Aretha Franklin’s Will Contest

Jul 19

Apparently a handwritten will signed with a smiley face isn’t the best way to plan your estate.

In July of 2023, nearly 5 years after Aretha Franklin’s death, two of her four children are battling it out in court to see who will be the executor of her estate. A 2010 handwritten and notarized document appears to be the closest thing to a will, but in 2019 a set of notebooks was discovered stuffed into the cushion of the couch in her living room.

Among the notes is a more recent 2014 “will” that picked a different child to serve as the executor her estate and also differed on who would receive her personal property and her beautiful home located in Detroit.

Both documents split Aretha Franklin’s royalties among her children and require three of them to support her fourth son who has a disability.

In an ideal world, Aretha would have had a trust set up prior to death to both avoid probate and establish a more formal structure for her disabled child’s inheritance, but this lack of formal estate planning appears common among celebrities despite their wealth.

It’s also important to note that with ongoing royalties, the executor of her estate would be in a position to not only control that inflow of cash temporarily, but also have the potential to charge reasonable fees for serving as executor (unless the handwritten notes say otherwise).

Given that the size of the estate is surprisingly small, having control of the royalties as the executor is a much bigger deal than would be the case in a traditional estate with little to no income.