✍🏾: @lexisryann
After the singer died at age 76, her family believed she had no will. Under Michigan law, her assets would have been divided equally among her four sons: Kecalf, Edward and Clarence Franklin, and Ted White Jr.
In May 2019, the two handwritten documents were found at Franklin’s home in Detroit, one in a locked cabinet, the other in a spiral notebook in the couch which immediately divided the singer’s children.
In the later will, three of Franklin’s sons, all except Clarence, would receive equal shares of their mother’s music royalties, but Kecalf and his children would receive more of Franklin’s personal property.
According to the document, Kecalf would receive his mother’s primary home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., valued at $1.1 million at the time of her death, and the singer’s cars.
Kecalf and Edward favored this later document, saying that it represented her final wishes and revoked the earlier one.
White, who long played guitar in his mother’s band, argued for the 2010 will; at about a dozen pages, that document is much more detailed and has Franklin’s signature on every page.
After a two-day trial in a probate court, a six-person jury decided that the four-page document written by Franklin in 2014 should serve as her will. #BWLM💕
