What is The State of Whitney’s Estate?
In 2001, she signed a six album, $100 million record deal. Also at this time, her drug use was no secret, so with that much money coming in, and the signs of mortality risk, advisors should have tried to set up an estate plan. Unfortunately though, they may not have gotten the chance, because throughout the next ten years, numerous big events occurred to make strategic estate planning nearly impossible.
After she signed the contract, her father was slowly dying of a heart disease and sued her for $100 million for helping her beat marijuana possession charges and negotiate her record deal. While the lawsuit was pending, lawyers could not move that money into an asset protection trust without it looking like a clear intent to defraud an existing creditor. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2004, but then Houston spent much of the next two years in rehab, and if she made an estate plan within that time, it would not escape challenges that she was not in sound mind to make those decisions. Around 2007, she was still going through a divorce with Bobby Brown. The divorce concluded the big events of that decade and she faded out of the limelight.
Currently, the big question is how much Whitney is worth? She never completed her six-album deal, so the full $100 million cannot be counted in her estate. She has a 10-acre property in New Jersey that was once said to be worth $6 million, but was recently appraised at under $2 million and that will barely cover what she owes in taxes and mortgage payments. Rumors are circulating that Whitney was borrowing money up to a few weeks before her death, but her representatives deny that she did not have money. They also note that she just finished movie and was paid for that project, so we will soon see what her lawyers have done to make that money last.
See Scott Martin, Whitney Houston Leaves Behind a Legacy of Music anad Estate Riddled With Confusion, The Trust Advisor, Feb. 12, 2012.