Judge leaves BB King's estate in hands of longtime business manager

BB King’s longtime business manager has been named sole executor of his estate Thursday despite objections from a lawyer for four of the late blues musician’s daughters.

Clark county District Judge Gloria Sturman first refused to let attorneys Benjamin Crump and Jose Baez contest King’s will on behalf of daughters Karen Williams, Patty King, Rita Washington and Barbara Winfree.

The will, filed in January 2007, puts Laverne Toney alone in charge of administering King’s assets, his property and his trust. The trust documents have not been filed publicly.

The judge then rejected efforts by Las Vegas attorney Larissa Drohobyczer to cast Toney as having misused her power of attorney while BB King was alive to move about $1m from personal to joint bank accounts to which she had access, and to block relatives from visiting King in his dying days.

“A million dollars is a big deal,” Sturman said, but she left the argument for another day.

“I’m not saying there may not be other issues or that we may not need outside assistance,” she said.

“But he had a plan. I don’t see anything before me at this point in time that he wanted that changed.”

Attorney Brent Bryson, lawyer for the estate and Toney, said claims by the daughters that Toney stole from their father, isolated him and poisoned him before his 14 May death at age 89 had no basis in fact. The family members had provided no evidence that a competing will existed, he said.

“There has to be more to the objections than hollow allegations and innuendo,” Bryson said.  (Continue Reading)

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Judge leaves BB King's estate in hands of longtime business manager

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