Decision settles a disagreement Aretha Franklin’s family has had since her death in 2018.
The longstanding disagreement over how to divide up Aretha Franklin’s estate has finally been settled. On Tuesday, a Michigan jury ruled that a four-page handwritten note from 2014 that the singer stashed in a couch was her legally binding will, rather than a different handwritten will from 2010.
A six-person jury in a Pontiac, Michigan probate court rendered a verdict after less than an hour’s deliberation. Franklin apparently wrote the will in 2014 but it wasn’t discovered until months after her death in 2018.
“It’s been a long five years for my family and my children,” said the singer’s son Kecalf Franklin, according to New York Times. “We just want to exhale right now.”
The court decision now sets in motion a plan for how Franklin’s income and assets should be divided among her loved ones.
Upon the singer’s death at age 76, it was believed by her family that Franklin had no will.
