A jury is to determine which of two handwritten wills found at Aretha Franklin’s home in Detroit, Michigan, is the late musician’s valid last testament, as disputed by her sons.
One was found in a cabinet, dated June 2010, which Ted White II, Franklin’s third son, claims is her true will and lists him as co-executor. Kecalf Franklin and Edward Franklin, her second and fourth sons, say a will discovered in a spiral notebook under a cushion, dated March 2014, is in fact the primary will. In the latter, Kecalf is the co-executor and would inherit his mother’s $1.2m (£934,000) gated mansion.
Franklin, a fiercely private woman, was said to have resisted writing a formal will despite years of ill health. She died in August 2018 at the age of 76. Her assets were to be equally split between her sons until the discovery of the wills nine months later.
Her fortune was estimated at $80m at the time of her death, but has subsequently been reduced to just under $6m given more recent valuations and years of unpaid taxes.
A six-person jury at the Oakland County probate court will hear from three of Franklin’s four children: Franklin’s first son, Clarence Franklin, who has special needs and lives under a guardianship in an assisted living facility, is not involved in the case. A lawyer for his guardian told the BBC that whatever the outcome, Clarence would receive a percentage of the estate.
The purpose of the case which began on Monday, Judge Jennifer Callaghan told the jurors, was to determine whether the 2014 document is a valid will. Handwritten and illegible, they would both be inadmissible in other states, but Michigan law may accept them on the basis of other criteria.
Recordings of three voicemail messages from Franklin released in the months before her death, regarding another will she was preparing, have been excluded from the case.