Godfather of Soul’s death brings mother of estate battles

James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, left an estate worth between $90 million and $100 million in gross assets to noncharitable beneficiaries. This Aiken, S.C., resident died Christmas Day 2006, and to date there has been no inventory and warrant of appraisement filed in the estate.

There is so much interest in the litigation of this estate, the Aiken County clerk of court sells compact disks containing copies of the relevant public records for $100 each.

The first disk contains 2,245 pages, and the last disk contains 1,816 pages. I don’t know the number of pages covered by the disks between the first one and the last, but there must be a lot.

Brown left a will and trust agreement dated June 15, 1999, wherein he gave the bulk of his estate to two trusts. One trust was for the education of his grandchildren who are under 35 years of age, and this trust was valued at about $2 million.

The rest and remainder of his estate would become “The James Brown ‘I Feel Good’ Trust.” The net income was to be used for “tuition, educational expenses and financial assistance of and for poor students who are attending or desirous of attending USC Aiken, USC Salkehatchie and Voorhees College.”

Brown named three friends to be the trustees in his second trust – his former bookkeeper, his friend and attorney, and his friend and magistrate.

On March 7, 2007, the court appointed Robert L. Buchanan Jr. and Adele J. Pope, a Columbia tax attorney, to “oversee the actions of the above named trustees.” Buchanan and Pope prevented the trustees from paying themselves between $5 million and $17 million and discovered an alleged $900,000 misappropriation and other secret dealings in the assets of the trust.

Brown’s 61.08-acre home and property is in Beech Island, Aiken County, and is a part of the assets of this trust. Buchanan and Pope are seeking a museum purchaser for his home.

Royalties from the approximately 800 published songs Brown wrote exceed $3 million annually.

Brown quit school when he was about 10 years old, but clearly he was smart.

In about 1992, he owed the Internal Revenue Service $9 million. Two years later, he raised $30 million from Wall Street. That debt was secured by future royalties on such songs as “I Feel Good.” His bonds were rated A, and financiers found no liens on his assets.

“Having IRS problems kept me from having other problems because when they see you owe money, other people don’t sue you. Once I paid off the IRS, I got 25 lawsuits for nothing,” Brown said.

There are numerous attorneys actively involved with his estate.

From the Aiken Bar, there is James D. Bailey and Stanley G. Jackson. From the Richland Bar, there is Jan L. Warner, Matthew D. Bodman, James M. Griffin, W. Wesley Kirkland and C. Havird Jones Jr., senior assistant attorney general.

From the Charleston Bar there is Robert N. Rosen, T. Heyward Carter Jr., S. Alan Medlin, David L. Michel, Thornton Morris, A. Peter Shahid Jr. and Stephen Slotchiver.

R.Wayne Byrd of the Florence Bar, William J. Barr of the Kingstree Bar, Louis Levenson of the Atlanta Bar and David B. Bell of the Augusta Bar are also attorneys in this legal action.

At least two attorneys have filed claims for fees for services previously rendered; they are Rodney A. Peeples and Stanley G Jackson. The estate has a total of $33 million in pending claims.

“James Brown has consistently promoted himself as an exemplary figure of black capitalist self-improvement, touting a doctrine of enterprise as emancipation, ownership and tycoondom as the ultimate social justice,” said David Jenkins on May 3, 2002, in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine.

James Brown’s estate could come to the same conclusion as the legal action described by Charles Dickens in his novel “Bleak House.” That case came to its end when it was discovered that all the assets in the estate had been spent on lawsuits.

Ruth Cupp began practicing law in 1954. She served in the South Carolina House of Representatives and was an associate judge. She currently writes nonfiction about the legal profession. Questions or comments may be directed to the writer at [email protected].