Prince, Aretha Franklin, Howard Hughes, Pablo Picasso, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Sonny Bono, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Kurt Cobain are among the famous people who died without a will, and their estates followed a strikingly similar arc: years in court, millions paid to lawyers, and families split over money, property, and legacy. Wealth didn’t prevent it. Fame didn’t prevent it. In Lincoln’s case, being a practicing lawyer didn’t prevent it.
What “Dying Without a Will” Actually Means
When someone dies without a valid will, the legal term is intestate. A court then distributes the estate under a state statutory formula that puts surviving spouses and children first, followed by parents, siblings, and increasingly distant relatives.1Legal Information Institute. Intestate Succession The court also appoints an administrator, rather than an executor the deceased chose, to inventory assets, pay debts, and hand out what’s left. The whole process runs in public. For anyone famous, that means every asset, every debt, and every family fight ends up on the record.
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes died in 1976 with an estate worth roughly $2 billion and no valid will. What followed was one of the longest probate cases in American history. Around 400 people surfaced claiming a piece of the fortune, and courts had to evaluate roughly 40 forged wills, including the “Mormon Will” that purportedly left money to charities, employees, and a Nevada gas station owner. The estate wasn’t divided among 22 of Hughes’ cousins until 1983, and some disputes continued for decades. The U.S. government collected $169 million in taxes, and legal fees consumed an enormous share of what remained.
Prince
Prince died in April 2016 leaving no will and no instructions. The IRS initially valued his estate at $163.2 million; the estate’s administrator, Comerica Bank & Trust, appraised it at $82.3 million. Comerica sued the IRS in U.S. Tax Court, and after six years of litigation the two sides settled on a value of $156.4 million. The IRS also dropped a $6.4 million accuracy penalty. Under Minnesota intestacy law, his sister Tyka Nelson and five half-siblings were his legal heirs. Lawyers and consultants were paid tens of millions of dollars over those six years to administer the estate and work out a distribution plan.
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin died in August 2018 with an estimated $80 million estate and, at first, no will anyone could find. In 2019, her niece discovered three handwritten documents around the singer’s suburban Detroit home. One, dated 2014, had been tucked under a couch cushion. Two of Franklin’s sons, Kecalf and Edward, argued the 2014 note should control. Their brother Ted White II said a 2010 document found under lock and key should govern instead. In 2023, a jury ruled the 2014 note, signed at the bottom with a smiley face drawn inside the letter “A,” was a valid will under Michigan law. Roughly half of U.S. states recognize handwritten (holographic) wills, but their informality almost guarantees a fight over what they mean.2Legal Information Institute. Holographic Will
Pablo Picasso
Picasso died in 1973 with an estate appraised at $250 million, an enormous sum at the time, and thousands of paintings, sculptures, and other works to distribute. It took six years and $30 million in legal costs to divide the estate among his seven heirs. His personal life, which included children from multiple relationships, made the distribution a legal and logistical mess a clear will would have largely prevented.
Bob Marley
Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981 at age 36 with an estate reportedly worth $30 million. As a Rastafarian, he did not believe in writing a will. Under Jamaican law his estate was to be divided among his spouse and children, but Marley had eleven children, and his wife Rita was entitled to only about 10% under the statutory formula. Rita sued for a larger share and was later found to have forged signatures and backdated documents to transfer $9 million in assets to her name. Lawsuits have been filed in Jamaica, the United States, and England, and the estate, which now earns tens of millions annually from music royalties and licensing, has remained in legal dispute for more than four decades.
Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix died in 1970 at age 27 without a will. Because Hendrix had fathered two children out of wedlock who were not legally established as his heirs, his father, Al Hendrix, became the sole heir and took control of the estate. Al legally denied those children any benefit. When Al died in 2002, he left the estate, by then worth more than $80 million from music royalties and licensing, to his stepdaughter Janie, cutting out Jimi’s brother Leon entirely. Leon challenged the will in a Seattle court and lost in 2004. Lawsuits over Hendrix’s name, music rights, and legacy have continued for more than 50 years.
Sonny Bono
Singer, actor, and congressman Sonny Bono died in a skiing accident in 1998 with an estate worth approximately $2 million and no will. Despite her own reported $300 million fortune, Cher filed a $1.6 million claim against the estate for allegedly unpaid alimony dating back to their 1974 divorce. A 35-year-old man named Sean Machu also emerged claiming to be Bono’s illegitimate son, citing Bono’s own autobiography as evidence of the affair. Machu withdrew his lawsuit rather than submit to DNA testing. After months of proceedings, the estate was divided between Bono’s widow Mary, his daughter Chastity (now Chaz) from his marriage to Cher, and his daughter Christy from his first marriage.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 without a will, and his estate came under the control of his three surviving children: Bernice, Dexter, and Martin Luther King III. In 2014, Dexter and Martin voted to sell King’s personal Bible and Nobel Peace Prize medal. Bernice, who had possession of the items, refused to turn them over. A judge ordered the items released to the estate in 2016. The dispute is a reminder that intestacy causes more than money fights. Without instructions, families can also split over items of deep sentimental or historical value that no court formula can fairly address.
Abraham Lincoln
Perhaps the most ironic entry on this list: Abraham Lincoln, a practicing lawyer, died in 1865 without a will. His estate, worth about $110,000 at the time, went through probate. After paying $38.31 to creditors, the court divided the remainder into equal thirds: one-third to his wife Mary Todd Lincoln and one-third each to his two surviving sons. The process took 19 months. Even 160 years ago, dying intestate meant delays, public proceedings, and a formulaic distribution that may or may not have matched what Lincoln wanted.
Kurt Cobain
Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain died in 1994, and Washington state courts later found that several draft wills were invalid. His estate, eventually valued at approximately $450 million, passed primarily to his wife Courtney Love as the surviving spouse. A trust was established for their daughter Frances Bean, and income from Cobain’s company was split between Love and the trust, roughly 60-40. Draft wills sitting in a drawer don’t count. If a will isn’t properly executed under your state’s requirements, it’s the same as not having one.
The Patterns These Cases Share
Read together, the cases point to the same handful of problems.
Family fights become public and expensive. Prince’s estate paid tens of millions to lawyers and consultants over six years. Picasso’s heirs spent $30 million dividing the estate. Attorney fees for estate administration commonly run 1% to 7% of an estate’s value, and administrator compensation adds another 3% to 5% in many jurisdictions. Every dollar of that comes out of the inheritance.
Not everything passes through the will anyway, but the big things do. Retirement accounts, life insurance, joint tenancy property, payable-on-death bank accounts, and transfer-on-death securities pass directly to a named beneficiary and skip probate entirely. But music royalties, image rights, real estate held in the deceased’s name alone, cash, and other intellectual property don’t carry beneficiary designations. For Prince and Aretha Franklin, whose fortunes were largely tied to their catalogs, that meant the bulk of the estate flowed straight into intestacy.
Children can end up in the middle. A will is the primary way a parent nominates a guardian for minor children. Without one, a judge decides based on the child’s best interest, and grandparents, aunts, uncles, and family friends may all petition. Children over 14 may have some say. A single paragraph naming a guardian and a backup can prevent months of litigation.
High-net-worth estates lose tax planning options. Trusts, charitable giving strategies, and spousal transfers can reduce estate tax exposure, but they require advance planning. The federal estate tax exemption for 2026 is $15 million per individual, with a top marginal rate of 40% on amounts above the exemption.3Internal Revenue Service. Whats New Estate and Gift Tax4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 2001 Imposition and Rate of Tax Prince’s estate faced both a massive IRS valuation dispute and the resulting tax bill, problems that proper planning could have minimized.
Why Even Wealthy People Skip It
The common thread through these cases isn’t ignorance. It’s procrastination. Prince was 57 and had been famous for decades. Aretha Franklin was 76. Lincoln was a lawyer. Knowing you need a will and actually sitting down to write one are apparently very different things.
Some people avoid the process because they find it emotionally difficult to think about death or to make hard choices about who gets what. Complicated family situations make those choices harder, not easier. Picasso had seven heirs. Marley had eleven children. The more difficult the decisions, the more tempting it is to put them off. Others underestimate what they own. You don’t need a celebrity-sized estate for intestacy to cause problems. A house, a retirement account with an outdated beneficiary form, and a life insurance policy can keep a family in court for years.
A basic will from an estate planning attorney typically costs a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Set against six years of litigation, $30 million in legal fees, or a 50-year fight over a musician’s legacy, the math isn’t close.