A representative for Pamela Warner said Aug. 13 that a settlement has been reached in the legal dispute over Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s estate, ending for now a fight that had put his widow and mother on opposite sides of the family trust.
The statement said Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s daughter, MacKenzie Warner, will receive the majority remainder of the Trust and Estate, a result that centers the 9-year-old child at the heart of the case. It also said the settlement reflects the view that it is in her best interest to have a relationship with her grandmother, Pamela Warner.
That development matters now because it changes the case’s status after Tenisha Warner sued Pamela Warner in July over access to financial support for herself and MacKenzie Warner. Tenisha Warner, Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s widow, said her husband had been in the process of forming a new estate plan before he died, but that it was never finalized.
In the filing, Tenisha Warner said she and her daughter were left out of an outdated revocable trust Malcolm-Jamal Warner made when he was 26. She said that trust gave 70% of his assets to Pamela Warner, 15% to his late father and 15% to his half-sister, and she wrote, “This was not Malcolm’s intent.”
The family’s split sharpened over money and control. Tenisha Warner accused Pamela Warner of preventing access to funds and of selling the couple’s first family home in Los Angeles against her wishes. She said the home was where MacKenzie first lived and formed her earliest memories of her father. She also said she was owed more than $1.2 million under a premarital agreement that required $1 million life insurance policies on both lives, a Roth IRA for her, a $5,000 monthly salary for 39 months and $16,000 on every marriage anniversary.
Pamela Warner’s representative denied on Aug. 13 that she tried to withhold funds from her granddaughter and said Pamela Warner had tried to resolve the dispute privately before it reached court. The statement said Malcolm-Jamal Warner was deliberate in his estate planning and had provided for his wife and daughter separately from the trust at issue, to the tune of millions of dollars. It also said the trust favored Pamela Warner, Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s father and his sister.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner died from an accidental drowning at age 54, and the fight over his estate followed soon after. The settlement, as described, resolves the immediate conflict over support for MacKenzie Warner, but the filings do not spell out every term or say whether any further court action is still pending.
