More than four years of family conflict over the estate of Aretha Franklin ended in July when a Michigan jury decided what her family could not — which of two hand-scrawled wills represented the famed singer’s true wishes for how to divide her estate.
After a two-day trial in a probate court in Pontiac, Michigan, a six-person jury decided after less than an hour of deliberation that a four-page document written by Franklin in 2014 — and discovered under a couch cushion at her home, months after Franklin’s 2018 death — should serve as her will.
The verdict resolved the biggest problem that had been hanging over Franklin’s estate, and sets in motion a plan for how income and assets from her estate should be divided.
“We just want to exhale right now,” Kecalf Franklin, one of the singer’s four sons, said outside the courtroom. “It’s been a long five years for my family and my children.”
After the singer died, at age 76, her family believed she had no will. Under Michigan law, her assets would have been divided equally among her four sons: Kecalf, Edward and Clarence Franklin, and Ted White Jr.
But months later, in May 2019, the two handwritten documents were found at Franklin’s home in suburban Detroit — one in a locked cabinet, the other in a spiral notebook in the couch — which immediately divided the singer’s children. It also raised questions about how music royalties and other income from the estate — as well as cherished items like Franklin’s furs, jewelry and musical instruments — would be distributed.
The wills also divided Franklin’s assets differently. The earlier one specified weekly and monthly allowances to each of Franklin’s four sons. It also stipulated that Kecalf and Edward “must take business classes and get a certificate or a degree” to collect from the estate.
In the later will, three of Franklin’s sons — all except Clarence — would receive equal shares of their mother’s music royalties, but Kecalf and his children would receive more of Franklin’s personal property.
The court accounting document this year lists $4.1 million in personal property and real estate; $42,000 in furs; $73,000 in jewelry; companies and accounts related to Franklin’s music; and a little over $1 million in bank balances. The accounting did not attempt to estimate future earnings from her estate’s licensing rights.
c.2023 The New York Times Company. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
