Some questions about the value of Elizabeth Taylor's estate will be answered when Christie's auction house sells her clothes and her jewelry and art collections later this year. As we said in an earlier post, Taylor was a savvy businessperson. She had forged the agreement with Christie's over the past decade, putting the parts of her estate that had contributed so much to her glamorous image into the auction house's capable hands.

By her own account, Taylor's jewelry was the only collection to rival the Duchess of Windsor's. The one-time Mrs. Simpson's collection sold for $53 million in 1987. Taylor's art collection included a Van Gogh (which she established title to in 2007) and, reportedly, works by Renoir and Degas.

Christie's seems to have won Taylor's business over rival Sotheby's in 1999 when it fetched the second-highest price paid for a dress (at that time), selling her 1969 Academy Awards gown for $150,000.

Taylor did plan. Her dealings with Christie's also included a kind of reverse mortgage, established in 2006. Christie's gave her a private line of credit in exchange for the right to sell one of her homes. The move was made shortly before her jewelry company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection; the loan could have been a bailout, or it could have been a way to preserve her other assets for her heirs. Sources "close to the matter" haven't explained.

As for the rest of her estate ... well, we'll never really know. The actress established a revocable living trust, deliberately, some say, keeping her affairs from the prying eyes of the press. As a result, the disposition of the estate will remain private, as long as one of her heirs doesn't challenge the validity of the will or dispute the division of property in court.

Source: The New York Observer, "How Christie's Nabbed Liz's Loot," Alexandra Peers, 04/13/11