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Business News Legal
James Brown estate agreement overturned
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 4 March 2013
The matter of James Brown’s estate is back up for debate after the Supreme Court in South Carolina overturned a 2009 settlement.
As previously reported, after much dispute and legal wrangling between family members and the trustees of the estate of the late godfather of soul, a deal was struck in May 2009 by which half of Brown’s assets would go to two charitable trusts, while a quarter would go to his widow Tomi Rae Hynie and the remaining quarter to his adult children.
By that point Brown’s fortune wasn’t massive, various debts having been paid off since the singer’s death in 2006, and with allegations of mismanagement of the estate by trustees. But Brown’s name and intellectual property remain valuable of course, so the future revenue that could be received by each of the estate’s beneficiaries could be substantial.
But, said some former associates of the soul man, the deal – brokered by then South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster – ignored Brown’s dying wish that the vast majority of his future fortune go to charity, to fund education for both his grandchildren and “needy children” in South Carolina and Georgia. McMaster’s deal, they argued, had given family members a much bigger slice of the pie than Brown ever intended.
Trustees who had been pushed out of negotiations following the mismanagement allegations sued over the settlement, and now South Carolina’s Supreme Court has agreed with the dissenters, saying that McMaster strayed too far away from the wishes stated in Brown’s will, a move that would cause concern to other citizens in the state who wish to ensure that the majority of their assets go to charitable causes after death. A lower court will now have to reconsider what to do with the estate, although the Supreme Court did not reinstate the trustees who sued over the settlement.
Both McMaster and his successor in the AG job in South Carolina, Alan Wilson, last week said they believed the 2009 decision on the Brown estate was legal, though respected the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the agreement. McMaster also told reporters: “I believe we took the correct legal steps to make the very best of a bad situation. We worked hard to see that Mr Brown’s wishes were effectuated to the furthest extent they could be”.
