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Jackson's will presents new complications

New York Times News Service

LOS ANGELES — Nearly a week after he died, Michael Jackson has not been buried, new complications have arisen over settling his vast estate and his will has given up tantalizing details, including his choice of Diana Ross as a guardian of his children if his mother were unable to care for them.

In short, Jackson's death has carried on much as his life, full of rumors, litigation and a shifting cast of characters acting on his behalf.

One thing was made clear by the family's latest publicists: despite gathering fans and a swirl of news media reports, there would be no memorial for Jackson at Neverland, the ranch he once owned in Santa Barbara County, near Los Angeles.

The family, however, was planning a public memorial for Jackson, 50, who died Thursday of undetermined causes. No details were released.

Officials in Santa Barbara County confirmed that representatives of Colony Capital LLC, the company that acquired the ranch last year as Jackson's finances spiraled out of control, had approached them Tuesday about a burial there.

That prospect brought a surge of fans and news media to the narrow two-lane country road leading there, and law enforcement officials braced for a memorial. But after examining state regulations on burying people on private land, the representatives were told the necessary state and local approvals would take "months, not weeks," said Michael Ghizzoni, the county's lawyer.

He said the discussions left open the possibility of a later burial there, but the family's wishes were unclear, and their representatives would say only that planning continued.

As they searched for a suitable place for Jackson's funeral and burial, the family and their representatives also sought to clarify issues regarding his assets and the custody of his three children, Michael Joseph Jr., 12, known as Prince Michael, Paris Michael Katherine, 11, and Prince Michael II, 7.

A five-page will written in 2002 and filed in state court Wednesday by two executors who were once business partners of Jackson gives the entire estate to a family trust, and names his mother, Katherine Jackson, as a beneficiary of the trust and as legal guardian of his three children.

The will does not mention Joe Jackson, Jackson's father, who the singer in interviews had accused of physically and emotionally abusing him and his brothers in their years performing as the Jackson 5. Joe Jackson has denied those claims and has talked in recent days of his desire to find out how his son died and his plans for a record company.

Amid the dry legalize came a surprising revelation. If Katherine Jackson were unable to serve as guardian, the will named Diana Ross, who helped start Jackson's career in the 1970s, as a back-up to raise the children.

A spokesman for Ross, who is 65 and has five grown children, said she had no comment.

At a hearing Wednesday, Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff of Los Angeles County Superior Court gave temporary custody to Katherine Jackson and scheduled a hearing on Monday and another in August to help sort out "this ball that is all of Jackson's business dealings."

Debbie Rowe, the mother of Jackson's two oldest children, has not made a claim for custody, nor has the mother of the youngest child. That woman's name has not been revealed.

In a further sign of the legal flurry and Jackson's capacity to attract the bizarre, a London woman filed a lengthy, rambling, handwritten petition that claimed she had married Jackson in 1970 — when he was 11 — and demanded his assets, among other things.

It was not clear if the will filed Wednesday was the only one. With Jackson employing a revolving door of legal advisers and others over the years, Katherine Jackson's lawyer, Burt Levitch, did not rule out possibility of multiple wills.

But if the 2002 will is deemed valid and a trust receives all of Jackson's assets, many of the details of his finances could remain secret. The trust documents are private.

"The trust mechanism is a way to keep random people out of the woodwork from coming in," said Edward McCaffery, a law professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

The value of the estate, mostly in holdings other than cash, was estimated in excess of $500 million, but Jackson also carried unspecified debt as his career foundered in recent years, in part over accusations of child molestation.

In the will, which Jackson initialed 10 times on the right margin, he named the lawyer John Branca and a longtime friend, John McClain, as the executors, and they were the petitioners in Wednesday's filing. A third person, Barry Siegel, was listed as a co-executor, but the filing said Siegel had resigned from the position in 2003.

Jackson gave the executors full power over his financial matters, including the buying and selling of assets, the continuation of his "business enterprises," and the selling, leasing or mortgaging of his property.