Paris Jackson has accused John Branca, the sole executor of her late father Michael Jackson’s estate, of retaliating financially against her and her siblings after she questioned how he was managing the singer’s fortune.
In recent court filings, Paris alleged that payments to the siblings were cut by millions of dollars while Branca kept tight control over their inheritance. She is asking a Los Angeles court to direct $600 million from the estate into the family trust, citing what she describes as financial mismanagement.
Branca has served as the estate’s sole executor since 2009, the year Michael Jackson died from acute propofol and sedative intoxication that led to cardiac arrest.
Paris’s lawyers say her concerns about gifts Branca allegedly made to colleagues without contractual obligations were met with aggressive litigation and public criticism, as well as reduced payments to the singer’s children. They argued that this pattern should not continue.
In another filing, Paris accused Branca of using estate funds for personal travel on private jets, charging personal expenses to the estate and failing to disclose those costs to beneficiaries. She said he acknowledged taking several personal trips and repaid some expenses only after she looked into them. Her lawyers called the alleged conduct a breach of his fiduciary duties.
The filing also questions more than $604,000 in credit-card charges and reimbursements, $9.4 million in executor compensation, $1.4 million paid to Branca’s law firm and about $835,000 in public-relations costs. Paris further alleges that estate money was used for personal gifts.
She also claims Branca mishandled more than $440 million in estate cash while pursuing entertainment projects that could benefit him financially. Among the projects cited was a Michael Jackson biopic, which reportedly underwent tens of millions of dollars’ worth of rewrites and reshoots.
Paris’s legal team has asked the court to reject Branca’s accounting and require a fuller explanation of how estate funds were spent.
A representative for the estate rejected the allegations, saying Paris’s lawyers had repeated earlier complaints without accounting for the estate’s structure as an active business. The representative said the estate had been $500 million in debt when Michael Jackson died, but has since generated $3 billion in revenue and produced what it described as the highest-grossing biopic in movie history, with more than $1 billion in global box-office sales.
Paris says her father’s estate plan provided for his children—Prince, Paris and Bigi—to receive income from their trusts starting at age 21, followed by portions of their inheritance from age 30. She alleges that the trust has still not been funded, more than 17 years after his death.
Her petition says Michael Jackson intended his children to take responsibility for his legacy, with the executors providing them with greater financial independence as they reached certain ages.
Paris’s filing points to more than $2.5 billion in gross estate earnings and around $850 million in cash and cash equivalents as of December 2024. She argues the estate could transfer $600 million to the family trust and still retain enough to meet its liabilities.
The estate’s representative said the trusts and charitable contributions could not be fully funded until legal issues were resolved, including an ongoing dispute with the IRS. The agency had sought $700 million in taxes and penalties, the representative said, adding that a ruling had substantially reduced the amount but the case remained unsettled.
The representative also denied that payments had been withheld or cut, saying more than $200 million had already been distributed for the benefit of Paris and the other beneficiaries. The estate maintained that Michael Jackson’s will does not provide for distributions to his children until they are in their 30s, and said it would fund their trusts once outstanding matters were settled.
A hearing on Paris’s request to transfer $600 million into the family trust is scheduled for Dec. 4.
Paris has also spoken about growing up with her father. In an interview on the podcast “Call Her Daddy,” she recalled that he expected his children to finish homework and chores before weekend activities, limited their television and movie viewing, and had them wear masks in public to protect their privacy.
She knew her father was famous, she said, but didn’t understand the scale of his celebrity. Paris remembered looking out from a hotel window at a crowd of people holding signs after an assumed name failed to keep them from being recognized. She said she understood that the scene wasn’t something everyone experienced, but had not grasped how far the attention could go.
