Michael Jackson’s son Bigi, formerly nicknamed Blanket, has engaged his Grandmother, Katherine, in a court battle over the sale of half of Jackson’s music catalog for $600 million.
Bigi is asking the court not to allow the family matriarch to use funds from Jackson’s estate to pay for her legal fees in the ongoing battle with the estate’s executors over an undisclosed “recent transaction,” according to court filings obtained by PEOPLE. The transaction is believed to be the sale of half the hitmaker’s catalog to Sony.
Initially fought by both the children of the late singer and his mother, after a judge ruled the transaction could go on as proposed, the Jackson kids decided to go along with the ruling. Mrs. Jackson filed an appeal in the matter, but Bigi believes the estate doesn’t stand to “benefit” from her appeal and shouldn’t pay her legal fees.
“It is readily apparent that a reversal on appeal would be an extreme longshot,” Bigi’s lawyers said via statement. “Given those odds, Bigi decided not to waste his resources to participate in an appeal. Nonetheless, Katherine has decided to appeal this court’s ruling. That decision is not for the benefit of the heirs.”
The 22-year-old director and producer is not completely opposed to the estate paying all of his grandmother’s fees in the case. He “does not object to reasonable attorney fees and costs” stemming from the initial legal procedures when they were in unison against the deal, but he thinks “the overall amount for the trial might be high” and questioned whether “four lawyers charging fees of $840 to $1,400 per hour was necessary.”
“Katherine’s petition has the practical effect of requiring Bigi and his siblings pay for her appeal,” read Bigi’s court filing. “It would be unfair to make those beneficiaries shoulder this burden when they expressly decided an appeal would not be in their best interests.”
Born as Prince Michael Jackson II in 2002, in 2015, he legally changed his first name to Bigi.
