This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Business News Legal
Judge declines to sack bank administrating the Prince estate
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 19 December 2017
A judge in Minnesota has declined to remove the bank Comercia from its role administering the Prince estate. Three of the late musician’s heirs last month filed papers with the court requesting that Comercia be axed from its current role. The other three heirs then objected to that proposal.
As previously reported, there have been various disagreements between Prince’s siblings since his untimely death last year. Though all six heirs did initially agree to Comercia Bank taking over the administration of the estate from the Bremer Trust, which undertook that role on an interim basis until earlier this year.
However, while all six heirs may have approved the appointment of Comercia, three of them almost immediately raised concerns once the bank had started work. Things then seemingly came to a head when it was decided to move the master recordings stored in the vault at Prince’s Paisley Park home to a storage facility in California. Two of the musician’s half sisters – Sharon and Norrine Nelson – said they had not been consulted about that move.
Judge Kevin Eide yesterday ruled that it would not be in the best interests of the Prince estate to remove Comercia from its administrator role. Instead he appointed a retired judge to act as a mediator between the bank and the heirs to the estate, presumably hoping that that can relieve tensions between the disgruntled heirs and the bankers.
