Mommy blogger Candice Miller’s seemingly perfect life was shockingly upended by the suicide of her husband last summer — but she has found a new safe harbor near the sea, sources tell The Post.
The mom of two girls has resettled in Miami Beach, Florida, and sources told The Post she is finding ways to deal with and move on from Brandon Miller’s death after the real estate mogul ran up $33.6 million in debt and left her with just $8,000 in their bank account.
“She’s weirdly okay,” said a Miami socialite who travels in the same circles as Candice. The socialite told The Post she recently saw her at an exercise class and would not have guessed anything was amiss. “She’s at parties and events and dinners. She’s not sitting at home wearing all black with the lights off or anything,” she added.
“The word from Miami is that she’s out and about,” a former New York acquaintance of Candice told The Post.
Brandon and Candice Miller’s lives were opened up to the public via her Instagram account, Mama & Tata, which Candice ran alongside her sister. It showed Candice and Brandon living the Hamptons good life, tooling around in vintage cars, zipping out to sea aboard multi-million dollar yachts, flying private. “An insider’s guide to what every mom needs in NYC” was how she IDed it.
But everything came crumbling down over the July 4, 2024, holiday weekend. Candice was with the couple’s two daughters on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, while Brandon, home alone in the Hamptons, was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in his white Porsche by emergency workers.
It was only in the aftermath that Brandon’s huge debts and legal travails emerged, exposing how their ritzy life was largely a fabrication, a cautionary tale supersized by social media.
Though she had a glossy style, as it appeared on her now-deleted social media accounts, some in high society tend to categorize the Millers as aspirants making efforts to win a place among New York’s ultra-elite.
“What I know about her,” a member of that world told The Post, “is that she traveled around with a photographer. She liked to splash around her money.”
In the suicide note he left, Brandon made clear Candice would be receiving $15 million via a life insurance policy. According to the New York Times, that money has landed.
Regardless, she is starting fresh outside of New York and living a life worthy of the luster that centerpiece Mama & Tata — even if it is, for the moment, a bit borrowed.
For starters, Candice and their kids are residing in a 2,800-square-foot apartment inside the Continuum, a luxury building in South Beach. The pad is valued at $10 million and owned by a trust associated with Alexander von Furstenberg. It was purchased in 2023.
While von Furstenberg is one old friend who has stood by Candice, in her current city of residence there is said to be no shortage of new ones.
The source there added, “This is Miami. It’s a place where there are more than enough people who are willing to take her in and bring her into their circles.”
Despite the stress of dealing with the sudden death of her husband and all the debt he saddled her with — which Candice has made clear, she knew nothing about — the socialite source told The Post that Candice shows little resentment over the sudden change of circumstance.
“She’s not shopping at Chanel every day,” said the socialite. “But, day to day, she is living life. She’s residing in an expensive apartment that’s been loaned to her by friends, She’s going to dinners and places like the Four Seasons Surf Club and Casa Tua, working out, and traveling.
“Apparently, she was out on Halloween with her kids and at a party. Obviously, everything’s changed. But, from what we see, it doesn’t feel like anything’s changed. She’s not super laying low. That’s for sure.”
In terms of the Hamptons life that made Candice famous, that appears to have been cut loose. The seven-bedroom mansion that she and Brandon owned on Water Mill Lane sold for $12.8 million. She also faces a lawsuit over $194,881.89 in unpaid rent for the couple’s former Park Avenue apartment in New York City.
Despite the fact that the Hamptons home is where Brandon took his own life, there still were multiple bids. Nevertheless, a source told The Post, “The home probably would have sold for more, but the bank wanted out,” so a quick sale was desirable.
The buyer apparently received the place fully furnished and loaded with personal items, which the new buyer didn’t want. Some 200 items from the house hit the auction block last week in an estate sale by Privet Estate Sales, a Hamptons-based firm that specializes in those kinds of things.
Despite earlier reports that Candice was selling all of the home’s possessions, Kristen Hanyo, the owner of Privet Estate Sales tells a slightly different story. “I don’t work for Candice Miller,” she said. “That wasn’t her property any longer. I wasn’t hired by her.”
Asked who did hire her, Hanyo replied, “The buyer,” of the house.
Items ranged from the mundane (a pair of cake pans that went for $6.00) to the ritzy (a linen sofa with a hammer price of $5,500) to the personal (a set of high-end golf clubs, believed to have belonged to Brandon).
In the meantime, those in the New York City social world are still trying to figure out how things went so terribly wrong for a couple who seemed to have it all.
“People think they can set up this kind of lifestyle for themselves and go to lengths to sustain it,” said a source on Manhattan’s big money circuit. Blaming the allure of social media acceptance, flashing your wealth and all that comes with it, the Manhattan source added, “But, for almost everyone in the world, it’s unsustainable.”
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