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Aretha Franklin’s 2014 last will and testament, found by her niece Sabrina Owens in a notebook in a couch in her home in 2018 after her death, has been ruled a valid will by a Michigan jury, the Associated Press reports and documents viewed by Pitchfork confirm. The decision settles a dispute between Franklin’s sons Ted White II and Kecalf and Edward Franklin; White favored a will drafted in 2010 and found in a locked filing cabinet, testifying that his mother would typically have important documents prepared by a lawyer.
Franklin did not have a formal, typewritten will, but under Michigan law any document authored by Franklin can be interpreted by the court as a valid will. The two wills under dispute are among three handwritten wills found by Owens months after Franklin died in 2018. While both the 2014 and 2010 wills provide income to all of her sons from Franklin’s music catalog, the 2014 version bequeaths Franklin’s home in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills to Kecalf Franklin and her grandchildren. And while the 2010 will lists Owens and White as co-executors, including a provision that Kecalf and Edward “must take business classes and get a certificate or a degree” to draw benefits from the estate, the provision is not included in the handwritten 2014 version.
The dispute between the wills is not completely resolved, as Oakland County Probate Judge Jennifer Callaghan instructed both parties to file briefs and attend a status conference next week to determine whether some provisions of the 2010 will should be fulfilled. Kecalf Franklin could also potentially be named executor of the estate.
Last year, Franklin’s declassified FBI file revealed how the bureau tracked her civil rights activism, particularly her friendships with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Angela Davis. In 2021, Jennifer Hudson starred as Franklin in the biopic RESPECT; she later performed “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” at the 2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. In 2019, the estate released Songs of Faith: Aretha Gospel, a collection of her first recordings captured in Detroit when she was 14 years old; she was also posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her life’s work.
