Like other stories, the Gary Coleman story is fading. Probably for a bunch of reasons including that his estate is not that large; the controversy is taking place in Utah instead of Los Angeles; he was not a superstar; and the players are not that compelling.

Nevertheless, it provides an opportunity to illustrate why it is important to keep your estate planning documents up-to-date and that includes your advance health care directive or living will. In California, we call the document an advance health care directive.

Coleman was taken off life support one day after he fell into a coma. His living will provided that he should be taken off life support if two doctors believed his condition was “incurable, terminal and expected to result in [his] death within twelve months” or if doctors “diagnosed that [he has] been in a coma for at least 15 days and that the coma is irreversible, meaning that there is no reasonable possibility of [his] ever regaining consciousness.”

Should he have been taken off life support as quickly as he was? That is certainly not a question for me to answer. What I can say is that we all should be cognizant of who we have making medical decisions on our behalf!

Coleman’s remains were cremated on June 17 which was 20 days after his passing. The ashes are being stored until it is determined who is going to be the estate’s administrator or executor. Until then, an attorney has been appointed to serve in that position.

I have to confess. I had never heard of Gail Posner until this past weekend. However, now she and her dogs are all over the internet. The Wall Street Journal did an article on them that appeared in its Friday, June 18 edition.

Ms. Posner, was the daughter of Victor Posner who was a master of the hostile takeover in the 1980s. From what I can tell from reading various articles, he set up a trust for his daughter in the mid-1960s. At one time it was alleged to have approximately $100 million dollars in it, but an attorney who was a trustee of the trust said that it never had anywhere near that amount, but rather had “in the area of $6 million”.

Ms. Posner died in March 2010. She had a trust prepared in March 2008 which provided lavishly for her dogs. It also provided $5 million to one of her employees provided that employee cared for her dogs. She also provided that the assistant and the assistant’s mother could live rent free in Ms. Posner’s home and provided another $1 million to the assistant’s daughter. A body guard was bequeathed $10 million and another individual was bequeathed $5 million.

Meanwhile, Ms. Posner’s son was given a total of $1 million. Predictably he is upset. He has retained a probate litigator and has sued the attorney who drafted the estate planning documents, BNY Mellon, and Mellon Private Trust. The attorney who was named as the personal representative of the estate in the will has declined to serve.

This dispute will center on whether Ms. Posner was unduly influenced or incompetent when she signed her documents. Obviously had she never signed anything, her son would be her sole heir.

Here is a status report on the probate estate of Gary Coleman. As we left off last week, there was a will that had been filed naming Mr. Coleman’s former manager as the executor of his estate and its beneficiary.

However, there is a 2005 will that appoints a woman that used to run his corporation as his executor. Therefore, the former manager has bowed out.

Now, the woman he was divorced from, but lived with at the time of his death has filed a couple of documents. One is a handwritten codicil to his will (a codicil is essentially an amendment to a will) that provides that she is to receive Mr. Coleman’s entire estate.

Utah, like many states, has a statute that states that estate planning documents are invalid as to that part of the will that provides for the disposition to a spouse in the event there is a divorce. Therefore, his ex-wife has a large hill to climb. Her argument is going to be that they were common-law husband and wife.

In most states, including California, that would not be a successful argument because most states do not recognize common law marriage. However, Utah does recognize common law marriage under some circumstances. Ms. Price, the ex-wife, will have to prove that their relationship qualified under Utah law and then prove to the satisfaction of a probate court that the common-law marriage is an exception to its law that ex-spouses do not inherit under a prior written will.

Even if she cannot prove that she should inherit under the will, she may still be able to prove that she is entitled to inherit part of the estate as the common-law wife. It is possible that Mr. Coleman’s parents – who are being quiet for now – will get involved.

They would certainly inherit if he died intestate – without a will – and they could allege that Ms. Price used undue influence over their son. Probate litigation is not going away!

Part 4 will be up soon!

Gary Coleman probably did not leave a huge estate. Sadly, what he did leave probably not be distributed the way he would have envisioned. His last will was prepared in April, 1999 and names his manager at the time as his executor; leaves everything to that manager; and provides that he be cremated. He wanted a wake to be held in his honor and that the service be conducted by people who had no financial ties to him.

The attorney for the executor of the 1999 will has filed it and a hearing has been set for July 2.

In the eleven years since the will, Coleman’s life changed substantially. Besides no longer having the same manager, running for governor of California, moving to Utah, marrying, divorcing, he lived at the time of his death, with his ex-wife.

A codicil (similar to an amendment) to the will was allegedly handwritten by Coleman in 2007 and leaves everything to his then wife. The attorney for the ex-manager indicates that the codicil is invalid because Coleman was divorced at the time of his death.

The ex-wife has indicated that she will contest the will.

Whether he is right or not remains to be seen. Every state has its own probate laws. While the laws in most states are similar, they are not identical. Therefore, knowing California probate’s law is helpful to some degree to understanding Utah’s. However, the intricacies of the California probate code are going to be different from Utah’s. Moreover, California case law, is obviously not binding in Utah.

As a probate lawyer, I will be following this matter closely. It is a good example for me to provide to my clients about their need to keep on top of things.

Gary Coleman rose to fame at the age of 10 in 1978 starring in the television show Diff’rent Strokes. He made a lot of money from the show which ran until 1986, but in 1989 he sued his parents over their management of his money.

Coleman was taken off life support on May 28 at the age of 42. There was supposed to be a funeral on Saturday in Utah. However, it was cancelled.

Initially, it appeared from various articles that he did not leave any estate planning document – either a will or a living trust. From the articles that I have read, it is unclear whether he left a will and/or a revocable living trust. His agent said that he left a will, but an attorney in Provo, Utah had said that the only trust that he has seen was unsigned by Mr. Coleman. His parents retained an attorney who intended to file a probate.

At the end of last week, a different attorney indicated that there in fact was a will that was executed in 1999 in the possession of a former manager and close friend of the deceased which names the former manager as the executor. Among other things, it provides that the former manager has the power to determine Mr. Coleman’s final resting place.

By definition, the will could not provide for Shannon Price as he did not meet her until after 1999. Ms. Price was the woman he married, divorced, and was very close with at his death.

Meanwhile, there is an issue as to whether Mr. Coleman’s ex-wife should have been making the medical decisions on his behalf. While, he did refer to her as his wife recently and they were living together at the time of his death, they were officially divorced. Therefore, unless he had executed a document specifically providing for her to make medical decisions for him, one would think that she did not have the legal authority to determine whether he remained on life support.

What are the lessons from this? Update your estate planning documents. Your will; your trust; your advance health care directives; your thoughts concerning life support; your beneficiary designations should always be “fresh”.

Call your estate planning attorney – or find a new trust lawyer. Stay current!!!

Dennis Hopper was buried Wednesday in Taos, New Mexico. It appears that his death last week means that the Los Angeles County probate court will be the site of another interesting proceeding. As if they do not have enough already!

Everything that I have read about Mr. Hopper indicates that his life had a lot of twists and turns. His estate has been reported to be worth thirty million dollars. At the time of his death, he was embroiled in a divorce proceeding with his fifth wife, Victoria Duffy-Hopper. There are indications that prior to his death, there were settlement discussions in the divorce proceeding.

The couple had a prenuptial agreement that provided Duffy-Hopper with a percentage of the estate and some cash provided they were married and living together at the time of his death.

Were they living together? Good question and one that the probate court might be required to ultimately decide as they lived in side-by-side houses on a property.

It is likely that the court will order that the estate set aside money for the couple’s seven-year-old daughter if the estate planning documents do not provide an adequate share. However, more than likely they do as Hopper had indicated in court filings that he had arranged his affairs so that his four children would receive a “substantial portion”. Hopper had three adult children from previous marriages.

I am not sure whether the matter will be heard in Santa Monica or at the main downtown courthouse, but I am certain that one group of people will do well – the attorneys. It is in disputes like this that the real winners are the lawyers.

This is a follow-up to my thoughts after reading Mr. Jackson’s trust. Obviously, he was not an ordinary person and while he was certainly different than my clients, his desires were very similar to the great majority of my clients and to people everywhere.

In his “family” trust, he divides his estate into three shares in the short term. He provides that twenty percent of his gross estate shall be distributed to “one or more charities for the benefit of children and/or children’s causes.” He appoints his mother and the two co-executors of his will to select the charities.

One-half of the remainder of his estate, after all expenses and taxes have been paid, is to be divided equally for his children. Until a child is 21, the trustee is instructed to pay to or use for the benefit of the child the net income of the trust. Any net income not used, shall be added to principal. Upon the child attaining age 21, the instructions to the trustee change only slightly as it appears that all of the net income is to be utilized on behalf of the child. When a child attains age 30, he is to receive one-third of his/her trust; when the child attains age 35, one-half of the remainder or the second third; and at age 40, the child is to receive the balance of the trust.

The remaining one-half to be held in trust for his mother. She is to receive “as much of the net income and/or principal of the trust estate as the Trustee deems necessary or desirable, in his absolute discretion for KATHERINE’S care, support, maintenance, comfort and well-being.” Upon her death, the amount held in trust for her is to be added to Michael Jackson’s children’s trusts.

The distribution scheme, or a variation thereof, for his children is used quite frequently. Query, might he have set-up a different type of trust for his children that would have shielded and protected the assets from creditors, divorce, and wasteful spending.

That is something that I will explore in an upcoming post!

Michael Jackson’s trust is available on the internet for anyone to read. The fact that it is easily accessible dispels to some degree one of the “advantages” that attorneys (including this one) have offered of living trust over will and that is that the document is a private document and is not public record.

It is true that revocable living trusts, frequently called family trusts, are not required to be filed in the probate court upon the trust maker’s (also known as a settlor, trustor, or grantor) death as a condition of administering the trust. However, in the event that there is litigation, the trust will have to be filed in the probate department of the superior court. Once that happens, it is open season.

Does that mean that living trusts are not advantageous? No. I believe that living trusts are advantageous over simply doing a will in California because of the avoidance of probate. In some other states, New York and New Jersey come to mind, probate is a much simpler process than it is in California so that advantage is negated and there are many esteemed attorneys in those states who have a different view of revocable living trusts than do lawyers in California.

In my next post, I will provide a summary of what Michael Jackson’s trust actually says!