Jury Decides Whether or Not the Handwritten Document Found Under Aretha Franklin’s Couch Is Her Valid Will

In 2014, Aretha Franklin wrote a four-page document. Those four pages were found under a couch cushion in her home, months after her passing in 2018 at the age of 76.

A second handwritten document, written in 2010, was discovered in a locked cabinet. These documents reportedly read like Aretha Franklin’s will, The New York Times reports.

Both documents allegedly wished for different things and that put a rift in-between Franklin’s four sons.

According to The New York Times, the will found in the cabinet “specified weekly and monthly allowances to each of Franklin’s four sons. It also stipulated that Kecalf and Edward ‘must take business classes and get a certificate or a degree’ to collect from the estate.”

The will found under the couch cushion specified that “three of Franklin’s sons — all except Clarence — would receive equal shares of their mother’s music royalties, but Kecalf and his children would receive more of Franklin’s personal property. Kecalf would receive his mother’s primary home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. — valued at $1.1 million at the time of her death — as well as the singer’s cars.”

The Times reports the Kecalf and Edward preferred the 2014 will over the 2010 will stating that because it was written after the 2010 will it “represented her final wishes” more clearly. White argued that the 2010 will was more legitimate seeing as though the document included about a dozen pages and each page was signed by Franklin.

Over the last more than four years, Franklin’s family has fought in court over which of the documents, the one found under the couch cushion or the one found in the cabinet, was legitimate for how her assets should be divided.

At the time the wills were found, Aretha’s family thought she had died without a legal will, meaning her assets would just be divided equally between her four children. The issue with the found documents, however, was that neither listed witnesses, but the first document was notarized.

On July 11, 2023, a jury decided that the four-page document that was found under her couch cushion is her true will. Now, her family can move on from the situation.

“We just want to exhale right now,” Kecalf Franklin, one of the singer’s four sons, said outside the courtroom, The New York Times reports. “It’s been a long five years for my family and my children.”

The Times also reports that Franklin’s youngest sons have vowed to care for and support her oldest son, who reportedly deals with mental health issues.