LOS ANGELES (AP) ― It’s been five years since Michael Jackson died, yet his career is more alive than it has been in decades.
Just last month, the singer moonwalked across a Las Vegas stage in a nationally televised hologram performance. A new album recently debuted at No. 2 on music charts. And a traveling Cirque du Soleil show based on Jackson’s songs has logged nearly 500 performances worldwide.
The result has been an estate that has earned more than $600 million since the King of Pop’s untimely death at age 50.
Some of the earnings support Jackson’s three children and mother. Yet an analysis by The Associated Press shows much more has gone to erase the singer’s massive debts and to run the estate that powers his robust posthumous career.
Michael Jackson in 2009. ( AP-Yonhap)
As would be expected, the last five years have brought their share of change and adjustment for Jackson’s children, known to the world as Prince, 17; Paris, 16; and Blanket, 12. They were at their father’s rented mansion on June 25, 2009, when he was given an overdose of the anesthetic propofol in his upstairs bedroom. And they were at the hospital several hours later when he was pronounced dead. It would take more than two years before Jackson’s doctor was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
A father who taught his children philanthropy, threw them lavish birthday parties and meticulously masked them from the paparazzi is gone. Michael Jackson, however, continues to provide.
Nearly $20 million had been spent to support Jackson’s children and his mother, Katherine, through 2012. Payments to the family have increased each year since June 2009, according to court records. Adulthood will bring a sizeable inheritance for each child.
In the meantime, lawyers have busily untangled Jackson’s finances, which itself has been expensive. Among the disbursements between mid-2009 and the end of 2012:
More than $91 million on taxes and licenses, including $45 million paid to the federal government for taxes.
More than $25 million in compensation for the estate’s executors, Jackson’s longtime attorney John Branca and family friend and music executive John McClain. The men receive a percentage of the estate’s earnings.
More than $17 million to lawyers who represent the estate, Katherine and her grandchildren.
