- 6 weeks ago
When people think about celebrity wealth, they often assume that fame automatically leads to a lasting family fortune.
In reality, a growing number of high-profile stars have chosen a different path, one that prioritizes philanthropy, independence, or personal values over dynastic inheritance.
In reality, a growing number of high-profile stars have chosen a different path, one that prioritizes philanthropy, independence, or personal values over dynastic inheritance.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00From Marlon Brando's controversial estate that sparked years of family battles,
00:04to Jerry Lewis cutting several of his children out of his will, to Sting insisting his children
00:10should earn their own fortunes. But watch out for the inheritance decision that left an entire
00:15family with almost nothing. Joan Crawford died in May 1977, and when her will hit the papers,
00:22it read like a final scene from one of her own films. Two of her four adopted children,
00:27Christina and Christopher, got nothing. Not a dollars. Not a keepsake. The documents spelled
00:33it out in cold legal language, stating it is my intention to make no provision herein for my son
00:39Christopher, or my daughter Christina, for reasons which are well known to them. No explanation beyond
00:45that. Just a closed door. The estate wasn't small. At the time of her death, Joan Crawford left behind
00:52an estate with an estimated value of $2 million. The equivalent of more than $10 million as of 2023.
01:00That's a lot of money to walk away from two grown children while leaving trust funds to their
01:05sisters instead. So who actually got it? According to reporting on the will,
01:10Joan's revised will left a trust fund to her adopted twin daughters, Cindy and Kathy. And money to her
01:15longtime friend and secretary Betty Barker, and to several charities and organizations.
01:20But nothing to Christopher and Christina. In dollar terms, a will made in October 1976
01:27left a trust fund of $77,500 to Kathy and Cynthia. $35,000 to her longtime friend and secretary,
01:36Betty Barker. And smaller bequests to a few other people, with the rest going to charity.
01:41Now, to understand why Joan cut two of her four children out completely. You have to go back to
01:47the relationship itself. Because this wasn't a sudden decision made on her deathbed. It had been
01:52building for years. Joan Crawford adopted five children over the course of her life. Though one
01:58was returned to his biological family early on. Leaving her with Christina, Christopher, and twin
02:04girls Kathy and Cindy. She raised them as a single, controlling, image-obsessed Hollywood star during an
02:10era, when publicity and appearances meant everything. By the late 1960s, cracks had already formed.
02:16Joan Crawford's relationship with Christina Crawford, noticeably began to decline in the late 60s.
02:22And in a moment that still gets talked about today. She replaced her daughter in a soap opera
02:27called The Secret Storm, when Christina couldn't perform due to appendicitis. Essentially stepping into a
02:33role written for a much younger actress, just to keep control. Christopher's story ran along a similar track.
02:39He remained estranged from his mother, until her death in 1977. And the two never repaired their
02:46relationship. Whatever happened between them, it was severe enough that Joan wrote the disinheriting
02:51clause years before she died. And then kept it in place, every time she updated the will. It's been
02:57reported that the clause disinheriting Christina and Christopher, was written in the 60s. And repeated
03:03every time, the will was rewritten. This wasn't a spur-of-the-moment snub. It was a decision Joan Crawford
03:09held onto for over a decade. Joan herself gave a glimpse into how she saw the fallout with her
03:15children. In an excerpt drawn from a later biography, she said of Christina.
03:19Christina is her own person, and that person brought me a lot of pain. I said this about
03:24Christopher, and now I say it about Christina. The problem was I adopted her, but she didn't
03:30adopt me. That line tells you everything about how she framed the estrangement. Not as her failing
03:36them, but as them failing her. Then came the memoir that turned a private family wound into
03:41a national conversation. A year after Joan's death, Christina published
03:45Mommy Dearest, a book that alleged years of abuse. The book paints a picture of an actor
03:50who misused alcohol and had frequent fits of rage. And it became a bestseller before getting
03:56adapted into a film that's since become a camp classic. Remembered largely for its over-the-top
04:01performances. The book highlighted the strained relationship between mother and daughter
04:06for a mainstream audience. That had no idea how bad things had gotten behind the studio
04:11gates. Here's the twist people forget, though. Joan seemed to have some inkling the book was
04:17coming before she died. And in another biography, she reportedly said of Christina,
04:21I think she's using my name strictly to make money. I think this book will be full of lies
04:26and twisted truths. Some have wondered whether learning of the book was the final straw that
04:32hardened her decision to cut Christina out completely. Though other biographers pushed
04:36back on that timeline. Since the disinheriting clause long predated any public knowledge of
04:42the memoir. So Christina and Christopher didn't just accept getting cut out, they fought it in
04:47court. In October 1977, the pair sued Crawford's estate to try to invalidate the will entirely.
04:53Their argument centered on Kathy, the twin sister who did inherit, and her husband Jerome. The
04:59lawsuit charged that the couple took deliberate advantage of Joan's seclusion and her weakened
05:04and distorted mental and physical condition. To insinuate themselves into her favor in the years
05:10before she died. In plain terms, they argued mom wasn't in her right mind when she signed off on
05:15cutting them out. And that Kathy had manipulated the situation. The case didn't go to a dramatic
05:21verdict, though. It ended in a settlement, and Christopher and Christina each ended up receiving
05:26$27,500. That's a fraction of what their sisters got from the trust fund, and nowhere close to an
05:33equal share of the estate. Essentially confirmation that the will held, with a token payout to make the
05:39lawsuit go away. Christopher, for his part, later said in an interview that he'd received $1,500
05:45just for waiving his rights connected to Christina's book and the film based on it. A strange coda to a
05:51decade of legal wrangling. The lesson from Joan Crawford's case is that this wasn't wealth lost by
05:57accident or bad luck. It was a documented, repeated, deliberate decision that survived years of will
06:03revisions, a public scandal, and a courtroom battle. And in the end, the disinheritance stuck.
06:08Marlon Brando died in 2004, leaving behind one of the most complicated families in Hollywood
06:15history. And his will made sure at least two of his descendants would never see a cent of it.
06:20His estate reportedly benefited several children, friends, associates, and his producer. But his
06:25will specifically excluded his daughter Petra and all of her descendants, as well as the descendants of
06:31his late daughter Cheyenne, including his own grandson. The wording in the will left no room for
06:37interpretation. It stated plainly, I intentionally and with full knowledge of the consequences do not
06:42provide in my will, or in my living trust for Cheyenne's issue, or for Petra Brando Corvill,
06:47or for any of Petra's issue. That single clause meant Brando's grandson, a boy named Tukey,
06:53received nothing from his grandfather. Despite being the only child of Marlon's late, daughter Cheyenne.
06:59It's one of the more unusual disinheritances on this list, because it skipped a generation.
07:04Punishing not a child, but a grandchild who'd already lost his mother.
07:08To understand how Brando ended up with a will this tangled, you need the scale of his family first.
07:14Brando was the father of as many as 11 acknowledged children by the time he died. Though other reports
07:20put the real number even higher. Some say 16 or 17, when counting every relationship. Those children
07:27came from three ex-wives, a longtime housekeeper in Lowe's Angels, and various other relationships
07:33scattered across decades. When he died, he left behind an enormous, sprawling family. Partners and
07:38offspring of different nationalities, some living in Tahiti, some in the mainland United States.
07:44Cheyenne, the daughter whose children got cut out entirely, was widely reported to have been one
07:49of Brando's favorites. She and her partner Dag Drolet had a difficult relationship. And in 1990,
07:56Marlon's son Christian shot and killed Drolet inside the family's Lowe's Angels home.
08:01A case that dragged Brando's family into a very public murder trial and devastated Cheyenne
08:06emotionally. She gave birth to Tukey not long before that tragedy. And she died by suicide in
08:121995, leaving her young son to be raised by his grandmother, Tarita, in Tahiti. Far from the Hollywood
08:19spotlight and, as it turned out, far from any share of his grandfather's estate too. Petra's exclusion
08:25is murky-er. Reports on the Will don't spell out exactly why Brando chose to shut out her whole
08:31branch of the family. And even journalists digging through the estate records afterward could only say
08:36the decision remains one of the more disputed and unexplained elements of his legacy. What is clear
08:42is that Brando revised his Will less than two weeks before he died, replacing decades-long personal aides
08:48and naming new executors. A decision that immediately raised eyebrows and would go on to spark years of
08:55legal disputes among his heirs. That last-minute rewrite became its own saga. Family members
09:01alleged the new executors made financial decisions with Brando's money and his private island that
09:06directly opposed what he actually wanted. And disputes over the Will dragged on for years afterward,
09:12with the last of them only resolved in 2013, nearly a decade after his death. One of his sons, Christian,
09:19wasn't even specifically named in the trust distributions. And when his wife later tried
09:24to challenge a codicil as a forgery, the courts ruled he had no legal standing because he'd never
09:29been formally listed as an heir or beneficiary in the first place. So where did the money actually go?
09:36Brando's estate was valued at around $21.6 million when he died. Smaller than
09:41many assumed for a man who'd once been the highest paid actor in the business. Partly because of the
09:47mammoth legal costs tied to Christian's murder trial years earlier. The bulk went to a mix of
09:52children who were named, his longtime producer friend, and other associates. While his housekeeper,
09:58Angela Borlaza, wasn't included at all. Despite later suing the estate claiming Brando had promised
10:04her her home. As for Tukey, the grandson who got nothing. By most accounts, he never turned the snub
10:10into public bitterness. He built a life in fashion and modeling on his own terms,
10:15separate from any Brando money. Growing up with Tarita in Tahiti, after being raised without a
10:20share of the fortune his grandfather amassed. Between roughly 10 named children in the will,
10:26and something like 30 grandchildren. The total pool, reported at around $30 million,
10:31was never going to stretch very far once split, fees and deductions included. So even the ones who were
10:37named as heirs, weren't necessarily walking away wealthy. But Petra and Tukey weren't in that pool
10:42at all. They were written out entirely, on purpose, in Brando's own words. Jerry Lewis died in August
10:492017, at age 91. And when his will surfaced, it read almost like a legal hit list. Six sons, Gary,
10:56Ronald, Anthony, Christopher, Scott and Joseph, were named individually and cut out one by one.
11:02Along with their descendants. The estate, reportedly worth around $50 million, went instead to his
11:08second wife, Sandy, and their adopted daughter, Danielle. The language in the will left zero
11:14ambiguity. It read, I have intentionally excluded Gary Lewis, R-O-N-A-L-D Lewis, A-N-T-H
11:19-O-N-Y
11:20Joseph Lewis, Christopher Joseph Lewis, Scott A-N-T-H-O-N-Y Lewis and Joseph, Christopher Lewis and
11:25their descendants as beneficiaries of my estate. It being my intention to that, they shall receive
11:30no benefits hereunder. Estate lawyers have pointed out that Lewis used the word, intentionally,
11:36on purpose. There's no reading this as an oversight or a will, that simply forgot to
11:41mention them. This was written to survive any challenge in court. Those six sons all came
11:47from Lewis's first marriage, to Patty Palmer. A marriage that lasted from 1944 to 1980. By the
11:54time it ended, decades of strain had built up. One of the sons, Gary, went on to become a
11:59genuinely successful musician in his own right. Fronting a band that had hits in the 60s.
12:04Another son, Joseph, struggled for years and died of a drug overdose in 2009. Eight years
12:10before his father's death, and while the family was already estranged. That estrangement had a
12:16specific flashpoint. After Joseph's death, Lewis's eldest son reportedly blamed the comedian publicly
12:22for his brother's struggles with addiction. An accusation that seems to have deepened whatever
12:27rift already existed between Lewis and the rest of his sons from that marriage. The will itself
12:32was executed in 2012, three years after Joseph's death. Meaning Lewis had years to reconsider the
12:39decision, and chose not to. While six sons were cut off, Lewis's adopted daughter Danielle, whom he'd
12:45had with Sandy, was treated completely differently. In interviews before his death, Lewis spoke about his
12:51bond with her in a way he never did about his sons. Telling one outlet, I don't have to do
12:56anything for
12:57her to love me. She loves me already. Danielle went on to work as his manager later in life, and
13:03she was
13:03the one who confirmed publicly that he'd passed peacefully at home with his family at his side.
13:08There's one more wrinkle to the story that often gets left out. Lewis actually had seven children total
13:14from that first marriage, not six. And the seventh, a son named Susan, wasn't mentioned in the will at
13:20all, for reasons nobody has ever explained. He wasn't disinherited by name like his brothers. He was
13:26simply left out of the document, entirely. Which under most state laws, still typically counts as an
13:32unintentional omission, unless a will spells things out clearly enough. Though Lewis's clarity about,
13:37intentionally, excluding the other six suggests this was far from an accident regardless of Susan's
13:43absence from the page. Because Lewis used a will instead of a private trust. Every detail of this
13:49family rift became a public record the moment he died. His fortune, his reasoning, or lack of it,
13:55and the names of every son he cut off. All searchable by anyone. Estate attorneys have used his case for
14:01years afterward as the textbook example of how a public will turns private family pain into headlines.
14:07While a trust would have kept the same decision completely out of the news. Sting has been saying the
14:13same thing publicly for over a decade now, and he's never walked it back. Sting says he won't be
14:18leaving his six children an inheritance. A fortune that's been estimated at various points between
14:24$300 million and $550 million, depending on the year and the source. When CBS Sunday morning asked him
14:32directly whether his kids would ever see that money, he laughed before answering. His reasoning hasn't
14:37changed much since he first said it publicly back in 2014. He told journalist Mark Phillips,
14:43All of my kids have been blessed with this extraordinary work ethic. Whether it's the DNA of
14:48it or whether I've said to them, Guys, you got to work. I'm spending our money. I'm paying for your
14:54education. You've got shoes on your feet. Go to work. He doesn't frame it as punishment. He frames it as
15:01the opposite, an act of care dressed up as tough love. That's the theme that runs through everything
15:07Sting has said about this over the years. The idea that handing kids everything actually damages them.
15:13He's put it in stark terms more than once. Saying he thinks the worst thing you can do to a
15:18kid
15:19is tell them they don't have to work. Calling that a form of abuse he hopes he's never guilty of.
15:24It's a strong word to use about your own parenting philosophy. But he's repeated some version of it
15:30in nearly every interview on the subject since. Sting has six children total. Two from his first
15:36marriage to actress Frances Tomlety. And four more with his current wife, Trudy Styler. His eldest son
15:42from that first marriage, Joe Sumner, has built his own career as a musician and founded several
15:48startups. Which Sting has pointed to as proof his approach is working, rather than harming anyone.
15:54Back in 2014, Sting gave the Daily Mail a slightly different reason, alongside the tough love
15:59philosophy, a much more practical one. He said flatly, I told them there won't be much money
16:05left because we are spending it. We have a lot of commitments. What comes in we spend and there
16:10isn't much left. At the time he mentioned having over a hundred people on his payroll between staff,
16:16properties, and charitable commitments. Meaning even a fortune in the hundreds of millions gets
16:21eaten up fast when you're running an operation that size. He also used a phrase that's stuck with him
16:27ever since. He said he doesn't want to leave his kids trust funds that become, in his words,
16:32albatrosses around their necks. Dead weight they carry rather than a gift that helps them.
16:37It's the same idea Sting has repeated in nearly every interview on the topic, for over 10 years
16:42running. That money without effort isn't a blessing, it's a burden. By the time he sat down with CBS more
16:49recently, over a decade after his first comments on the subject, nothing had shifted. He confirmed the
16:55plan was still exactly the same, and added that his kids rarely ask him for money, which he said
17:00he respects. He's been clear that if any of them were ever genuinely in trouble, he'd step in. But
17:06that scenario, according to him, has essentially never come up. His kids, now ranging in age from
17:11their 30s up into their late 40s, have built careers of their own, rather than waiting on a payout.
17:17Jackie Chan made this decision public back in 2011, and has repeated it, almost word for word,
17:23for more than 15 years since. His fortune, estimated at around $400 million, is set to go entirely to
17:30charity. And his only son, JC, will inherit none of it. Chan's original plan wasn't quite this extreme.
17:37He'd first said he intended to split his wealth, giving half to charity, and leaving the other half
17:42to his son. But in October 2012, he reversed that decision completely. Announcing he now intended to
17:48give his entire fortune to charity, cutting JC and any other family members out entirely. His reasoning
17:55has stayed consistent across every interview since. If he, JC, is capable, he can make his own money.
18:02And if he isn't capable, in Chan's view, the money would just be wasted. To understand why Chan drew
18:07this line, you have to look at how he raised JC in the first place. Because it wasn't neglect,
18:12if anything, it was the opposite. JC grew up in mansions, went on lavish vacations, received a
18:19top-tier education. And even got his father's financial backing, when he tried to break into
18:24a movie career of his own. Chan clearly gave his son every advantage money could buy, while he was
18:29growing up. The problem, in Chan's eyes, was what came after. JC's acting career, never took off the
18:36way his father's did. He's had roughly 20 starring roles over the years, most of which failed to connect
18:42with audiences. One of the more painful examples was a movie he co-starred in alongside his own father
18:48in 2012. Which brought in only about $9,000 at the box office, despite a heavy marketing push.
18:54A staggering flop for a film built around two Chan family names. Then came the scandal that a lot of
19:00people assumed was the real reason behind the disinheritance. In 2014, JC was arrested in China
19:07for drug possession, was found guilty, and spent six months in jail. A genuinely serious embarrassment
19:13for a father, who, at the time, was serving as an anti-drug ambassador, and sitting on a political
19:19advisory board in China. But reporting on the decision has been clear, that the disinheritance
19:24had nothing to do with JC's arrest, or his legal troubles. Chan had already made the call two years
19:29before that scandal, even happened. Chan has been candid about what he actually thinks is wrong with
19:35his son, and it's not really about money at all. He's said in interviews that he believes JC lacks
19:41discipline, and doesn't know how to properly hold a conversation with people. And he's said he wishes
19:46he'd sent his son into the army when he was younger, just to toughen him up. In his 2015 autobiography,
19:52Chan told a story about booking himself a first-class ticket, and JC an economy seat on the same flight.
19:58Telling his son directly, that he hadn't earned the upgrade. Only for JC to pay for the upgrade
20:04himself anyway, missing the point of the lesson entirely, according to Chan's own telling.
20:09The relationship with his second child, daughter Etta and G-Chok Lam, has been even rockier.
20:15Etta has publicly said her father abandoned her, and their relationship has played out in headlines
20:20for years. Adding another layer to why Chan seems so firm about steering his fortune away from his direct
20:25family, and toward causes instead. Chan founded his own charitable foundation back in 1988,
20:32decades before any of this became public, and has served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2004.
20:39So the charity commitment wasn't invented as a snub to JC, it long predates the fallout.
20:44Despite everything, JC has never publicly hit back at his father over the decision. By most accounts,
20:50he's continued working, as an actor and singer, in his own right. Building a career and a life that,
20:56while nowhere near his father's level of fame, is entirely his own. Which, ironically,
21:01is exactly the outcome Jackie Chan says, he was trying to force all along.
21:05Elton John has been open for years about not wanting his sons, Zachary and Elijah, to grow up
21:11as what he calls trust fund kids. He's talked in interviews, about worrying that unearned wealth
21:16strips young people of ambition. Echoing almost exactly the same fear that runs through every
21:22name on this list. Sting's albatross Jackie Chan's wasted money, Jerry Lewis's silence,
21:27Joan Crawford's shut door. John's own path to fame started from very little. He grew up in a
21:33working-class household outside London, before building one of the biggest music careers of
21:38the 20th century. And he said more than once that struggle shaped him in ways he doesn't want to rob
21:43his own children of experiencing. That's the throughline in almost everything he said publicly
21:49about his sons and money. The sense that handing over a fortune, without any of the work that built
21:54it, would cheat them out of something more valuable than cash. He and his husband, David Furnish,
22:00have talked about raising their boys with rules around excess. No extravagant spending sprees,
22:05chores expected around the house, and emphasis on manners and grounded behavior. Despite growing up
22:11around some of the wealthiest and most famous people on the planet, John has framed this as deliberate,
22:17not accidental, much the same way Sting has described his own approach as a form of kindness
22:22rather than neglect. Where John's stance differs slightly from some of the others on this list
22:27is in the charitable structure behind it. He's spent decades building the Elton John AIDS Foundation,
22:33one of the largest HIV and AIDS charities in the world. Funded in large part by his own performances,
22:38art collection sales, and personal wealth over the years. The foundation has already redirected an
22:44enormous share of what he's earned toward research, treatment access, and prevention programs globally.
22:50Money that, under a more traditional inheritance model, might otherwise have simply piled up for
22:55his children to inherit outright. That's really the thread connecting all six stories here.
23:00Whether it was written into a will the week before death, spelled out furiously to reporters for over a
23:06decade. Or shaped quietly through years of foundation building. Each of these six stars reached the same
23:12conclusion from very different lives. That the biggest inheritance they could leave their children
23:17wasn't a number in a bank account. But the requirement to go out and build one of their own.