Kate Spade‘s family are at odds after the late designer’s death on Tuesday at age 55.
Spade’s older sister Reta Brosnahan Saffo, 57, made statements to multiple outlets on Tuesday night saying she believes her sister suffered from a mental illness for a number of years and that Spade’s suicide “was not unexpected by me.”
However, a source close to the family claims Brosnahan Saffo has long been estranged from her designer sister, whom the source says was as a “kind, generous, funny, warm and extremely private person.”
“The family is disgusted and saddened that at this time of great sorrow, Kate’s sister who has been estranged from the entire family for more than 10 years would choose to surface with unsubstantiated comments,” the source said to PEOPLE. “Her statements paint a picture of someone who didn’t know her at all.”
Brosnahan Saffo, however, reportedly told her local paper The Kansas City Star via email that she and Spade spoke on the phone for “6 to 7 hours” on end prior to Spade’s death.
Brosnahan Saffo emailed that her sister had suffered “three to four years of mental illness” and “chickened out” from multiple attempts to seek treatment.
“I will say [Kate’s suicide] was not unexpected by me,” Brosnahan Saffo wrote in her exchange with The Star, to which she admitted taking a sedative before speaking with her hometown newspaper. “Sometimes you simply cannot SAVE people from themselves!”
RELATED: David Spade Breaks His Silence After Sister-in-Law Kate Spade’s Death: ‘I Still Can’t Believe It’
According to Brosnahan Saffo, her late sibling was “concerned how hospitalization might harm the image of the happy-go-lucky Kate Spade brand,” and had “eventually became full-on manic depressive” due to the “stress and pressure” of her empire.
Manic depression is a term once used to discribe bipolar disorder.
Brosnahan Saffo reached out to her local paper initially to correct the way it had written Spade’s childhood name, Katy. She was asked to speak about her sister with the publication via phone but said, as she was sedated, email was…
