Generosa Ammon Pelosi, who died of breast cancer last Friday, did not mention her estranged husband, Daniel Pelosi, in the 37-page will. She also left $250,000 and a Porsche to a contractor in Manhattan and another $250,000 to her mother-in-law.

Mrs Ammon Pelosi, who was 46, left written instructions that her nanny, Kathryn Mayne, 59, should be the guardian of her 13-year-old adopted Russian-born twins, Alexa and Gregory. She also decreed that Ms Mayne could stay at the Hamptons home "for the duration of her life".

Until Ms Mayne's death, the title to the house will be held in trust for the twins, who will receive the bulk of the $34m fortune.

A previous will, signed last year, left almost everything to Mr Pelosi. An attachment to the new will, however, notes that he waived all rights to his wife's estate when he signed a postnuptial agreement, written the day before the will was signed, that gave him $2m and a waterfront home on Long Island.

Part of the will is already under dispute. Mrs Ammon Pelosi decreed that Ms Mayne be the keeper of her cremated remains. But Mr Pelosi took the ashes from the funeral home.

His lawyer, Gerald Shargel, insists that the couple only lived separately because Mrs Ammon Pelosi "wanted dignity" on her deathbed. "Generosa Pelosi expressed her deep and abiding love for her husband up until the day she died. The documents I've seen raise more questions than they answer."

The couple's relationship was born in controversy. Mrs Ammon Pelosi's former husband, Theodore Ammon, a multimillionaire financier, was bludgeoned to death in the Hamptons mansion in 2001 while they were in the midst of a bitter divorce. Three months later she married Daniel Pelosi, an electrician who had installed the security system at the mansion.

The alarm did not go off at the time of the murder. Nobody has been charged with the killing.