Legal challenges mount to Jackson's estate, children

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — As mourning fans and dueling promoters vetted ideas for a public memorial for Michael Jackson, legal challenges sharpened Wednesday to the pop legend’s estate and custody of his three children.

Having abandoned plans to memorialize and bury Jackson at the Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County, organizers were considering the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the farewell event expected next week and likely to draw massive crowds and security arrangements, city of Los Angeles sources told the Los Angeles Times.

A representative of Colony Capital, the private equity firm that owns Neverland, was told by Santa Barbara County officials that considerable bureaucratic hurdles would stand in the way of burying Jackson at the ranch.

A ranch near Neverland is to host an event Friday commemorating Jackson’s life and legacy, according to a spokesman for management company Releve Unlimited.

In Los Angeles County Superior Court, attorneys for the executors of Jackson’s will filed it with the court and asked a judge to remove Katherine Jackson as temporary administrator and put them in charge. Attorneys for John Branca and John McClain, the executors, suggested that lawyers for the 79-year-old Jackson family matriarch had rushed into court with a “demonstrably false” claim that the performer died without leaving a will. They urged Judge Mitchell Beckloff to restrain her power over the estate now that the 2002 document had been found.

Meanwhile, permanent custody of Jackson’s children, temporarily awarded to his mother, came into question. Eric George — a lawyer for Debbie Rowe, the biological mother of the older two, Prince Michael Jr., 12, and Paris Michael Katherine, 11 — said he would attend a custody hearing Monday to monitor Rowe’s interests.

Rowe hasn’t yet signaled any intention to seek custody, but legal experts have said she has a strong claim to the elder children.

His newly unveiled will says his mother should raise his children, or failing her, Diana Ross.

Speculation on the destination of Jackson’s remains continued, with media reports indicating he might be interred at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills and that the pop star’s body is already there.