Michigan jurors will only be tasked with deciding whether a 2014 scribbled note found in Aretha Franklin’s couch cushions can be accepted as the Queen of Soul’s valid will, a judge ordered on Monday.
The ruling narrows the issues the Oakland County Probate Court jury will decide in the highly-anticipated trial over the ownership of Franklin’s expansive estate, the Associated Press reported on Monday.
The trial comes about five years after 76-year-old Franklin died in 2018 of pancreatic cancer inside her suburban Detroit home. Since the singer did not leave a formal will, her family believed that her assets—including the royalties for her vast musical catalog—would eventually be evenly split among her four sons. (The AP reported that Franklin’s overall assets are estimated to be $4.1 million.)
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Eight months after her death, however, two handwritten and conflicting wills were found hidden in her Bloomfield Hills home. Now, three of Franklin’s four sons are divided over how to split their mother’s estate.
Ted White Jr., the second youngest son, contends that a June 2010 set of documents found in a locked cabinet should decide the fate of Franklin’s assets. That document lists White and a niece as co-executors and dictates that Franklin’s two other sons, Edward and Kecalf Franklin, “must take business classes and get a certificate or a degree” to benefit from her estate.
A March 2014 will, which was scribbled in a spiral notebook and stuffed in a couch cushion, offers a new version of Franklin’s last wishes. The second will, notably, crossed out White’s name as an executor and replaced it with Kecalf Franklin—and excluded any mention of business classes. Kecalf would also stand to inherit Franklin’s cars and two of her four homes.
Franklin’s eldest son, Clarence, is not participating in the trial and is under legal guardianship. According to the New York Times, Clarence stands to inherit less than his brothers in the 2014 will, but his representatives reached a settlement for an undisclosed percentage of his mom’s estate.
Judge Jennifer Callaghan, however, seemingly simplified the trial on Monday when she decided to only put the question of the 2014 will’s validity in front of the jury. Under Michigan law, an individual’s final wishes may be handwritten if no typewritten will is available.
