Daniel Nan­coo

Aretha Franklin may have been the Queen of Soul, but she cer­tain­ly was not the Queen of record-keep­ing. Her fail­ure to en­sure that her last will and tes­ta­ment was prop­er­ly record­ed and safe­ly stored, re­sult­ed in a five-year long dis­pute over her vast es­tate among her chil­dren af­ter her death in 2018 .

When Aretha died from can­cer in Au­gust 2018, it was wide­ly be­lieved by fam­i­ly mem­bers that she had not pre­pared a will dic­tat­ing how her as­sets of rough­ly US$6,000,000 ($40,000,000) in re­al es­tate, cash, gold records and furs, or to her mu­sic copy­rights would be man­aged.