Warring members of Johnny Hallyday’s family will seek a court order freezing the late French rocker’s estate on Thursday in the first round of a bitter dispute over his 100-million-euro fortune, reports The Guardian.
The battle has pitted Hallyday’s widow Laeticia, to whom he left his entire estate, against the singer’s two elder children, who were disinherited.
In a case that also interests the French tax authorities, the court will examine whether Hallyday’s testament, drawn up in America, is valid or whether his estate comes under French inheritance laws.
When Hallyday died aged 74 in December after being treated for lung cancer, there was little doubt France was honouring one of its own.
The country was engulfed by a wave of grief for a man, dubbed “the French Elvis”, who sang in French to an overwhelmingly French audience and who died in France before being buried on the French West Indian island of Saint Barthelemy.
That Hallyday’s father was Belgian and that he chose to bring up his youngest children in Los Angeles was not mentioned at the funeral, an occasion of national pomp and ceremony attended by French politicians, pop stars and President Emmanuel Macron. An estimated million fans turned out in the streets to pay tribute to the star.
The public show of family unity lasted as long as it took to open and read his will. The document, written in English and signed in July 2011, made Laeticia his executor. He put the management of his global estate into a trust, details of which are not known.
Hallyday’s elder children David Hallyday, from his marriage to singer Sylvie Vartan, and Laura Smet, whose mother is actor Nathalie Baye, were left nothing, not even, they claim, the right to hear the album Hallyday was preparing to release at the time of his death. The star’s will stated he had made provision for them while he was alive.