Editing Claudette Colbert (section)

===Final years and death===
For years, Colbert divided her time between her Manhattan apartment and her vacation home in [[Speightstown]], [[Barbados]].<ref name="Pace1996" /> The latter, purchased from a British gentleman and nicknamed Bellerive, was the island's only plantation house fronting the beach.<ref name="A Perfect Star"/> Her permanent address remained Manhattan.

When her mother Jeanne died in 1970,<ref name="tcmdb" /> and her brother Charles in 1971, Colbert's only surviving relative was her brother's daughter, Coco Lewis.<ref name="Obituary">{{cite news |title=Oscar-Winner Claudette Colbert dead at 92|work=Tributes.com|url=http://www.tributes.com/show/Claudette-Colbert-83730381|access-date=February 20, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|title=A Perfect Star|date=January 1998|magazine=Vanity Fair|author=Amy Fine Collins}}</ref>

Colbert suffered a series of small strokes during the last three years of her life. She died in 1996 in Barbados,<ref name="Pace1996" /> where she had employed a housekeeper and two cooks. She was 92. Her remains were transported to New York City for cremation and funeral services.<ref name="A Perfect Star" />

A [[requiem mass]] was later held at [[Church of St. Vincent Ferrer (Manhattan)|Church of St. Vincent Ferrer]] in Manhattan.<ref name="Envoi">{{cite book|title=Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty|year=2008|first=Bernard F.|last=Dick|publisher=University Press of Mississippi|chapter=Chapter 17. Envoi}}</ref> Her ashes are laid to rest in the Godings Bay Church Cemetery, Speightstown, [[Saint Peter, Barbados]], alongside her mother and second husband.<ref name="A Perfect Star" />

Colbert never had children. She left most of her estate, estimated at $3.5&nbsp;million and including her Manhattan apartment and Bellerive, to longtime friend Helen O'Hagan, a retired director of corporate relations at [[Saks Fifth Avenue]]. Colbert had met O'Hagan in 1961 on the set of ''[[Parrish (film)|Parrish]]'', her last film,<ref>Stephanie Harvin, "O'Hagan, a Legend at Saks", Post and Courier, August 23, 1996</ref><ref>"Colbert's Will Provides for Long-Time Friends", ''Austin American-Statesman'', August 10, 1996, p. B12</ref> and they became best friends around 1970.<ref name="tcmdb"/>

After Pressman's death, Colbert instructed her friends to treat O'Hagan as they had Pressman, "as her spouse".<ref name=mann>{{cite book|last=Mann|first=William J.|title=Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910–1969|year=2001|publisher=Viking|location=New York|isbn=0670030171|pages=[https://archive.org/details/behindscreenhowg00mann/page/81 81–82]|url=https://archive.org/details/behindscreenhowg00mann/page/81}}</ref> Although O'Hagan was financially comfortable without the generous bequest, Bellerive was sold for over $2&nbsp;million to [[David Geffen]]. Colbert's will also left $150,000 to her niece Coco Lewis; a trust of over $100,000 to UCLA, in Pressman's memory; and $75,000 to Marie Corbin, her Bajan housekeeper.<ref name="A Perfect Star"/>