The long and tangled court fight over the estate of James Brown entered a new chapter on Wednesday when the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned a settlement dividing up his fortune, saying the former state attorney general had failed to follow Mr. Brown’s wishes in brokering the deal, The Associated Press reported.
Henry McMaster, the attorney general at the time, negotiated a settlement in 2009 that split up the singer’s estate, giving nearly half to a charitable trust, a quarter to his widow, Tomi Rae Hynie, and dividing the rest among his adult children.
But the supreme court ruled on Wednesday that the deal had a fatal flaw: it ignored Brown’s last wish that all his money go to charity. The court said Brown was of sound mind and body when he made his will before dying of hear failure in 2006 at the age of 73. The justices sent the case back down to lower court to be reconsidered and chastised Mr. McMaster for turning a blind eye to Mr. Brown’s instructions.
“The compromise orchestrated by the A.G. in this case destroys the estate plan Brown had established in favor of an arrangement overseen virtually exclusively by the A.G.,†Associate Justice John W. Kittredge wrote. “The result is to take a large portion of Brown’s estate that Brown had designated for charity and to turn over these amounts to the family members and purported family members who were, under the plain terms of Brown’s will, given either limited devises or excluded.â€
