As always, this column was written for my Patreon followers 2 weeks ago, so the time references are outdated, But the information, and the warnings, are timeless.
On Sunday the New York Times ran an article about the embattled Aretha Franklin estate.
Is Aretha Franklin’s True Will the One Found in the Couch or a Cabinet?
(This story may be behind a paywall, but it's worth reading if you can get to it. I have tried to summarize it below.)
The story is a familiar one - creator dies without a will, heirs battle each other over the estate - complicated by the fact(s) that the estate valuation was in question, a large tax bill was owed to the IRS, one heir was under a legal guardianship for mental illness, not one, but two handwritten documents were found in the year following the singer's death, and there is evidence that a new will was in process at the time she died. The attorney preparing that final document has stated that he was under the impression that she had not reached a final decision about at least some of the terms of the will, and therefore felt it should not be considered in the disposition of her estate.
Following me so far?
Normally I would take my time to write about this for next Sunday's column, but by then the situation may well have changed again - because the battle goes to court beginning today.
There is a long list of potential witnesses, conflicting claims from three of her sons (the fourth is represented by his legal guardian, who has reached some kind of agreement with the others and is not involved), and lots of attorneys.
According to Billboard (the music industry publication):
The last public accounting filed in March showed the estate had income of $3.9 million during the previous 12-month period and a similar amount of spending, including more than $900,000 in legal fees to various firms.
Overall assets were pegged at $4.1 million, mostly cash and real estate, though Franklin’s creative works and intellectual property were undervalued with just a nominal $1 figure. [emphasis mine]
Two things to note here: the spending in the latest financial report is equal to the income, and the estate spent nearly a million dollars in legal fees. That's a million dollars that could have gone to her heirs, a million dollars for her sons and her grandchildren that instead landed in the pockets of the lawyers.
I am not arguing that the attorneys aren't doing the work, or that they aren't entitled to be fairly compensated for the work they are doing. I'm just pointing out that the estate is paying for a lot of legal services (and, I suspect, the heirs are also paying their individual attorneys though I have no proof of that), and a great deal of this is expense that could have been avoided if there had been a properly executed will and/or trust.
The other point of interest is the valuation of her intellectual property at the nominal amount of $1. Do any of us believe that even a single bar of music or line of lyrics is worth only $1? I know I don't; I believe that the real value of her estate - far beyond the cars, the houses, the gowns and pianos and jewelry - is in the music she created, which is performed every day, all around the world.
I have no idea how this will end. Most likely we will never know because there will be some out-of-court settlement reached between the parties and the details will remain secret.
But this serves as another reminder that each of us that produces intellectual property needs to keep our will/trust agreement/power of attorney current and readily accessible to our heirs. Our heirs need to know, and deserve to know, what our wishes are, clearly and directly. They all need to know the same thing, and they need to know that the other heirs know what they know.
For heaven's sake, don't scribble a note and hide it under the couch cushions!