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Prince heirs accuse former estate administrators of mismanagement
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 26 January 2017
Two heirs to Prince’s estate, his sister Tyka Nelson and half-brother Omarr Baker, have accused temporary estate administrator the Bremer Trust and its advisors – L Londell McMillan and Charles Koppelman – of mismanaging a tribute concert last October and refusing to hand over profits from the event.
The concert took place at the Xcel Center in St Paul, Minnesota last year, with performances from Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan, among others. However, it had originally been planned to be held in the larger US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. The venue was downgraded after several artists and the event’s original promoter pulled out.
According to the Star Tribune, Nelson and Baker filed legal documents yesterday seeking at least $7 million from the Bremer Trust, McMillan and Koppelman. The figure is apparently the amount the estate was guaranteed from the show. Although this promised amount and the payment actually received had been kept confidential, the $7 million figure was revealed accidentally at a recent estate court hearing.
The two heirs say that the Bremer Trust failed in its commitments to the estate by mismanaging the concert, and by not firing McMillan and Koppelman. They also say that the bank has provided “insufficient” details of the value of the overall estate, having not completed its valuation of most of its assets.
It seems that this dispute is the reason that Nelson and Baker opposed McMillan being made permanent administrator of the estate, against the wishes of the other heirs. They instead asked for Anthony ‘Van’ Jones, who had previously advised Prince on philanthropic endeavours, to be appointed as the individual overseeing the estate, who would sit between the heirs and the estate’s corporate administrators.
As previously reported, after a number of delays to the appointment of a permanent administrator, caused by this fall out, the judge overseeing the case ruled earlier this week that the estate did not need an individual overseer. The Michigan-based Comerica Bank will instead take on the management of the estate as corporate administrator without a court appointed individual advisor.
Meanwhile, the Bremer Trust is demanding payment of over $1.5 million for work carried out between October and December, while five other law firms are seeking payment of almost $400,000 from the estate.
