Last Thursday, along with 116 million other Americans, I viewed the first official trailer for Michael, Lionsgate’s $150 million Michael Jackson biopic-musical, directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring Jackson’s nephew Jaafar in the title role. While others parsed the accuracy of Jaafar’s moonwalk, I had a different set of questions, starting with: Why is Jackson’s probate case still open 16 years after his death? Though the estate has become a commercial juggernaut—it has earned $3.5 billion since his death in 2009, according to Forbes’ 2025 list of “Highest Paid Dead Celebrities”—the legal machinery overseeing the entity has never actually wound down. Also: How exactly did executors John Branca and John McClain end up running a multibillion-dollar global brand out of a corner of the court system typically reserved for validating wills, settling debts, and parceling out leftovers?

Somewhere along the way, administering the estate came to include underwriting film reshoots and brokering deals with abuse accusers. How did we get here? (Matt shed light on the movie’s third-act quagmire back in January.) One person who’d like answers is Paris Jackson, the star’s 27-year-old daughter, who recently filed an objection in the marathon probate case. She’s challenging “premium payments for unrecorded attorney time,” as the motion put it—and, more sharply, $625,000 in what she calls “lavish gratuities” paid to law firms like Kinsella Holley and Greenberg Traurig, which have already banked millions for their work. Paris suggests the money wasn’t for services rendered but for services rewarded. She’s also taken issue with a more-than-five-year delay in the estate’s submission of the fees and bonuses.

The response? An astonishing anti-SLAPP motion from the executors that casts her fee objection as a First Amendment affront—essentially, scolding Paris for daring to second-guess the executors who elevated the Jackson estate from near insolvency to spectacular profitability. “Attorneys do not work for free,” the motion reads. “At the risk of understatement, ordering individuals throughout the country, and across the seas, to perform personal services without pay would violate several basic public policies.”

People close to the situation tell me that Paris has become frustrated over how the estate is being managed—concerned that a system designed to protect an artist’s legacy has been bent over time toward preserving its own power. Of course, this was the case with Britney Spears, whose conservatorship lumbered on long after the rationale for it had evaporated. Meanwhile, the Jackson probate deserves scrutiny, too. Lately, the executors have been fighting a lawsuit by longtime Jackson associate Frank Cascio, who’s suing over “life rights” agreements designed to keep him and his siblings quiet about their own allegations of abuse. The executors have countered that Cascio’s money demands merely amount to “extortion” and that such hush deals fall squarely within their “fiduciary obligation to protect and preserve the assets of the Estate for the benefit of its beneficiaries.” Maybe so. But since when does probate include crafting NDAs?

However, the idea that Branca and McClain are dragging out the probate simply because it benefits them in the short term doesn’t track with what happens after the case finally closes. Once the assets transfer to the trust—as they inevitably will, and, as Paris wants, sooner rather than later—it won’t change who’s in control. Under Jackson’s will, Branca and McClain remain at the helm. The biggest difference is that they’ll operate with even less oversight: no court accountings, no judicial approvals, no public filings. As one probate veteran put it to me, “If you want to make Branca’s day, let this private estate distribute to the Trust so it can operate out of the public eye. That’s really the only difference.”

This isn’t the first time the Jackson probate apparatus has faced a judicial reality check. Back in 2022, Branca orchestrated the sale of Jackson’s catalogue to Sony for $600 million. When he sought Judge Mitchell Beckloff’s approval for the blockbuster deal, it triggered a challenge from the singer’s mother, Katherine.

Katherine’s objections were sweeping. She argued that the Sony sale violated a provision in Michael’s will that directed assets be placed into a trust for the benefit of unspecified charities and his three children—Paris, Prince, and Bigi. She also testified that Michael had told his family before his death that his assets should never be sold. Yet under the Sony arrangement, his heirs were contributing intellectual property to a joint venture with a corporation, not to the trust. In the process, they lost any power to control iconic works like “Thriller,” “Billie Jean,” and “Smooth Criminal.”

The court rejected her arguments. As an appellate panel later ruled, Branca and McClain were free to convert those assets—songs, royalties, likeness rights—into cash, stock, or whatever else fit their business judgment. But Katherine’s objection had another dimension, which was sealed until recently. She wasn’t just arguing about the authority to sell; she was questioning Branca’s competence in doing so. According to his testimony, Branca never ran the catalogue through a competitive auction, never solicited a bid from Lucian Grainge at UMG, and bypassed both Warner Music Group and the tech giants—Amazon, Apple—who might have wanted an exclusive. Katherine questioned whether he got fair market value.

So how did Branca prevail? He showed savvy. He might not have brought Sony’s rivals to the table, but he did shop the deal to the hedge fund ecosystem. Hipgnosis floated a valuation around 28 times annual earnings; Primary Wave proposed roughly 24 times. Branca wanted 30—more than the multiples fetched by Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen.

Branca also testified that the estate would benefit from selling while the market was still frothy—a prediction that proved prescient, as music-asset valuations have since cooled. After Katherine filed her challenge, he secured a fairness opinion from Houlihan Lokey supporting the valuation.

All of this persuaded Judge Beckloff, who ruled that the sale orchestrated by Branca was in the best interest of the estate and its beneficiaries. Beckloff not only praised Branca’s dealmaking, but reaffirmed the extraordinary latitude the executors enjoy. “This is no ordinary probate case,” he told the parties in an oral ruling. “The Estate is not merely about marshaling assets. In an effort to avoid financial meltdown and to secure assets for the benefit of the Estate, the Court authorized the personal representatives to continue to operate Michael Jackson’s businesses about eight months after he died. … What started out as nothing but debt and substantial ongoing obligations has turned into a $2 billion estate.”

Not everyone would agree that brand management ought to be part of the mandate—after all, it effectively sanctions activity unheard of in the probate world, like bankrolling pricey reshoots of the Lionsgate biopic. But the ruling underscored the sweeping nature of the executors’ discretion—a breadth that makes them nearly impossible to dislodge. Perhaps that’s why some family members have shifted to targeting fees, hinting at self-dealing. It’s a long shot, but given Beckloff’s prior rulings, it may be the only narrow opening they have left.

So why is the probate case really still open after 16 years? As readers may recall, the Jackson estate executors have been locked in a valuation war with the Internal Revenue Service. That dispute, now in its 12th year, centers on the provocative question of how to value a celebrity’s posthumous image and likeness for estate tax purposes. And the issue, of course, has lately grown more consequential as A.I. has made digital resurrection of celebrities profoundly easier.

Branca and McClain scored a major win at trial in 2021, when the United States Tax Court held that the relevant measure was the value of Jackson’s image at the moment of his death, regardless of any surge in popularity thereafter. Because Jackson died amid scandal, that significantly depressed the number—the judge pegged the value of Jackson’s name and likeness at just $4 million, a fraction of the government’s $161 million ask. (Here’s the ruling—which, incidentally, included a government expert’s estimation that a theoretical Michael Jackson biopic would produce a $144 million net profit for producers.)

But the executors didn’t come away unscathed— the court determined that Jackson’s song catalogue was worth more than the executors had claimed. The estate believes the court made a math error—a discrepancy worth roughly $20 million—and filed a motion for reconsideration. That motion has been pending for more than four years. And until estate taxes have been paid, the executors believe they can’t close the probate case.

Some, but not all, of the delay can be attributed to Trump-era government cuts. (After all, the tax authorities received a substantial infusion of resources under Biden.) The more plausible theory is that the administration of Michael Jackson’s estate has been swallowed by bureaucracy. Judges have rotated, staffers have turned over, institutional memory has eroded, and each passing year makes scheduling more difficult. The probate isn’t still open because of some grand design. It’s trudging along because, like so many things in government, it slipped between the gears and never found its way out.

Thanks, Eriq. I’ll be back on Thursday.

Matt