Who inherited Bing Crosby’s money?

Bing Crosby’s will left everything to Kathryn Grant, his second wife. 

Crosby’s will led to a dispute between him and his first wife Wilma, best known as Dixie Lee. They were married from 1930 until 1952, when she died. They had
four sons.

HLC Properties was the trust set up to manage the estate.

In 1996, the trustees of Wilma’s estate sued HLC over “interest, dividends, royalties and other income derived from community property” of Bing and Wilma. The case was settled in 1999 for about $1.5 million.

A few years later, Wilma’s Trust realized that they should benefit from Crosby’s publicity rights. After all, he rose to fame during his first marriage. Were those public relations rights not community property?

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger authorized an amendment to the state’s publicity rights statute in 2008, and the Wilma Trust used this change to argue that something new had occurred.

California appeals judge H. Walter Croskey wrote in an opinion how the state’s posthumous right of publicity has been on the books for quite some time and that the 2008 law “only clarified” the older statute’s original intent.

“Since we conclude that SB 771 only clarified existing law, the amendment did not create any new rights that fell outside of the 1999 settlement’s release of all claims to community property, the argument of Wilma’s Estate that Bing’s right of publicity did not exist in 1999 and thus could not have been the subject the settlement agreement must fail,” writes the appeals judge, reversing the trial judge.

“The petition of Wilma’s Estate is clearly barred by res judicata.”