Paris Jackson’s lawsuit against the Michael Jackson estate executors challenges how John Branca and John McClain have spent estate money and paid themselves and outside lawyers since her father’s death in 2009, and in April 2026 a court-appointed referee sided with her on one piece of it, ordering $625,000 in attorney bonuses returned to the estate and imposing new limits on how legal fees can be paid going forward.
The fight is unfolding in Los Angeles County probate court over an estate valued at roughly $2 billion. Michael Jackson’s 2002 will named Branca, an entertainment lawyer, and McClain, a music executive, as co-executors and co-trustees of the family trust. The trust’s beneficiaries are Jackson’s three children — Prince, Paris, and Bigi — and his mother, Katherine Jackson, who is the sole beneficiary of a separate sub-trust. Twenty percent of the estate is earmarked for charity before anything flows to those sub-trusts.
What Paris Jackson Is Challenging
Her representatives have described the executors as running the estate like a “slush fund” for Branca’s personal interests rather than as a fiduciary operation for the family. The filings target three categories of spending.
The first is bonus payments to outside law firms. Paris challenged $625,000 in bonuses paid during the second half of 2018, arguing the payments lacked adequate explanation or justification. The money went to three firms: $250,000 to Greenberg Traurig, $250,000 to the late Howard Weitzman of Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir, and $125,000 to Jeryll Cohen of Saul Ewing.
The second is the executors’ own compensation. Paris has alleged that Branca and McClain received more than $10 million in 2021 alone, which she described as more than double what any beneficiary received that year from the family allowance. Through the end of 2021, court filings cited by her legal team put the executors’ total compensation at roughly $148 million.
The third is the 2026 biographical film Michael. Paris has questioned the estate’s role in producing it, criticizing the casting of Miles Teller to portray Branca, the film’s budget of more than $150 million, and tens of millions in reshoot costs she attributed to the executors’ lack of film production experience.
The April 2026 Ruling on Attorney Bonuses
The bonus fight went before retired probate judge Mitchell Beckloff, sitting as a court-appointed referee. On April 29, 2026, Beckloff ordered that the $625,000 in bonuses were “not approved; they are disallowed” and had to be returned to the estate. He wrote that he “cannot find the bonus payments are just and reasonable based on the information provided.”
Beckloff paired that finding with recognition of the executors’ broader record, noting that “there can be no dispute that under the expertise of the Executors, this estate has transformed from teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in June of 2009 … to the financial powerhouse that it is today.”
The order also changed the rules for future spending on the estate’s lawyers:
- The executors can no longer pay attorney bonuses without written consent from all beneficiaries or an order from the referee or court.
- The estate may pay outside attorneys only 70 percent of incurred fees on an ongoing basis. The remaining 30 percent must be held back until the court formally approves it.
- The executors must file petitions covering attorney fees for the years 2019 through 2024 by September 15, 2026.
- Paris is entitled to recover her reasonable attorneys’ fees in the matter.
A spokesperson for Paris called the outcome a “massive win” for transparency and accountability. The estate’s representatives said they disagreed with the ruling but would comply, emphasizing that no bonus money had gone to the executors themselves and that outside counsel had previously agreed to return the funds if the payments were not approved by the court.
What Is Still Pending
A week after the ruling became public, Paris filed a motion seeking an additional $463,752, which her lawyers said represents interest that accrued on the disallowed $625,000 from 2018 until the return order. “When funds are misappropriated, they have to be paid back — with interest,” her legal team stated. A representative for the executors said they were “confident it will be rejected in due course.” As of mid-2026, the motion remains pending.
The estate is also conducting a self-audit of expenditures covering 2019 through 2022. Paris’s team has pressed for faster disclosure of a 2025 financial report, which they have linked to costs associated with the biopic.
An earlier round did not go Paris’s way. She filed a petition in October 2025 accusing the executors of showering outside lawyers with “lavish gratuities” while keeping beneficiaries uninformed. The estate responded with an anti-SLAPP motion, and on November 13, 2025, a judicial referee struck most of the petition, finding Paris could not show a probability of success on many of her claims, and ordered her to pay the executors’ legal fees from that motion. She then refiled through what the estate’s lawyers described as a “procedurally proper motion” in late February 2026, which produced the April ruling.
How the Executors Defend Their Record
Branca and McClain, through lead counsel Jonathan Steinsapir, have called Paris’s claims “false and specious” and described her legal campaign as an abuse of the court system driven by a “media campaign to distract from their legal setbacks and the inherent weakness of their case.”
They point to the estate’s turnaround. When Michael Jackson died in 2009, the estate owed more than $500 million to over 65 creditors. Since then, according to Forbes figures the executors have cited, it has generated more than $3.5 billion in revenue through deals including a $750 million sale of the ATV music catalog to Sony in 2016, a $600 million sale of half the remaining music rights to Sony that closed in late 2023, and income from Cirque du Soleil shows, Broadway productions, licensing, and the This Is It concert film.
In an October 2025 filing, the executors stated that Paris herself has received roughly $65 million in benefits from the estate, money they argued she would not have seen had they followed the “typical playbook” for a debt-laden estate in 2009. They have framed the disputed $625,000 as a small fraction of what the estate earned in 2018, a year in which the sale of the EMI Music Publishing stake to Sony brought in $287.5 million. On the biopic, they argued in a March 2026 filing that Paris’s objections “betray a complete lack of understanding about how the motion picture industry works,” citing their production of MJ the Musical as evidence of competence.
Why the Trusts Still Haven’t Paid Out
The dispute sits inside a larger unresolved question: when the Jackson family will receive the full inheritance the will contemplated. The trusts for the children and Katherine Jackson have never been funded, because the estate is still fighting the IRS, which has sought roughly $700 million in additional taxes and penalties on the theory that the estate undervalued its assets. The executors have said they cannot determine what amount can be “safely distributed” to beneficiaries until that fight ends. Katherine Jackson, now in her 90s, has received more than $55 million since her son’s death, but through a family allowance rather than a formal trust distribution.
Prince and Bigi are also trust beneficiaries. Nothing in the available record indicates that either has joined or opposed Paris’s legal actions; she appears to be pursuing the litigation on her own. Whether her wins produce broader structural change in how the estate is run will depend in part on the September 2026 accounting deadline and the ruling on her pending interest claim.