“R-espect, find out what it means to me,” sang Aretha Franklin. It’s unlikely that settlement involved an unfortunate family lawsuit he’d just filed against his children in a Michigan court.
The Queen of Soul, the giantess of 20th-century music and the fight for black civil rights, died in August 2018 and was initially thought not to have left a will. Therefore, under Michigan law, his estate would be divided equally between his four sons: Kecalf, Edward, Clarence, and Teddy. That in that moment of fleeting unanimity, they jointly chose a cousin—Sabrina Owens—as executor.
However, in May 2019, two documents — both handwritten — were found by Owens at the home where Franklin lived near Detroit.
One of them from 2010 in a locked closet.
The other, dated 2014, on a large notebook taped between the sofa cushions.
Two wills with different provisions: Three of the four children immediately separated and ended up in court: The trial ended the day before yesterday (Franklin’s eldest son Clarence lives in an assisted living facility for people with disabilities and remains uninvolved Dispute: His legal guardian’s lawyer had told the BBC informed that he had “reached an agreement whereby Clarence would receive a percentage of the estate, regardless of the outcome of the case”).
The 2010 will established the amount of weekly and monthly allowances each of Franklin’s four children would be entitled to, and also stipulated that Kecalf and Edward “must take business courses and earn a diploma or degree” in order to take up their inheritance can.
However, in the 2014 will, three of Franklin’s children – all except Clarence – would receive equal shares of their mother’s music royalties, however, Kecalf (and his children) would receive a larger share of Franklin’s personal property, i.e. jewellery, cars, musical instruments and numerous memorabilia from his very long career. According to the document, Kecalf’s maternal mansion in Bloomfield Hills is worth $1.1 million (it was now worth much more at the time of his death) and the singer’s cars (a Mercedes, two Cadillacs and a Thunderbird). Inevitably, Kecalf and Edward considered the latter document valid, arguing that it more accurately reflected the artist’s last wishes, and therefore revoked the validity of the previous one. Teddy, who played guitar for a long time in his mother’s band, supported the validity of the 2010 will: yes, older, but objectively longer (twelve pages), much more detailed, and with Franklin’s signature on each page, absent from the will instead most recent Will that emerged from the sofa (the somewhat adventurous methods of discovery are not surprising: Franklin was an absolute artist, but an inattentive administrator, in fact, with the inheritance she also left various arrears with the IRS amounting to tens of millions of dollars).
According to the precise information provided by the judge, the six-member jury only had to decide whether the last will was authentic and therefore valid, regardless of all other elements of the question. After just an hour of deliberation, the jury decided it was indeed real.
What would the great Aretha have said? In a letter filed in court after he resigned as executor, Owens wrote, “Given my Aunt Aretha’s love for the family and her desire for privacy, I would say she didn’t want to see that.”