Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris Jackson, discovered “irregular payments” being made by her late father’s estate that raised “serious” questions for her, Us Weekly can exclusively report.
According to court documents obtained by Us, Paris, 27, has objected to a request by the executors of her father’s estate, John Branca and John McClain, for legal fees.
Michael died on June 25, 2009. The beneficiaries of his estate are Paris and his sons, Prince and Bigi Jackson. Michael’s mother, Katherine Jackson, was also taken care of in the will.
The fees relate to work done for the estate between July 2018 and December 2018. The legal fees take a long time to be approved by the court due to Michael’s estate being quite complex.
In her motion, Paris called out the executors for not providing “adequate responses to the court’s inquiries or [making] a clear, enforceable commitment to bring these long-delayed fee petitions current.”
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Paris said she is “concerned” with the executor’s practice of granting “so-called ‘premium payments’ for unrecorded attorney time.” Her lawyer explained, “During this one six-month period alone in 2018, Executors request that the Court approve $625,000 in payments to three law firms for what they say is uncaptured time, without explanation as to why counsel was incapable of recording unbilled time, or why such a failure should not preclude payment.”
Her attorney added, “Even worse, these payments appear, at least in part, to consist of lavish gratuities bestowed upon already well-compensated counsel.”
In addition, Paris said it appears two of the law firms were already paid by the executors “in full, in violation of the court’s order allowing only partial payments of attorney fees until court approval is obtained.”
Paris’ lawyer argued, “These irregular payments raise serious and substantial questions about Executors’ ability to effectively supervise counsel by, at minimum … and refraining from wasteful, six-figure gift-giving to themselves and their colleagues.”
Michael’s daughter pointed out that the executors are asking for fees from five years ago to be approved. “Such a delay makes meaningful review of any underlying legal, much less real-time monitoring, of substantial legal work all but impossible,” Paris’ motion pointed out.
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The filing added, “Despite repeated inquiries from the Court, Executors are unable to provide even remotely satisfactory explanation for their delay, nor have they provided the beneficiaries any sort of plan to fix this ongoing and worsening issue.”
In addition, Paris said she found “several inconsistencies that demand close scrutiny of all fees and costs sought in the petition.”
She pointed out that the fee requests for each firm changed as the petition was modified by the executors. Paris wondered why one firm was initially owed $194,000, but then the amount grew to $211,000.
He had questions about another firm requesting $789,000 initially, but then reducing the bill to $258,000. “Why was the original amount so grossly overstated?” her lawyer asked.
Another firm’s bill went from $838,000 to $427,000 to $675,000. “Why are the fees repeatedly misstated in such large amounts?” her lawyer wrote.
Paris demanded that the entire request for $625,000 in legal fees be denied until the attorney’s invoices can be gone over in court. She also asked that they submit a plan to figure out how to handle the fees being approved faster.
In court documents, the executors argue that they had an agreement with Michael’s children to present petitions for legal fees in six-month increments.
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Last year, Katherine, 95, and the executors were going back and forth over the sale of a portion of Michael’s music rights to Sony for an estimated $600 million. Katherine objected to the sale.
In court documents, the executors scoffed at Katherine’s objection and said the deal was fair.
At the time, they told the court they paid her over $33 million since Michael’s death, including a $160,000 per month allowance, plus put her in a $15 million home. “Virtually no request of Mrs. Jackson for her care or maintenance has been declined by the Executors,” their motion read.
The judge ended up siding with the executors and approved the deal.
