One would think that celebrities, surrounded by a team of financial and legal professionals, wouldn’t make terrible mistakes when it comes to estate planning. One feels they have “no excuses,” but the stories continue. While sensational, they often provide an opportunity to learn from them, so here are three more sad examples.
I often say that we don’t know what the future holds but if you did, and you knew the end was coming sooner than later, wouldn’t you take steps to protect your loved ones?
In this case, the celebrity is Chadwick Boseman, who shocked the world in 2020 by dying at the young age of only 43. He bravely fought progressive colon cancer for four years, and maybe he thought he would win. Of course, we know he didn’t. But it is surprising to learn that even though he knew he might not make it, he still did not make a will. One can only think he was in total denial about his situation. And the result was not good for his widow. Because he didn’t have an estate plan, his wife had to go to court and fight her in-laws over the assets. She ended up with only half, with the other half going to his parents. Maybe that would have been okay with Boseman. We’ll never know.
Another young celebrity who died too soon was Heath Ledger, who died in 2008. He did have a will, but it was outdated and did not include “after-born children.” That meant that a daughter he had with his unmarried partner was not included in any of the estate planning documents. His entire $20 million estate went to his parents and three sisters, not to his child or the mother. This could have been a tragic situation, but the Ledger family chose to “do the right thing” by putting the entire fortune into a trust for the daughter. That is what they thought Ledger would have wanted. The lesson is that they were not legally obligated to create that trust – it could have gone another way. And while there were comments that his daughter’s mother would be “taken care of” by his parents, nothing is documented about exactly how they went about doing so.
Larry King was famously married and divorced eight times over his lifetime. When he died in 2021, it became known that he had drafted a “secret will” handwritten in 2019 that instructed his $144 million estate to be split equally among his five children and cut his estranged wife out completely. The issue was he had an estate plan already in place that had been drafted by an attorney in 2015. Had he had the updates made to his estate plan by an attorney who could testify to his mental capacity and intent, the new directives would have been upheld. But he didn’t – which was the problem. Eventually, the estate was settled about two years after Mr. King’s death; details were not disclosed. But one can be sure considerable time and money was spent to get to that settlement.
What are the takeaway lessons from these three celebrity estate planning mistakes? In the first case, failing to create a will can leave loved ones battling for your assets. In the other two cases, meeting with an experienced estate planning attorney periodically to ensure your estate plan documents are all up-to-date would have saved much time, expense, and heartache. Whether you need to begin the estate planning process or make some updates, now is the best time. We don’t know what the future holds – why not take the time now to protect your hard-earned assets and loved ones? Call me at 513-399-7526 or visit my website, www.davidlefton.com, to learn more.