According to TMZ, Paris Jackson filed a motion in L.A. Superior Court on Wednesday asking the court to cut Michael Jackson estate executor pay from 15% to 10% of gross entertainment income for 2023 and 2024, calling co-executor John Branca's late and incomplete financial reporting "intolerable."
The estate's answer, in the same filing: "completely without merit." The executors, they remind the court, "waived" their compensation from the start. What they did not waive, apparently, is the $109,219,648.27 they separately asked the court to approve for co-executors and the law firm. Waived compensation. A nine-figure fee request. The estate's legal team has perfected the art of subtracting a number so big you stop doing the math.
Big John Branca, meanwhile, says the books are fine and points with pride to an estate that went "from hundreds of millions in the red to being worth billions." Billions. In a motion where the daughter is asking to see the actual financial statements. The statements that were "late" and "incomplete" are also, conveniently, the ones that prove the billions. A man cannot have both.
Paris, who received $6.3 million in estate benefits last year by the other side's own numbers, is also asking for her attorneys' fees, having previously claimed $1,165,481.90. The daughter is suing the accountants about the accountants' paycheck. Somewhere a trust officer is quietly learning to balance a ledger in a second language.
This is not a feud, it is a franchise. The estate civil war is now its own touring attraction. Every filing gets a headline, every counter-filing gets a "Thriller?" pun, and the only thing more profitable than the music catalog these days is the paperwork.
YOUR TURN: Is Paris auditing the estate, or is the estate auditioning Paris for a reality show about the estate?
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