As news breaks that Bobbi Kristina Brown will be moved to a long term care facility, one wonders what will become of her estate. Or at least those of us in the estate planning field wonder. Her mother, Whitney Houston, left her reportedly $20 million estate in trust for Bobbi Kristina per the terms of her 1993 will. Bobbi Kristina should have received 10% of that on her 21st birthday last year under the terms of the trust. Bobbi Kristina's assets will go to her closest living relatives i.e. her father, Bobby Brown. The remaining 90% of the trust will be distributed per the terms of Whitney's will which means to her mother and her two brothers. Bobby Brown was also listed as a trust beneficiary, as was her father who died in 2003, but is precluded from inheriting from Whitney due to their 2007 divorce.
Several points:
1. Whitney should have updated her will multiple times - as her daughter aged, after the death of her father in 2003, and after her divorce in 2007.
2. Distributing trust assets to a child at the age of 21 is a bad idea. I never draft a trust that permits a distribution prior to age 25. I also have a clause prohibiting distributions to beneficiaries suffering from drug use, alcohol abuse, or a gambling problem.
3. Recreational drug use is expensive. In an age where Lou Reed's estate was valued at $20 million primarily based on one song ("Walk on the Wild Side"), a $20 million estate seems small for an artist of Whitney's stature recording in an era of larger royalties and multi-platinum CDs, with a film career to boot. Not that Lou Reed did not do drugs.
