Meg Muldoon cannot recall the last time she dealt with a handwritten will.
“It’s been many, many years,” she said, explaining that computers are more efficient in working with such documents.
“In today’s world, it’s very simple to amend a change in a word document,” said Muldoon, an assistant vice president of advanced sales with the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company who provides technical estate planning and business support to financial advisors.
So news of three holographic or handwritten wills found in Aretha Franklin’s home, six months after the singer’s death last August from pancreatic cancer at the age of 76, is surprising to say the least. Lawyers and family members at the time said she had no will.
But those pieces of papers do have some validity because, according to Muldoon, in Michigan, where the “Queen of Soul” resided, holographic wills are recognized under the law. “As long as most of it is the handwriting of the testator and it is signed and dated, these wills are at least valid,” she said.
Michigan is one of 26 states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Virginia and North Carolina where handwritten wills are valid.
According to published reports, three wills were found: one dated March 2014 and found inside a spiral notebook under cushions and two from 2010 found in a locked cabinet after a key was located. An attorney for Franklin’s estate, David Bennett, said the 2014 document appears to give the famous singer's assets to family members.
Reports said two of her four sons object to the wills. A hearing is scheduled for June 12.
Muldoon said the court will want to hear from at least three people to ensure that the testator, the person who created the will, was of sound mind and feeling confident at the time she wrote them.
Because of the earlier will, Muldoon said the question becomes, “When you create a new will, do you revoke your previous wills? … So that would mean the ones written before 2014 would not be valid."
The wills appeared messy. with frequent strike-throughs. Muldoon figures maybe the singer amended the will to include the correct language or maybe Franklin was trying to amend or revoke the prior documents. These are issues the court will have to try and figure out by actually reading the documents, she said. Also, the question of “did she do it (the strike-throughs) or did somebody else do that,” will be considered, Muldoon said.
Muldoon added that if the wills are determined to be invalid, there are no other known estate documents. Franklin had no trust or other estate-planning document, so she would have died intestate. The state of Michigan would then determine how her assets are distributed.
Muldoon noted that she likes to pay attention to celebrities and their finances. “What’s interesting to me is oftentimes they don’t plan properly," she said. "If you have so much money and access to a legal team, I would think you would want to maintain your privacy by using a trust and avoiding probate so that the world doesn’t know what’s happening to your estate or how your asset is being distributed,” she said.
