Celebrity Estate Lessons — Farrah Fawcett

Farrah Fawcett

Farrah Fawcett, well-known Charlie’s Angel, seemed to have done everything right with her estate plan. She made sure her only child, son Redmond who has struggled with mental health issues and drug dependencies his whole life, was cared for. She left money to her father, her boyfriend at the time of her death, and some other friends, but most of her $70 million estate went to a cancer charity. Both she and her sister died from cancer. Her artwork was all left to the University of Texas at Austin. If everything was set up so well, why are we talking about her? In 1980, Andy Warhol made two silkscreen portraits of Fawcett. According to long-time boyfriend and father of her son, Ryan O’Neal, one portrait was given to Farrah Fawcett and the other was gifted to him. He later gave it to Fawcett for safekeeping as his later girlfriends were not fans of having her face hanging on the wall. It was part of her estate until a week after she died, when O’Neal would remove it from her house.

The University of Texas sued O’Neal to get the artwork back. Despite paperwork showing that Fawcett insured the painting and listed herself as the owner when it was loaned out to museums, a jury found in favor of O’Neal.

But that’s not all; Greg Walls, Farrah Fawcett’s nephew, sued her estate’s trustee, Richard Francis, in 2018 alleging that he undervalued her belongings and he and O’Neal kept items for themselves. According to Walls, her Will stated he was to get all of her personal property. David Pinsky, a friend of O’Neal was hired to go through her storage units. Walls discovered items showing up on auction websites and entire units sold on the TV show Storage Wars. The people who bought the units said that the value was much lower than expected. While this was filed in 2018, I was unable to find out what happened with the lawsuit.

What could have helped in this case? Fawcett could have listed out all of the artwork she considered hers as part of her estate plan. While it’s unreasonable to list literally everything you own, down to your spare plastic cutlery, listing her higher-value or better-known items could have helped in the storage case also. If a listed item showed up as part of the auction, it could have helped in the lawsuit.

Okay, okay, I can hear you asking, “What happened to the red bathing suit?” In 2011 it was presented to the Smithsonian Institution by her estate.

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