A Michigan jury ruled Tuesday that a handwritten will found sandwiched between couch cushions in Aretha Franklin’s home after her death in 2018 is valid.
According to reports, the award-winning music legend had left behind two wills, scribbled in notebooks and on pieces of paper, that were found inside her Detroit home following her death from pancreatic cancer at age 76 in August 2018.
The wills were conflicting and disagreed on which family members would gain access to her estate estimated to be worth more than R1.5 billion.
As stated by the Associated Press, after deliberating for less than an hour, the jury chose the will that was written in 2014 and found stuffed between cushions in Franklin’s couch months after her death. It names Franklin’s niece Sabrina Owens and Franklin’s son Kecalf Franklin as co-executors of the estate. The will also states that Kecalf Franklin and his children, Aretha Franklin’s only grandchildren, will get his mother’s main home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
The 2010 will found inside a cabinet in Franklin’s home, lists one of her other sons, Theodore White, and the niece, Owens, as co-executors of the estate. It also says Kecalf Franklin and her fourth son, Edward Franklin, “must take business classes and get a certificate or a degree” to benefit from the estate.
The 2014 will, does not make mention of the above requirements for Kecalf and Edward.
When the “Queen of Soul” died five years ago, family members believed she had not left a will leaving her four children expecting to share her assets evenly, as determined by Michigan law if someone dies without a will or a spouse.
In 2019, however, Owens went meticulously through Franklin’s home and found the two handwritten wills. And while both wills agreed that her sons would share the proceeds of their mother’s estate, such as royalties from her recordings, they differed on who would serve as executors, pitting her children against one another.
