Two documents found in a cabinet and couch of the late Aretha Franklin, which caused rifts in her family since her death in 2018, have come under the spotlight.
The singer’s handwritten will found in her couch after her death is a valid Michigan will, a jury said on Tuesday, a critical turn in a dispute that has turned three of her four sons against each other.
It’s a victory for Franklin’s second oldest and youngest children – Edward and Kecalf – whose lawyers had argued that papers dated 2014 should override a 2010 will that was discovered around the same time in a locked cabinet at the Queen of Soul’s home in suburban Detroit.
Aretha Franklin did not leave behind a formal, typewritten will when she died five years ago at age 76 after having pancreatic cancer. But both documents, with scribbles and hard-to-decipher passages, suddenly emerged in 2019 when her niece, Sabrina Owens, scoured the home for records.
