Paris Jackson has secured a significant legal victory against the executors of her late father’s multibillion-dollar estate, with a Los Angeles judge ordering the return of $625,000 in bonuses paid to three outside law firms in 2018. The ruling, signed on April 29 and made public on May 13, marks one of the most consequential outcomes yet in the 28-year-old singer’s months-long campaign for financial transparency and accountability within the Michael Jackson Estate.
Also Read: Stop chasing the male audience: Alia Bhatt uses Cannes 2026 platform to push for gender-agnostic cinema in India
Who runs the estate and how it got here
When Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, from an accidental overdose of the surgical-strength anesthetic propofol at his rented Holmby Hills mansion in Los Angeles, he left behind a financial situation that few could have predicted from the outside.
Despite being one of the most commercially successful entertainers in history, Jackson was more than $500 million in debt at the time of his death.
His last will, signed July 7, 2002, named entertainment attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain as co-executors. The will was filed at the Los Angeles County courthouse on July 1, 2009, and a judge confirmed both men in their roles on July 6 of that year.
Jackson’s mother, Katherine, initially contested the appointment but withdrew her objections by November 2009.
Branca had served as Jackson’s attorney on and off since the early 1980s; he brokered the 1985 purchase of the ATV Music Publishing catalogue, which gave Jackson the rights to hundreds of Beatles songs, and helped engineer the Sony/ATV merger. Their relationship was not without turbulence: Jackson fired Branca in 1990, rehired him, fired him again in 2003 amid allegations about offshore accounts, and eventually brought him back on June 17, 2009, just eight days before his death.
McClain, a childhood friend of Jackson’s, had built a separate career as a music executive, most notably managing the recording career of Michael’s sister Janet Jackson.
Under their stewardship, the estate reversed its fortunes dramatically. By June 2024, it was valued at more than $2 billion, with total earnings reported to have exceeded $3 billion. The turnaround included the blockbuster 2009 concert documentary ‘This Is It’, two posthumous studio albums, a long-term Sony recording deal, two Cirque du Soleil productions, and the four-time Tony Award-winning Broadway musical ‘MJ’.
The centre of the dispute
The legal flashpoint centres on payments made during the second half of 2018. As part of a broader petition for attorneys’ fees covering the period from July through December of that year, filed in June 2024 with the Los Angeles Superior Court, the estate sought approval for payments including $625,000 in bonuses distributed to three outside law firms.
Those bonuses broke down as follows: $250,000 to Jay Cooper of Greenberg Traurig; $125,000 to Jeryll Cohen of Saul Ewing; and $250,000 to the late Howard Weitzman of Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir, who served as the estate’s lead attorney. Weitzman has since died.
The executors defended the payments, arguing the three firms had been “instrumental and critical” in helping achieve what they described as unprecedented results for the estate.
Paris Jackson’s objection
In July 2025, Paris filed a formal legal objection to the bonus payments. Her lawyers described the payments as “so-called ‘premium payments’ for unrecorded attorney time,” calling them “irregular” and arguing they raised serious questions about the executors’ ability to supervise legal spending. Her team further characterised the payments as “gifts” and “gratuities”.
Paris is one of three beneficiaries of the estate, alongside her brothers Prince, 29, and Bigi, 24, formerly known as Blanket. Under the terms of Jackson’s will, 40 percent of the estate is in trust for his three children, 40 percent for Katherine Jackson, and 20 percent for unspecified children’s charities.
The executors pushed back hard against Paris’s filing. In October 2025, Branca and McClain noted in court documents that Paris had herself received roughly $65 million in benefits from the estate and suggested she would never have received such sums had the executors followed a more conservative management approach. They also pointed to prior judicial praise of their management, with one court having noted the estate had been transformed from one that “started out as nothing but debt and substantial obligations” into a “$2 billion estate.”
The ruling
Retired probate judge Mitchell Beckloff, who for many years presided over the Jackson estate case before taking on the role of private referee, sided with Paris in a 23-page ruling signed April 29, 2026.
“Ms. Jackson’s objection to the $625,000 of bonus payments made in the second six months of 2018 is sustained,” Beckloff wrote. He found that the bonus amounts appeared “arbitrary” and that the estate had failed to demonstrate the payments were “just and reasonable based on the information provided.”
While acknowledging the executors had provided “exceptional services to the estate and, ultimately, to the beneficiaries,” Beckloff ordered the $625,000 to go back. He also directed the estate to withhold 30 percent of all attorneys’ fees going forward until such fees receive formal court approval.
Beckloff also credited Paris as the “catalyst” behind a separate, related ruling requiring the executors to file petitions for attorneys’ fees covering the full period from 2019 through 2024 by September 15, 2026. The estate had previously indicated those figures might not be ready until 2027.
The Michael biopic and ongoing disputes
The ruling arrives against a broader backdrop of tensions between Paris and the estate. She has publicly opposed the Antoine Fuqua-directed Michael Jackson biopic, ‘Michael’, which released in the United States on April 24, 2026, and has grossed more than $584 million globally.
The film, distributed by Lionsgate and starring Jaafar Jackson in the lead role, required significant reshoots after the discovery of a 1994 settlement of more than $20 million with the family of Jordan Chandler, who was a minor at the time.
The reshoots removed references to child sexual abuse allegations, and 2025 appears to have been major year for estate payouts related to the film’s production.