In new legal documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, Paris Jackson has accused the executors of her late father Michael Jackson's estate of mishandling millions of dollars. In the court filing, Paris claimed that administrators John Branca and John McClain took in 'enormous sums of cash' from the estate but failed to properly invest substantial funds that could have significantly boosted its profitability.
Paris's lawyers said that she is '"increasingly concerned the estate has become the vehicle for John Branca to enrich and aggrandize himself". The late singer's daughter stated that the focus of the co-executors should be to "serve the beneficiaries' best interests and steadfastly preserve her father's legacy".
The 27-year-old claimed that the co-executors "apparently undertook no effort to" properly invest $464 million in cash the estate had on hand. Attorneys have stated that the co-executors made no initiative to "make this substantial sum productive" to the estate's bottom line.
According to legal filings, Paris said that 10 law firms received more than $4.5 million in 2021, surpassing the sums distributed to any individual beneficiary during that year. She claimed that between 2009 and 2021, executors were paid a total of $148 million.
The filing came after Paris was unsuccessful in a previous legal attempt to audit the executors’ management of the estate’s finances.
In a filing made to the Superior Court of California on October 9, attorneys claimed that Paris "has received roughly $65 million from the Estate in benefits," and moreover argued that she "would have never received that had the executors followed a typical playbook for an Estate like this one in July 2009."
The documents maintained that Paris only received such a large sum because of the restructuring of the estate executed by the attorneys. A previous July 15 filing revealed that Michael was in over $500 million in debt at the time of his passing, and noted that the attorneys' payouts were made because of how they were able to turn around the late singer's finances, and subsequently turn it into such a powerful estate.
Alongside Paris, Michael also had two sons – Prince Jackson and Bigi Jackson – each of whom is a beneficiary of his estate.In a June filing against the law firms, Paris alleged that her father's estate had "failed to provide adequate responses" as to why $625,000 was allocated as "premium payouts" to three separate law firms back in 2018 for unrecorded attorney time.
The singer was just 11 years old when her father, Michael, then 50, died from an acute overdose of the anaesthetic propofol combined with sedatives, for which his physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, was later found responsible.