Aretha franklin how much is she worth

And she won't have it. You are not going to disrespect her. Getty Images. Franklin," states a contract published by The Smoking Gun in Franklin is to be given payment in any form on her behalf unless prior written authorization is received from our office. Franklin, who won 18 Grammy awards, is known as a musical icon. Former President Barack Obama said she " helped define the American experience " — and one of her performances even brought the former president to tears.

She was one of the best-selling artists in history, with one industry estimate indicating she sold over 75 million records worldwide in her career, according to Business Insider. But "the songstress never appeared on any Forbes ranking of the highest-paid celebrities, and we estimate that her income sat in the low seven figures annually over the last few decades of her life," Zack O'Malley Greenburg wrote in a Forbes article titled, " Aretha Franklin Had The Respect Of Billions , But Earned Mere Millions.

When Franklin died from pancreatic cancer at 76 years old on August 16, , her family could not find a will. Her four sons thus expected to receive equal shares of the estate. Then in , in a surprising twist, three unofficial handwritten documents, dated from to , were discovered in Franklin's home via The New York Times.

These documents, one of which was reportedly found under some couch cushions, allegedly revealed how she wanted her assets distributed. When Aretha Franklin died in , the music industry lost one of its most prolific and beloved performers. Sadly, it also instigated a financial debacle that has yet to be resolved. When she died, Franklin's family believed that she had no will, per The New York Times , which meant that whatever her estate was worth would be divided equally among her four sons — Clarence, Edward, Kecalf, and Teddy — who had appointed their cousin, Sabrina Owens, as the estate's executor.

But then two handwritten documents were found — one from , in which Franklin outlined how she wants to divvy up her estate and also trash talks people who wronged her in her life, like her ex-husband, Edward Jordan, Sr.

The will is reportedly more direct about who should get what from her estate, but it also leaves it up to the younger two brothers to decide how much Clarence would need going forward, as he has spent most of his life in a group home for chronic mental illness, per Hour Detroit.