Aretha Franklin’s Estate to Sell Late Singer’s Property to Help Pay Off her Remaining $5.3 Million Tax Debt

The estate of the Aretha Franklin, who passed away this last August from pancreatic cancer, has petitioned the court to sell a vacant block of land in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan to help pay off the singer’s tax debt of $5.3 million. The land, as well as a house being built on the plot, will be placed on the market for $1.4 million.

It was also revealed last month that Franklin reported a missing check of $178,000 to Bloomfield Township police back in June 2018. The investigation of the theft remains open, and has the possibility of adding more animosity among her family and her estate. The police tracked down the check and spoke with the teller who had endorsed it at the bank, but they did not release any further details of their relationship with the singer.

The diva’s estate attorney, David Bennett, claimed that she “always paid her debts” but she “did not immediately cash checks.” He said in December that “She had a lot of (pay) checks lying around that she had never cashed. I had to have some of them reissued because they were so old. I don’t know why she didn’t cash them, but it seems that the IRS figured some of it as undeclared income and are going after it.”

See Annita Katee, Aretha Franklin’s Estate to Sell Late Singer’s Property to Help Pay Off her Remaining $5.3 Million Tax Debt, Daily Mail, May 4, 2019.

Special thanks to Joel C. Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.