The battle over pint-size actor Gary Coleman's estate underscores the importance of a clear, coherent will — and the pitfalls of having more than one will in existence.
When he died at 42 on May 28 after suffering a brain hemorrhage, it became clear that he had left three different wills — including one that was handwritten.
Predictably, battle lines are being drawn over which will reflects his true intentions.
“People often leave a trail of wills behind them,” said Laura Zwicker, a partner in the law firm Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Macht-inger LLP. “The difficulty is proving which is the final will and which is the real will that the client [wanted] executed.”
Legally speaking, the last will written is the binding document. But that will must be well-communicated so that there is no confusion about the client's intent.
“The most important thing about a will is that it be clear and unambiguous,” said Ronald Aucutt, partner and leader of the private-wealth-services group at McGuireWoods LLP.
When multiple wills surface and all of them are vague or poorly worded, courts tend to focus on uncovering the deceased's true intent, based on “clear and convincing” evidence. Sometimes, even a quickly scrawled, handwritten will provides evidence of that intent and holds up in court.
Mr. Coleman, the 4-foot-8-inch star of the TV show “Diff'rent Strokes” — and onetime gubernatorial candidate in California — left a mess for his complicated family network. He was estranged from his parents and was divorced from Shannon Price but was living with her at the time of his death.
She has produced a handwritten will that leaves the estate to her and has said that she and Mr. Coleman were planning to marry again.
Meanwhile, Todd Bridges — who played Willis, screen brother of Mr. Coleman's character, Arnold, on “Diff'rent Strokes” — said that he had paperwork making clear his friend's final wishes to exclude his parents from the will. Mr. Coleman also had an earlier, formal will crafted with his attorney in 1999, which names a friend as beneficiary.
It is unclear how much his estate is worth, but he made about $18 million when he starred in the sitcom.
Also unclear is whether Mr. Coleman had a financial adviser. If he did, that person should have encouraged him to get his affairs in order, lawyers agree.
Naturally, it can be an uncomfortable topic to broach at the outset, though.
“Nobody ever wants to address mortality prematurely,” said Adam T. Sherman, an adviser and chief executive with Firstrust Financial Resources, a firm that manages $650 million in assets. “This whole topic brings into account discussions that spouses don't want to have together and parents don't want to have with children.”
But when clients don't have a clearly written will that stands up to court scrutiny, an adviser runs the risk that much of the estate that they have worked to build and preserve will be lost to attorney fees.
“Financial advisers take so much time and quite often do a wonderful job in getting finances in order, but if they don't take the extra step of making sure the estate plan is done by someone who is as fine a practitioner as they are, everything that they have done goes up in smoke,” said H. Neal Wells III, of counsel at Slovak Baron & Empey LLP.
The best thing for advisers to do, lawyers said, is to try to walk a line between getting too involved in the details of who gets what and just making sure that a well-executed and clearly written will exists.
“A disorganized estate is something an adviser can help with, hopefully without getting involved in who gets what,” said Joseph L. Wyatt Jr., senior of counsel at Morrison & Foerster LLP.
Oftentimes, financial advisers are the ones alerting lawyers to important changes in an estate, Mr. Aucutt noted. That's because advisers have more-regular contact with clients.
“I have had clients come to me with useful suggestions that financial advisers have made,” he said. “Clients have the idea that if they're always calling me and engaging me in conversation, I'll send them a bill. And they're right. With other professionals, like advisers, there's more comfort with having more-regular conversations.”
E-mail Lisa Shidler at [email protected]. E-mail Hilary Johnson at [email protected].
