Article on Problems Surrounding Bob Marley’s Estate

McKen Carrington (Professor of Law, Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Texas Southern University) and Christopher Ogolla (Instructor, Academic Support, Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Texas Southern University) recently published their article entitled, Fame, Family Fueds, Lack of Estate Planning, and Ethical Misconduct in the Administration of the Billion-Dollar Legacy of Bob Marley, 4 Est. Plan. & Community Prop. L.J. 53 (Fall 2011). The introduction to the article is below:

Family feuds about inheritance can be acrimonious and protracted. They are particularly complex and expensive when a large sum of money is involved. But while posthumous family feuds are common, fights over inheritance and “family dramas have haunted famous [people] well into [their] afterlife.” This is no more so when the famous person dies intestate, for example, former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair, guitarist Jimi Hendrix, and musician Bob Marley, to mention but a few. What is more, these family feuds often involve personalities and property in multinational jurisdictions leading not only to pain and agony but also to protracted transnational family and probate litigation that spans across issues of blended families, inheritance laws, and rules of professional responsibility for the attorneys involved. Almost unequivocally, the overwhelming root cause of all these feuds is lack of estate planning.

This papers uses the story of the estate of musician Bob Marley to illuminate the problems of family feuds, lack of estate planning, and the ethical misconduct of lawyers involved in estate planning. It discusses Marley’s family structure, arguing that his blended family relationships were a recipe for legal confusion after he passed away. This paper notes that his wife, Rita, who was the custodial mother of the many Marley children, later ended up misappropriating funds from the estate and breaching her fiduciary duty. The paper concludes, noting that although his lack of estate planning may have cost his heirs significant litigation costs, Marley’s legacy endures because his message was equal parts cultural, spiritual, commercial, and political.