Though James Brown is known for hits like “I Feel Good,” the mess that has enveloped his estate would likely not be described in such glowing terms.
Since his death nearly eight years ago, the crooner’s estate has been embroiled in a near-constant battle with heirs over the otherwise clear wishes of Brown. The New York Times recently published an article about the debacle, raising issues that can impact other, ordinary families.
James Brown’s estate
Though Brown himself was known for living a wild life, his estate planning appeared to take an entirely different form. Unlike many celebrities who fail to take the time to draw up a detailed plan, Brown sat down with an estate-planning attorney and drafted a clear plan for what would happen with his assets after he passed away. Seeking to burnish his own reputation, Brown wanted the vast majority of his estate to go to creating a scholarship fund for disadvantaged children (Brown himself had not managed to get past the seventh grade).
All total, experts estimate that Brown left behind an estate valued at $86 million. Except for a few million put aside to cover family members’ education and the distribution of some personal mementos, Brown chose to cut his children and a woman he lived with for years and treated as a wife entirely out of his will. This decision proved costly, resulting in eight years of legal challenges, a fight that appears to be far from over.
The dispute over Brown’s will has implications for those without millions of dollars. For instance, issues like legal fights based on incapacity or preventing unhappy heirs from wasting time and money challenging a will can impact estates of almost any size. To find out more keep reading.
Incapacity and thoughts on Minnesota Will Contests
One of the arguments used by Brown’s heirs is that the will was created while Brown was suffering from diminished mental capacity and thus ought to be deemed invalid. Brown’s unhappy heirs claim financial advisors manipulated the soul singer who they say was vulnerable after decades of drug addiction.
With people living longer than ever, there are far longer periods where disgruntled heirs can claim they suffered from diminished mental capacity. Experts say one way to protect against this kind of claim is to draft your will early on, don’t wait until the very end of your life when such arguments could prove more convincing. Another way to avoid challenges based on capacity is to create a trail of paperwork that supports the decisions laid out in your will. When a will appears to reflect a sudden or surprising shift, it can be easier to attack as the work of outside influence. However, years of documents reiterating the same position become much more difficult to challenge.
Just how far in advance a person has to draft the will is up for debate. In Brown’s case, the singer drew up his will a full six years prior to his death, at 67. Though that would seem sufficiently early in most cases, it depends on the specific mental capacity of the person whose estate is being challenged.
Unhappy heirs
A common situation that results in wills being drug into legal disputes occurs when parents either treat their children differently or cut them out of their inheritance entirely. In this case, Brown left behind only personal items to his offspring, preventing them from accessing the millions that he intended to go towards scholarships.
Though a perfectly acceptable choice, this is exactly the kind of decision that can result in disputes by your heirs. One way of countering that is to make the downside of losing a dispute too much of a risk to take. This can be done by creating a no-contest clause in your will, something that says that if an heir challenges the will and loses, he or she is left with nothing.
Though that might seem to have solved Brown’s troubles, he gets credit for thinking ahead and including such a no-contest clause in his will. The problem, according to experts, is that Brown failed to understand that such clauses only succeed if you leave the individual heirs enough so that a challenge is not worth the risk of losing the inheritance completely. In Brown’s case, the children and his long-term partner were left only personal items and money for education, evidently not enough to avoid a fight.
Minnesota Estate Planning Law| Wills, Trusts and Estate Planning Lawyer
An experienced Minnesota estate planning lawyer can help walk you through the complicated process of establishing a workable estate plan. For more information on estate planning in Minnesota, along with a variety of other topics, contact Joseph M. Flanders of Flanders Law Firm at (612) 424-0398.
Source: “Downbeat Legacy for James Brown, Godfather of Soul: A Will in Dispute,” by Larry Rohter, published at NYTimes.com.
