Candice and Brandon Miller showed the public a world of glittering parties and vacations. The money to sustain it did not exist.

Mr. Miller, 43, died on July 3 at a Southampton hospital. A suicide note indicated he had killed himself while his wife and children were on vacation on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, according to a Suffolk County law enforcement official. He said Mr. Miller wrote that a business deal he had hoped would ease the family’s financial strain had collapsed.

His family was stunned. When Ms. Miller was contacted for comment, a family spokesman said she and the children were overwhelmed by grief. “Candice is devastated by the loss of her soul mate, and her two young daughters’ lives are forever impacted by the loss of their beloved daddy,” he said.

The Millers’ downfall has become the focus of obsessive talk in the Hamptons and among internet sleuths who have scoured Ms. Miller’s social media presence for clues to what went wrong.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240814035733/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/nyregion/brandon-miller-suicide-debt.html

  • @jpreston2005
    13•5 months ago

    In 2021, near the bottom of the pandemic market, he sold the family’s TriBeCa home for just over $9 million, according to city records. The family set their sights on living uptown, in the type of co-op building that Mr. Miller had grown up in.

    Instead, they rented a 4,382-square-foot, five-bedroom apartment on the corner of Park Avenue and East 71st Street, according to court records — keeping up appearances for $47,000 per month. They decorated with rented furniture for which they paid $180,000 for one year, according to a lawsuit filed this spring, and $12,000 per month after the first year.

    9 million is enough to never work again. They could have bought a beautiful home, invested the rest in treasury bonds, and then sat there comfortably making 6 figures a year doing nothing.

    I have a hard time believing his wife’s extravagant lifestyle didn’t contribute heavily to this string of ludicrous financial decisions.