Bigi Jackson in 2022; Katherine Jackson in 2013.Photo:Kevin Winter/Getty ; Ethan Miller/Getty
Kevin Winter/Getty ; Ethan Miller/Getty
Katherine Jacksonis firing back at her grandsonBigi Jacksonamid an ongoing legal battle overMichael Jackson’s estate.
Days after Bigi (formerly known as Blanket)objected in a court filingto his grandmother using funds from the King of Pop’s estate to pay her legal fees in anongoing dispute with the executorsover the singer’s catalog sale to Sony, Katherine has filed a response.
The filing states, “… it seems clear to [Katherine] that the Executors are holding all of the assets in the Estate in order to keep control over them, and to avoid the more liberal distribution requirements of the Trust.”
Katherine Jackson and Bigi Jackson at the immortalization of Michael Jackson at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre Hand & Footprint ceremony in January 2012.Lester Cohen/WireImage
Lester Cohen/WireImage
Katherine argues that “the Executors cannot in good faith contend that the Estate does not have sufficient available funds to allow the Trust to make the requested payment,” per the filing, considering it is currently valued at $1.5 billion.
According to the documents, attorneys on behalf of late singer’s mother claim that there would be no “loss to creditors or injury to the estate or any interested person” to cover her legal fees. “This vastly exceeds its potential liabilities, and leaves hundreds of millions of dollars available for the remainder beneficiaries,” the papers state.
The filing also argues against a point that the executors' attorneys made at a March 8 hearing, noting that 20 percent of the estate is to be donated to charities. “…Nothing in the Trust requires those payments to be made before any preliminary distribution to other beneficiaries,” the papers read.
(Katherine herself is not a beneficiary of the estate like the singer’s children, but is instead a sole beneficiary of a sub trust in Michael’s will.)
Michael Hickey/WireImage
Katherine and her attorneys also argue in the filing that the court is within its jurisdiction to instruct executors to pay her legal fees and that she properly satisfies all of the requirements for it to do so.
In court last Friday, her attorney Adam Pines once again requesting that the estate pay the half a million dollars in attorney fees Katherine has accumulated while appealing last year’s decision.
While the deal was not disclosed in the filing, it seems to be the estate’s estimated $600 million catalog sale to Sony.
Prince Michael Jackson, Katherine Jackson, Bigi Jackson, and Paris Jackson attend the immortalization of Michael Jackson at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre Hand & Footprint ceremony in January 2012 in Los Angeles.Lester Cohen/WireImage
It seems as though Bigi and Katherine were initially aligned in the case involving the estate’s proposed transaction, but the two parties began to disagree with one another as a judge ruled last year that the sale would move ahead. Bigi and his siblings,PrinceandParis, approved the decision, while Katherine filed an appeal, which is currently pending.
“It is readily apparent that a reversal on appeal would be an extreme longshot,” lawyers wrote in the objection on behalf of Bigi. “Given those odds, Bigi decided not to waste his resources to participate in an appeal. Nonetheless, Katherine has decided to appeal this court’s ruling. That decision is not for the benefit of the heirs.”
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The documents also state that Bigi isn’t entirely against the estate paying for Katherine’s attorneys, as he supported payment of “reasonable attorney fees and costs” for her initial objection to the deal as she presented “essential evidence.”
source: people.com
