Rosslyn Dillon, Mr Hawke’s youngest daughter, has engaged lawyers to fight Blanche d’Alpuget over the division of his multimillion-dollar will, according to a report in The New Daily.
The website claims Ms Dillon and her two siblings, Sue Pieters-Hawke and Stephen Hawke, each received a payment of $750,000 in the days following their father’s death in May.
Ms d’Alpuget’s son, the artist Louis Pratt, also received the payment,
But Ms Dillon’s discovery that the remainder of Mr Hawke’s vast estate will go to his second wife has reportedly caused anger.
She has engaged the family law firm Tiyce & Lawyers with the intention of contesting the will, on the grounds that it provides inadequate family provisions, The New Daily reports.
Should she and Ms d’Alpuget be unable to reach an agreement, the matter could head to the New South Wales Supreme Court.
Following his time in politics, Mr Hawke was successful in business and his Sydney home in Northbridge was recently sold for $15 million.
Mr Hawke, Labor’s longest-serving PM, died on May 16 at the age of 89, just days before the federal election.
The New Daily claims that signs of tension between his children and their stepmother were evident at his state memorial at the Sydney Opera House last month when Ms d’Alpuget mentioned Ms Pieters-Hawke by name, but not his other two children.
Mr Hawke married Ms d’Alpuget, his biographer with whom he’d had a relationship for some time, in 1995 after splitting from his first wife, Hazel.