the greatest loss of time, attention, protection, advice, guidance, counsel and affection.”

The grandchildren, she wrote, “lost their universally beloved and revered grandfather, who could magically open any door, innocently pave ways into college admissions, and who would have always carried a de facto hero element to any school or athletic or workplace function.”