Paris Jackson has asked a Los Angeles probate court to order a $600 million distribution from Michael Jackson's estate to the Michael Jackson Family Trust, escalating a fight over a trust that the filing says has still not been funded more than 17 years after Michael Jackson's death.
The timing matters because the request lands now, while the filing says the trust beneficiaries have already waited past every milestone Michael Jackson set for them. The papers say he intended his children, including Prince and Bigi Jackson, to begin receiving income on their twenty-first birthdays and principal distributions on their thirtieth birthdays, but those dates have all long passed.
Paris Jackson's filing says the estate has the money to make a large payment. Her legal team says the estate has generated substantial proceeds through business deals and property sales, including the sale of EMI Music Publishing, the sale of Neverland Ranch, and a deal with Sony tied to Michael Jackson's music and IP assets. It claims the estate holds approximately $600 million in distributable cash, not counting any cash held at the entity level.
The family trust issue is not new. Paris Jackson raised the unfunded trust in a separate legal document a year ago, and her filing leans on a 2011 reference in which executors said they were considering a separate petition for preliminary distribution. Fifteen years later, the beneficiaries are still waiting for the trust to be fully funded.
The estate tells a different story. It says it cannot fully fund the trusts until other legal matters are resolved, including litigation with the Internal Revenue Service. The estate says the tax agency sought $700 million in taxes and penalties, that it secured a ruling cutting that figure, and that the matter has not been settled and could still change.
That leaves the court with a simple but consequential question: whether the estate can move the cash now, or whether unresolved liabilities still justify holding it back. Prince turns 30 in four months, Paris turns 29 in April and Bigi turns 25 in February, so the next deadline is no longer far off.
