Three years ago, at the black-tie opening at the de Young Museum’s new home in San Francisco, the collector John Friede held court in the gallery that bore his and his wife’s names, looking as proud as if the celebration was solely in his honor.

It partly was: a few months earlier the de Young had announced that John and Marcia Friede had promised to give the museum their entire 4,000-piece collection of tribal art from New Guinea, generally regarded as the best of its kind in private hands. The museum built an 8,000-square-foot wing to display the Friede (pronounced FREE-dee) collection and helped publish a lavish two-volume catalog of the works.

Today the gift is in doubt, and many wonder whether the collection will remain intact. A feud between Mr. Friede, 70, and his two brothers over their mother’s estate has led to litigation in three states, with the two brothers, the museum and Sotheby’s auction house all laying claim to the art.

Last month a Florida judge ruled that Mr. Friede’s brothers, Robert Friede, 68, and Thomas Jaffe, 58, could take possession of the entire collection. The judge determined that John Friede had violated the terms of an October 2007 settlement in the estate dispute in which he put up his collection as collateral. Later the city attorney’s office in San Francisco, acting on the de Young Museum’s behalf, sued and obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting the brothers and John and Marcia Friede from disturbing the collection until a judge could determine who legally had title to it.

And on Thursday a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled that Sotheby’s, which lent Mr. Friede $25 million and has not been repaid, could take possession of 54 artworks that are part of the collateral for the loan. The judge placed a restraining order on another 99 works to which priority rights are being disputed between Sotheby’s and Mr. Friede’s brothers.

In a telephone interview from his home in Rye, N.Y., John Friede said it would be a tragedy to break up the collection, and that he would do “everything in my power to prevent that.”

But he added that it seemed more and more likely he would have to sell something to meet all his obligations. Once his mother’s estate has settled with the Internal Revenue Service, he said, he believes there will be enough money to pay his brothers. As part of the settlement, he owes $20 million to Mr. Jaffe and $10 million to Robert Friede. But he said there might not be enough left over to pay his legal bills and his debt to Sotheby’s.

“My enormous preference would be to do what is traditionally done by big collectors who are not just boiling over with cash, where there is a small purchase and a large gift,” he said, referring to the common museum practice of paying for only part of a donation’s value, which allows the donor to claim a tax deduction and also reap direct proceeds. “Another possibility would be having to sell off a section” of the collection, he said. “That would be a darned shame.”

The feud among the brothers would appear to have deep roots. Their mother, Evelyn A. J. Hall, who died in 2005, was a collector and philanthropist and a sister of the publishing magnate Walter Annenberg. By all evidence John Friede was her favorite son. She supported his collecting and business ventures with large sums and made gifts of art and endowed curatorships in their names at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the  Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art.

“Mother and I were kindred souls,” Mr. Friede said.

Their closeness, Mr. Friede said, stirred deep resentment in his brothers, particularly his half-brother, Mr. Jaffe, whom he described as suffering from “pathological sibling rivalry.”

Mr. Jaffe’s lawyer in Florida, James Pressly Jr., dismissed the suggestion that his client was motivated by rivalry, saying, “This is a straightforward business transaction.”

After Mrs. Hall died, Mr. Friede and his brothers disagreed over how much of her support to him had been outright gifts as opposed to loans. The estate ultimately sued Mr. Friede for $40 million that it said Mrs. Hall had lent him. In the October 2007 settlement Mr. Friede agreed that when the estate was settled, if there was not enough to cover his mother’s bequests to his brothers, he would pay Mr. Jaffe $20 million and Robert $10 million. Among other security, John Friede pledged up to $20 million of his tribal art collection. (The 401 works currently on display at the de Young alone have been insured for $90 million.)

Although the estate was not yet settled, Mr. Friede’s brothers quickly cried foul. In February they brought a complaint in Palm Beach County, Fla., where the estate is in probate, saying that Mr. Friede had violated the settlement by, among other things, failing to inform either Sotheby’s or the de Young about having put the collection up as security to his brothers.

As reflected in the complaint filed by the San Francisco city attorney, Dennis Herrera, the de Young was surprised to learn that Mr. Friede had put up his collection as security only a month after renewing his promise to give it to the museum. The complaint cites a formal gift agreement he reached with the museum in September 2007 that officially transferred ownership of 137 artworks to the museum while setting up a schedule for giving the balance of the collection.

Mr. Herrera, said in an interview that the city was determined to defend the museum’s right to the collection, which is referred to as the Jolika Collection, after the names of John and Marcia Friede’s three children, John, Lisa and Karen. “We’re confident in our ability to hold onto the gift under the law,” Mr. Herrera said.

John Buchanan, the director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, of which the de Young is a part, said he was “cautiously optimistic.” He said the museum’s “No. 1 interest” was to preserve intact the collection of 401 objects in the inaugural exhibition.

“My feeling is that, should cooler and wiser heads prevail, there are other assets and more than enough to satisfy Mr. Friede’s commitments to his brother and half brother,” Mr. Buchanan said, referring to Mrs. Hall’s estate. He said he hoped waiting for the I.R.S. settlement of the estate would “not get in the way here.”

Asked why the brothers filed a legal complaint rather than waiting for the estate to be settled, Mr. Pressly, the lawyer for Mr. Jaffe, said, “Just like in any commercial transaction, it is incumbent on a secured party to immediately call the court’s attention to their insecurity, not to wait around for other events to occur.”

Robert Friede’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

The enmity between John Friede and Mr. Jaffe is well known in the tribal-art world. Mr. Jaffe is also a collector, though on a somewhat more modest scale than his brother. He collects primarily Indonesian art and apparently has his eye on his own legacy; several people in the field said Mr. Jaffe had promised his collection to Yale University, his alma mater, and planned to finance some kind of study center or endowed curatorship there.

Mr. Pressly declined to confirm the planned gift to Yale, and the Yale University Art Gallery did not respond to a question about the donation on Friday.

Mr. Friede described the family feud as something from another era. “This a little bit like succession was in medieval England, where one prince was killing another prince,” he said. “It’s out of date.”

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