Estate of Denial:  A long-running legal battle over the fate of 1960s country singer “Gentleman” Jim Reeves’ music royalties ended this week with a ruling that his wife’s second husband isn’t entitled to claim a share.

Terry Davis married Jim Reeves’ widow, Mary, in 1969, five years after Reeves and his piano player were killed in a Brentwood plane crash. Mary Reeves Davis died in 1999.

Davis is not entitled to any further share of his late wife’s estate than the $100,000 she specified in her will, Judge Randy Kennedy ruled at the end of a legal fight that has gone on for more than a dozen years. That money was distributed years ago. Davis had sought a percentage of the estate and a year’s worth of spousal support instead.

Jim Reeves’ niece, who is among the heirs who have been fighting Davis’ claim to the estate for more a decade, said she was relieved by the ruling.

Continue reading about the battle over Jim Reeves' royalties.

Estate of Denial:  The Michigan Supreme Court has ordered a judge to return the estate of civil rights icon Rosa Parks to her longtime friend Elaine Steele and the institute the two women founded in 1987 to carry on Parks’ legacy.

 In a tersely worded order Thursday, the high court said Wayne County Probate Judge Freddie Burton Jr. and the Michigan Court of Appeals wrongly stripped Steele and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development of their financial stake in Parks’ estate.

 The Supreme Court said Steven Cohen, the lawyer for Steele and the institute, did not divulge details of a 2007 confidentiality agreement that resolved an estate dispute involving the institute, Steele and Parks’ 13 nieces and nephews.

Cohen said Thursday’s decision is a significant victory for his clients.

“They are thrilled and gratified that Rosa Parks’ wishes are finally being honored,” he said.

He said the order requires Burton to return all of his clients’ property and, within 30 days, to remove attorneys John Chase Jr. and Melvin Jefferson Jr., whom Burton put in charge of the estate after Parks died in 2005. They are to be replaced with Steele and retired 36th District Judge Adam Shakoor, whom Parks had designated to handle her estate. Steele is Parks’ longtime friend, assistant and caregiver.

Alan May, who represents Chase and Jefferson, said Friday that he wasn’t aware of Thursday’s decision and needed time to review it. Lawrence Pepper, who represents Parks’ nieces and nephews, agreed.

“We need some time to sort things out and look at this order,” Pepper said, adding that he doesn’t know how realistic it will be for Burton to […]

Estate of Denial:  THE premiere of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a suitably high-profile occasion.

This is, after all, the long-awaited screen version of what has become a publishing ­phenomenon almost on a par with the Harry Potter series.

Author Stieg Larsson never knew how successful he would be as he died just before his first best-seller was published.

But his heirs have certainly reaped the benefits. More than ­ 50 million people have bought a Stieg Larsson thriller and they’re still ­buying in droves. If Larsson’s estate makes one pound from each book sold – a conservative estimate – then his heirs have already made around £50million from the novels alone.

The film rights, which have been sold twice, brought in more. The first film adaptation, made by a Swedish company, has generated more than £70million. Sony bought the English-­language rights with American ­producer Scott Rudin and it is their version, directed by David Fincher, which premiered on Monday and will go on general release on Boxing Day.

The fact they spent $100million on it suggests they are confident it will not only recoup its costs but surpass them by some margin.

Shot largely in Sweden, the film stars Bond actor Daniel Craig – suitably Nordic and gloomy as investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth Salander, the deeply disturbed computer whizz anti-heroine is played by Rooney Mara, known so far only for a small role as the girlfriend who dumps Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the beginning of The Social Network.

The ­impressive supporting cast includes Christopher Plummer, Joely Richardson, Steven Berkoff, Stellan Skarsgard and former ER heartthrob Goran Visnjic. With that kind of […]

Estate of Denial:  More than 40 years after the death of country singer “Gentleman” Jim Reeves, a Nashville court will determine the fate of his musical legacy – and the ownership of his considerable posthumous royalties.

Reeves heirs – chiefly his nieces – and the surviving second husband of his widow Mary Reeves Davis will return to Davidson Country Probate court January 23.

The two-day trial will determine how big a stake Terry Davis, the second husband, has in Mary Reeves Estate, which owns Jim Reeves’ music royalties. Those royalties have ranged from $100,000 to $400,000 per year, according to court records.

Jim Reeves was a country crooner and ambassador of the “Nashville Sound” of the 1950s and 1960s. One of his best-known songs, “He’ll Have to Go,” includes the lyrics “Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone.” He died in a Brentwood plane crash in 1964 at the age of 39.

Los Angeles Times:  The late James Brown once warned the world: “Papa don't take no mess.”

So one might assume that Brown — the Steve Jobs-slash-Albert-Einstein-slash-Benjamin-Franklin of funk (that's right Isaacson, we're paging you!) — would be pleased with news from the Associated Press that a professional money manager has been able to take the atrophied remnants of Brown's charitable trust and effect a remarkable turnaround, wiping more than $20 million in debt off the books and putting it in a position to fund thousands of college scholarships to poor students.  The credit goes to a series of canny licensing deals.

But that arrangement may now be in peril due to a challenge from two ousted trustees, Adele Pope and Robert Buchanan, who have filed a brief with the South Carolina Supreme Court that might be best summed up in the lyrics to Brown's 1973 hit “The Payback, Pt. 1”:

“I can dig rappin'… I can dig scrappin'. But I can't dig that backstabbin'!“

Estate of Denial:  France’s richest woman threatened to emigrate today after a judge ruled that she was ‘mentally unfit’ to manage her £15 billion fortune.

Liliane Bettencourt, who inherited the L’Oreal cosmetics fortune, was told that she had dementia and Alzheimer’s and is no longer well enough to run her business affairs.

In turn, the 88-year-old said she was fine, and accused her daughter of plotting against her to try and wrestle control of one of the most successful companies in the world.

Mrs Bettencourt, who turns 89 on Friday, is also suspicious of France’s judicial authorities who are investigating her for allegedly giving brown envelopes full of cash to leading politicians in return for tax breaks.

Estate of Denial:  Bradford Lund, heir to an immense Disney fortune and son of local developer Bill Lund, wants a federal judge to fire his state-appointed legal guardian.

Lund, his father, and other members of the family have been embroiled in a nasty fight over hundreds of millions of dollars in a trust left to Walt Disney’s grandkids. An articleabout the flap last year in the Arizona Republic exposed the family’s squabble and how it ended up in probate court.

In a nutshell, Bill Lund married Disney’s daughter, Sharon, back in the 60s, and had twins with her. After their divorce in 1977, Bill was made one of the trustees to the kids’ fortune. He and his daughter, Michelle, had a falling out after she suspected him of dabbling in her financial affairs while she was laid up in 2009 with a medical condition.

Estate of Denial: Billionaire L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt is ready for “nuclear war” with her daughter and has asked her lawyers to revoke a reconciliation deal the two struck last year, according to a French Sunday paper.

Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers had, in one of a series of lawsuits, tried to have her 88-year-old mother declared mentally unfit to manage France’s largest private fortune, but in December the two announced that they had resolved their differences.

However Bettencourt’s laywer, Jean-Rene Farthouat, told France’s Journal du Dimanche that relations have turned hostile again.

“I saw Lilliane Bettencourt on Friday, and she is in favour of nuclear war, but we are waiting a bit before taking action,” Farthouat told the paper and later confirmed the quotes to AFP.

In a Friday letter, the multibillionaire asked her lawyer to “act firmly and without delay against the activities of (her) daughter.”

Estate of Denial:  The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Stern v. Marshall, 131 S. Ct. 2594 (2011), has a narrow holding, but potentially enormous implications for bankruptcy courts and litigation in the federal courts. The authority not just of bankruptcy judges but also of federal magistrate judges is now uncertain.

The case involved a dispute between Anna Nicole Smith and Pierce Marshall over inheritance from the very large estate of J. Howard Marshall. To make a long story short, Smith, the widow of Howard Marshall, filed for bankruptcy in the Central District of California. Pierce Marshall, Howard Marshall’s son, filed a proof of claim, primarily alleging that Smith had defamed him. Smith then filed a counterclaim asserting that Pierce Marshall tortuously interfered with her ability to recover from Howard Marshall’s estate. The bankruptcy court ruled in favor of Smith on her counterclaim and awarded her $425 million, which ultimately was reduced to $88 million.

Subsequent to the bankruptcy court’s decision, the Texas probate court ruled in favor of Pierce Marshall. This question, therefore, was one of preclusion. Did the bankruptcy court have the legal authority to issue a final judgment on the state law counterclaim, in which case there was preclusion of the Texas probate court’s decision?