As someone who lived at the edge of the spotlight that shines on the Kennedys, Mary Richardson Kennedy had been there long enough to become a partner in their rituals of grief – she was there when the clan buried Michael Kennedy, killed in a New Year’s Eve skiing accident in 1997, and John F. Kennedy Jr, who died in a plane crash in 1999.

She fought with dignity, and in the end, the demons won

And now, the gathering will be for her, the estranged wife of Robert Kennedy Jr, who hanged herself last Wednesday at the family’s 10-acre estate in a New York City suburb.

However, the two sides of her family faced off in court over custody of her body as they finalised plans for separate memorial services.

One of Mary Kennedy’s brothers, Thomas Richardson, filed a legal motion at a court in White Plains listing Robert Kennedy as a defendant.

Details of the legal dispute were sealed by a judge, but it came as the Kennedy and Richardson families were finalising arrangements for separate memorial services for the 52-year-old architect and environmentalist.

Mary and Robert Kennedy had been going through a lengthy, contested divorce.

Robert Kennedy declined to speak about the matter after emerging from a closed court session in White Plains, saying only: “It’s all done.”

Lawyers for Mary Kennedy’s siblings also declined to comment or did not return phone calls.

After the legal proceedings concluded, the medical examiner’s office in Westchester County received an order instructing them to release the body to a funeral home in Bedford, according to a county spokeswoman.

Mourners – so many that some had to park on nearby side streets – converged on the brick mansion in suburban Bedford, New York, for a wake.

Floral deliveries and vans full of people arrived as two police cars were stationed at end of the long driveway, keeping reporters at a distance.

Funeral services were also planned to be held at St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Bedford, with burial to follow near the Kennedy’s seaside compound in Hyannisport, Massachusetts.

“She struggled so hard, for so long, with mental illness, which so many Americans suffer with,” Kerry Kennedy, the sister of Robert Kennedy and a childhood friend of Mary Kennedy, said in brief remarks to reporters outside the church where the funeral was planned.

“She fought with dignity, and in the end, the demons won.”

Meanwhile, Mary Kennedy’s siblings announced through their lawyer, Kerry Lawrence, that they were planning a memorial service in Manhattan, though they did not say when.

Mary Kennedy’s death came as a shock to some friends and family, even though the past two years had been undeniably tough ones.

The couple was going through a divorce, and Mary had been charged twice with driving while intoxicated in 2010.

“A lot of times I don’t know how she made it through the day,” Robert Kennedy Jr told The New York Times. “She was in a lot of agony for a lot of her life.”

An architectural designer with New Jersey roots, Mary Kennedy met her estranged husband’s sister, Kerry, in boarding school when they were still teenagers and had stayed close to the clan through the decades before marrying Robert in 1994.

Robert is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the former US attorney general who was killed in 1968 while running for the Democratic presidential nomination, and the nephew of assassinated President John F. Kennedy and the late US Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Mary was RFK Jr’s second wife, and she entered the family in less-than-storybook circumstances.

When they married, she was already pregnant with their first child, and Mr Kennedy was only weeks removed from the divorce of his first wife.