The wills appeared messy. with frequent strike-throughs. Muldoon figures maybe the singer amended the will to include the correct language or maybe Franklin was trying to amend or revoke the prior documents. These are issues the court will have to try and figure out by actually reading the documents, she said. Also, the question of “did she do it (the strike-throughs) or did somebody else do that,” will be considered, Muldoon said.
Muldoon added that if the wills are determined to be invalid, there are no other known estate documents. Franklin had no trust or other estate-planning document, so she would have died intestate. The state of Michigan would then determine how her assets are distributed.
Muldoon noted that she likes to pay attention to celebrities and their finances. “What’s interesting to me is oftentimes they don’t plan properly," she said. "If you have so much money and access to a legal team, I would think you would want to maintain your privacy by using a trust and avoiding probate so that the world doesn’t know what’s happening to your estate or how your asset is being distributed,” she said.