A Michigan jury has decided that a handwritten document found stuffed in couch cushions at Aretha Franklin’s home after her 2018 death is her valid will.
Jurors deliberated for less than an hour after a two-day trial in Oakland County Probate Court after hearing testimony from two of Franklin’s four children. The decision officially settles a question that has caused a rift in the Franklin family: Who inherits the estate she left when she died of pancreatic cancer inside her Bloomfield Hills home?
“I’m very, very happy. I just wanted my mother’s wishes to be adhered to,” one of Franklin's sons, Kecalf Franklin, said after the verdict, the Associated Press reported. “We just want to exhale right now. It’s been a long five years for my family, my children.”
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Franklin’s initially family believed that her assets—including the royalties for her expansive musical catalog—would be split evenly among her four sons. Eight months after her death, however, two handwritten and conflicting wills were found hidden in her home.
“She’s speaking from the grave, folks: ‘This is my will,’” Craig Smith, an attorney for Franklin’s son, Edward, said during closing arguments on Tuesday about the 2014 document, the AP reported.
In a set of documents dated June 2010 found in a locked cabinet, Franklin listed her second youngest son, Ted White Jr., and a niece as co-executors of her estate. She also said that two of her sons, Edward and Kecalf Franklin, “must take business classes and get a certificate or a degree” to benefit from her estate.
But in March 2014, Franklin also scribbled a four-page will that was found in a spiral notebook inside her couch after her death. In those final wishes, she crossed out White’s name as an executor and replaced it with Kecalf Franklin’s name. She also excluded any mention of business classes and dictated that Kecalf would inherit Franklin’s cars and two of her four homes.
During the trial, White Jr. scoffed at the 2014 will, stating that his mother usually gets important documents drafted “conventionally and legally” with the help of her legal team. Jurors also heard arguments about Franklin’s signature on the later will, which she signed “A. Franklin” with a smiley face.
Lawyers for White Jr. argued that the name was merely a notation on the page and not an official signature. But lawyers for his brothers did not agree.
“That argument doesn’t hold water,” Craig McElvie, attorney for Kecalf Franklin, told jurors, according to the Detroit Free Press. “You don’t sign off on provisions, you sign off on the document.”
McElvie also pointed out that in the later will, Franklin made her intentions for the document known when she wrote, “Being of sound mind, I write my will & testimony.”
The conclusion of the trial, barring appeal, means that Kecalf will inherit the “crown jewel” of Franklin’s assets: her multimillion-dollar Bloomfield Hills home.
Franklin’s eldest son, Clarence, was not present during 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.
