Malcolm X married Dr. Betty Shabazz in 1958. She passed away in 1997 after she received burns on 80% of her body when her twelve-year-old grandson lit a fire in her apartment. No one was able to find her Will, although a number of family members thought she had one. It might be worth pointing out that paper does burn, although I couldn’t find anything saying how extensive the fire was.
Two of Shabazz’s six daughters, Ilyasah and Malaak were named executors of the estate. A third daughter, Malikah, has accused them of mismanaging the estate, not paying tax bills, and spending money on themselves. The other two daughters have fired back stating that it was in fact Malikah who has dragged out the proceedings for over a decade.
The feud reaches back to 2002, when some of Malcolm X’s items were put up for auction. Malikah was accused of taking some of his papers to Florida and put them in storage. When the bill for the unit went unpaid, the documents were auctioned off (imagine that Storage Wars episode). The family paid $300,000 to get the documents back They’re currently being rented to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem for 75 years.
In 2007, Lori Anne Douglass, Malikah’s attorney, was named her guardian ad litem. A guardian ad litem is a person who represents the person in court, but doesn’t make decisions for them. Douglass published a report in 2009 accusing the executors of prepaying themselves commissions against their lawyer’s advice. Due to penalties and interest, the tax bill has now bloomed to $2 million, more than the tangible value of the estate. The executors took two years to come up with an accounting of the estate, finally producing one after a contempt of court order. Since then, it has been revised multiple times. Because it took so long to write the initial accounting it would be impossible to tell if any of Shabazz’s personal items went missing, particularly considering that some items were lost in the fire.
If you’re named the Trustee of a family’s Trust, getting all the documents together and making sure everything is done correctly can be very difficult and cause fights between family members. Luckily for you, Harrison Estate Law is available to help make sure all documents are filed and kept up to date. If you’re struggling as a Trustee, give us a call and schedule a free consultation.