www.charlesjeromeware.com . "Here to make a difference."
Charles Jerome Ware, Attorneys & Counselors, is a Maryland-based national estates and trusts, inter alia, law firm. For an initial courtesy consultation, contact us at charlesjeromeware@msn.com, (410) 730-5016 or (410) 720-6129.
In my experience and opinion, if there was ever a modern American estate that was in desperate need of a " living revocable trust' it was that of the late billionaire owner of the NFL Washington Redskins professional football team --- Jack Kent Cook. With no revocable ( nor irrevocable) trust in place, The deceased former NFL team owner left only a will that had been amended 8 times, a $1.3 billion estate in almost total disarray, an angry widow's claim ( It is reported she eventually received about $ 20 million from a lawsuit against the estate), a disenchanted son's unfulfilled dream of owning outright his father's beloved Redskins' franchise, at least 7 years of lawsuits that helped to drain the estate of assets, and over $ 64 million in professional fees, etc.
Billionaire Cooke's estate planning and counseling, was clearly lacking. His final will left 7 executors for his estate ( far too many), most of them former employees. When presented with Cooke's will, most of the 7 executors had never even seen it nor knew of its instructions.
Jack Kent Cooke started out on his road to being a billionaire owner of media companies, sports teams, and real estate ( including New York's famous art deco Chrysler Building) valued at $ 1.3 billionaire by selling encyclopedias door-to-door as a high school drop-out. Although a highly successful and sophisticated businessman, his estate planning failed miserably. The lessons to be learned from his death continue to be relevant in estate planning to this day.
Cooke probably should have used a revocable living trust. With such a trust his estate would not have been required to go through the cumbersome probate process; which, by the way, is open to the inquisitive eyes of the public. His messy estate affairs would have remained private.
Having seven executors certainly created turmoil and unnecessary additional costs to the estate. As usual with such a large number of executors, there was dissension in the ranks which drove the executor fees to over $ 17 million.
Finally, it is apparent that Cooke failed to provide adequate liquidity ( cash on hand) to accomplish his estate goals. The estate ended up having to sell Cooke's beloved Redskins to Daniel Snyder for $ 800 million to pay estate taxes and so forth. This was unfortunate for Cooke's son, John, to whom his father had promised to leave ownership of the team.
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