Paris Jackson Keeps Fighting Michael’s Estate. But What Is She Fighting For?

By Stacy M. Brown

Black Press Media USA Senior Global Correspondent

Paris Jackson has a problem with the people running her father’s estate.

Again.

This time the fight is over lawyers and money. Paris wants $1,165,481.90 in legal fees after successfully challenging $625,000 in bonuses paid to attorneys working for Michael Jackson’s estate. John Branca, the executor Michael personally selected, argues that she should be paid for the work on which she prevailed and the benefit produced for the beneficiaries, not everything she has requested.

The estate, meanwhile, is asking a judge to approve more than $9 million in legal fees covering six years of work.

Paris won something important here. She questioned $625,000 in payments, and a judge agreed. Nobody entrusted with Michael Jackson’s billions should be immune from scrutiny, including Branca.

But Paris Jackson is 28 now, and her continuing war with her father’s estate raises another question.

Is she tone deaf?

Not because she wants to protect her inheritance. She should.

Not because she chose a life different from Michael’s. She had every right.

Paris has claimed to be a model, actress, singer, band member, and even a socialite. She has tried to establish an identity apart from being Michael Jackson’s daughter, an almost impossible assignment for someone who inherited perhaps the most famous last name in entertainment.

But what has she done with the other inheritance Michael left her?

Michael Jackson was one of the most consequential Black entertainers ever. He gave to the United Negro College Fund and financed scholarships. Humanitarian work became part of his identity. He stood beside the Rev. Al Sharpton and publicly accused the music industry of exploiting Black artists.

He also rejected the decades of chatter suggesting that his changing appearance meant he had rejected his race.

“I know my race,” Michael said. “I just look in a mirror. I know I’m Black.”

Paris inherited that history, too.

Where is it?

What has she done to carry the humanitarian legacy of the man whose fortune finances her life? Where is Michael’s concern for Black institutions, Black artists, and the people whose struggles he repeatedly backed with his money?

Paris does not have to become her father. She does not owe anybody a prescribed racial identity, either.

But if she wants to repeatedly question what the people Michael chose are doing with his legacy, it is fair to ask what she is doing with it herself.

There is another complication.

Paris barely knew the Michael Jackson whose decisions she is now litigating.

She was 11 when he died.

Think about what those 11 years actually contained.

She was about 5 when authorities descended on Neverland in 2003. She was 7 when a jury acquitted Michael of every criminal charge against him in 2005.

Michael never again lived the life Paris had known at Neverland.

He left California. He went to Bahrain. He later went to Ireland, where he spent time at properties including Blackwater Castle and visited Michael Flatley’s sprawling estate in County Cork.

There were famous friends and borrowed sanctuaries. Elizabeth Taylor remained one of his closest friends. Elton John was among the celebrities in the orbit of a man who could seemingly go anywhere but no longer seemed to have a permanent home of his own.

It was an extraordinary way for one of the richest and most famous entertainers in history to live.

Michael Jackson had become a vagabond.

Eventually he returned to the United States and landed in Las Vegas.

Even there, family turmoil followed him.

Three former bodyguards later described an extraordinary encounter involving Michael’s younger brother Randy at the gates of the Las Vegas house. Randy had come to see him. Michael did not want to see Randy. Randy’s representative said he was attempting an intervention and disputed the bodyguards’ more dramatic account of what happened at the gate.

Whatever version one accepts, Michael Jackson lived behind another set of gates and refused entry to his own brother.

This was not the Michael of Neverland at his commercial peak.

This was a man moving from country to country and house to house while staggering under debt despite owning assets worth fortunes.

Paris was there for much of it.

But she was a little girl.

How much could she possibly remember?

How much could a 7-, 8-, or 9-year-old understand about leveraged publishing assets, loans, creditors, litigation, catalog valuations, and a father whose spending could be as spectacular as his earnings?

By late 2008, Michael had moved again.

This time it was a rented French château-style mansion at 100 North Carolwood Drive in Holmby Hills.

The rent was $100,000 a month.

Michael was paying it from a multimillion-dollar advance from AEG.

One of the most successful entertainers who ever lived, a man who had sold hundreds of millions of records and owned enormously valuable music rights, was living in a rented house financed by the company backing the concerts he needed to perform.

AEG executive Randy Phillips later testified that Michael became emotional when he talked about wanting a permanent home for his children. Phillips recalled feeling terrible that a star of Michael’s magnitude had reached the point where buying a house had become a problem.

“This Is It” was supposed to change that.

Fifty concerts in London.

A return to the stage.

A financial resurrection.

Perhaps one last demonstration that nobody could do what Michael Jackson did.

He never made it to the first show.

Michael died in that rented Holmby Hills mansion on June 25, 2009.

Paris was 11.

And the bills remained.

More than $500 million in debt was accruing interest, according to the estate.

The performer who could generate the money was dead.

Katherine Jackson was still alive.

Three children had lost their father.

Creditors still expected to be paid.

And sitting among the documents Michael left behind was his decision about who should handle what remained.

John Branca and John McClain.

Branca was hardly an accidental choice.

Michael had already trusted him with one of the most consequential business transactions any recording artist ever made.

In 1985, Michael bought ATV Music Publishing for $47.5 million, acquiring a catalog that included many of the Beatles’ greatest songs.

Branca helped broker it.

People laughed at Michael for plenty during his life.

Nobody should laugh at that deal.

It became one of the great music investments.

Years later, when Michael's spending, borrowing, and legal problems tore through his finances, his publishing interests provided something more important than bragging rights.

They helped keep him afloat.

Michael made another decision involving Branca that proved nearly as consequential.

He chose him to handle the estate.

The results are sitting in the court papers Paris is fighting over.

The $500 million-plus debt is gone.

The estate says it is now a $2 billion conglomerate.

“Michael Jackson ONE” became a Las Vegas fixture.

“MJ the Musical” became a Broadway hit and traveled internationally.

Michael’s music remained commercially enormous.

Deals involving his catalog produced sums that would have been difficult to imagine even when he was alive.

And then came “Michael.”

The movie did more than make money.

It made Jackson a current name again.

Not just Michael Jackson.

Jackson.

For years, the family's greatest accomplishments increasingly belonged to history. The Jackson 5 had long ago broken up. Michael was dead. Janet Jackson remained an icon with her own legacy, but no young Jackson stood at the center of popular culture, carrying that surname into another generation.

Then Jaafar Jackson walked onto a movie screen as Michael.

Michael's nephew did not simply inherit the surname. He stepped into what may have been the most unforgiving role imaginable, playing an uncle whose walk, voice, dancing, and physical mannerisms are known worldwide.

And Jaafar delivered.

Suddenly there was another Jackson people were talking about.

Another Jackson on movie posters.

Another Jackson drawing crowds.

Another Jackson with the potential to become a star.

The Jackson name meant something new again.

That didn't happen because somebody discovered an old box of Jackson 5 master tapes.

The estate helped make it happen.

Branca helped make it happen.

Prince Jackson, Michael's eldest son, participated in the film and helped protect his father's story.

Jaafar put his own career on the line to portray him.

And Paris?

Paris is fighting the estate.

She is entitled to.

But the contrast is impossible to miss.

Prince is helping preserve his father's story.

Jaafar is introducing Michael to children who were not alive when Michael died.

Bigi has largely chosen privacy.

Paris has modeled, acted, recorded music, performed with a band, lived the celebrity and socialite life, and repeatedly gone to court against the people managing Michael's estate.

And perhaps she is right about some of it.

She was right about $625,000.

That matters.

But what does she ultimately want?

Does she believe Branca is damaging Michael's fortune?

How?

Does she believe Michael's catalog has been mishandled?

Where?

Does she believe the estate should not have made the movie?

Does she believe the Broadway show was a mistake?

Does she believe the estate should distribute more money rather than continue investing in Michael Jackson as an active entertainment business?

Does she want Branca gone?

If so, who replaces him?

Those questions matter even more because Michael Jackson did not leave his estate to chance.

Prince Rogers Nelson did.

Prince died without a will, and years of litigation, negotiations, fees, and competing interests followed. His fans begging for just a small piece of what Jackson fans have been treated to by Branca and company.

Michael had seen enough people make money from entertainers and spent much of his adult life thinking about ownership.

He bought publishing, fought Sony, and spoke publicly about Black artists dying poor while other people became wealthy from their work.

And he signed a will.

Michael chose Branca. He chose McClain.

That does not make either man sacred.

McClain is now gone. Branca remains.

It does mean Michael Jackson made the decision Paris is now challenging.

Maybe Paris has a better vision.

If she does, what is it?

Because there is something almost surreal about watching this fight from the other side of Michael Jackson's death.

In 2009, Michael lived in somebody else's $100,000-a-month house, financed through an advance tied to concerts he had not yet performed.

He owed more than $500 million and wanted a permanent home for his children.

He died before he could perform the first “This Is It” concert.

Today his daughter can spend more than $1 million litigating over the management of an estate that once appeared capable of collapsing under its obligations.

She can do that because the estate is worth fighting over.

She can do it because the debt was paid and because Michael's assets were protected and monetized after Michael was no longer here to protect them himself.

And she can do it while another member of her generation of Jacksons, Jaafar, walks through the enormous door the estate's stewardship of Michael's legacy helped reopen.

Nobody should begrudge Paris Jackson her inheritance, because Michael earned it.

Nobody should tell her she cannot question John Branca; he works for the estate, not the other way around.

But Paris Jackson is old enough now to face questions, too.

Michael spent money on Black students, fought publicly over the treatment of Black artists, and gave enormous sums to various humanitarian causes.

He understood the value of ownership and chose the lawyer who helped him buy one of the most valuable music publishing catalogs.

He chose that same lawyer to help decide what happened after he died.

Then Michael died with more than $500 million in debt.

Branca and McClain erased it.

They turned the estate into a multibillion-dollar business.

They helped put Michael on Broadway.

They helped keep him in Las Vegas.

They helped put him back in movie theaters.

And they helped create the conditions for Jaafar Jackson to emerge as something the Jackson family had not produced in years.

A new star.

The Jackson name means something again to a generation that never saw Michael Jackson perform live.

Paris Jackson benefits from every bit of it.

So, yes, she can fight.

But after the modeling, the acting, the singing, the band, the socialite years, and now the litigation, there remains a question worth putting directly to Michael Jackson's daughter.

What are you building?

Because John Branca can point to what he built with what Michael left him.

Jaafar Jackson can point to what he is building with the opportunity Michael's legacy gave him.

Paris should be able to do the same.