Alex Carson
Ever since television legend Larry King died in early 2021, there has been a good deal of mystery surrounding the details of his inheritance, including his $2 million estate. Much of this mystery is due to the fact that the late television host was undergoing prolonged divorce proceedings with his wife, Shawn King. Although the two filed for divorce in August of 2019, they were still married at the time of Larry’s death. After his death, it seemed that a 2015 will firmly established that Shawn was set to become the administrator of her late husband’s estate. However, a recently uncovered handwritten will contradicts the 2015 document. The new handwritten will says that King’s wealth is to be divided amongst his remaining children, with absolutely no mention of Shawn or any of his previous wives. In many instances, the existence of such a handwritten document could completely override any prior will. However, certain situational elements raise questions about whether or not this new handwritten document should be taken into consideration in court. Join Facts Verse as we try and uncover why Larry King’s secret will is raising questions.
Larry King died on January 23, 2021, after a long battle with failing health. It was originally reported that he had died of COVID-19, but it was later revealed that the actual cause of death was sepsis. Larry King’s long battle with his health lead him to make sure that he had a will in place to dictate where his estate was going to go after he died. at least, that’s what everyone thought. However, recent information has put Larry’s initially documented will into question.
This new revelation about Larry King’s will comes after a good deal of controversy surrounding both Shawn King and Larry King Junior. Shawn King is Larry’s late wife, while Larry King Junior is the son that Larry didn’t know about until he was well into old age. While a 2015 will firmly establishes that Shawn is to become the administrator of her late husband’s estate, a new handwritten will has been uncovered that claims to override the 2015 will. This new will gives ownership of Larry’s $2 million estate to his children, two of whom passed since the will was allegedly written. Larry King Junior is now seeking to take control of the estate, but Shawn is putting up a fight to try and retain what she feels is rightfully hers.
Larry and Shawn had been married for 22 years at the time of Larry’s death. However, the two had filed for divorce over a year prior, in August of 2019. Two months after this divorce filing is when the new handwritten will was alleged to have been written. For many, this might seem like an obvious case of Larry changing his mind at the last second and deciding to give his children power over his wealth. However, the scribbled and hurried nature of the document calls into question how official it should be considered. One of Shawn’s theories is that someone put her late husband up to writing this handwritten will. According to her, she and her husband “had a very watertight family estate plan”. She went on to say that this plan “still exists, and it is the legitimate will”. She believes that the 2015 will is going to hold up in court, as she feels that it rightfully should.
Despite Shawn’s insistence that the 2015 will was Larry’s true last will and testament, there remains the glaring matter that the 2015 will was written well before Larry and Shawn filed for divorce. In most cases, a divorce is more than enough to warrant someone changing their will. With this in mind, it makes more sense to assume that Larry did, in fact, make an effort to amend his will in some way after the August 2019 divorce filing. Still, this doesn’t explain the shoddy nature of the document. If the document was drafted two months after they filed for divorce, Larry had more than a year before his death to have his modified will documented in a way that might hold up better in court in the inevitable event of his passing. If the new will was so important to Larry, why did he not take the time to have it documented legibly? Surely he could’ve foreseen that his wife was going to be able to use the poor legibility of the document against his children. This lack of logic on Larry’s part plays into Shawn’s greater argument that Larry simply wasn’t of sound mind when he created this new handwritten will, if he even actually wrote it.
Now that this new handwritten will has been unveiled, Larry King’s firstborn son, Larry King Junior, has stepped up and asked to be appointed as the administrator to his late father’s estate. The estate is valued at $2 million, a fraction of the late Larry King’s overall net worth. The remaining value is held in trusts. Shawn is looking to fight Larry King Junior every step of the way, intending to retain her position as the inheritor of her late husband’s estate. While many may be tempted to take Larry Junior’s side based on his name alone, his story has it’s own twists and turns that call his motivations into question. If you’re enjoying this video so far, be sure to hit the like button to show your support! As well, subscribe to the channel if you’d like to be among the first to know when more Facts Verse videos are on their way!
Larry King’s impending divorce with Shawn King wasn’t the only drama in his life before his death in January of 2021. The late television host had been married numerous times over the course of his long career, and had five children. Two of these children were with Shawn, and three were with previous wives. Two of the three eldest children died in August of 2020, around a year after the alleged writing of the handwritten will. The remaining and absolute eldest child was Larry King Junior.
Larry King Junior was his father’s firstborn son, the result of his father’s marriage to Annette Kaye. Infamously, Larry King didn’t learn about his firstborn son until Larry King Junior was already well into his 30s. Perhaps the guilt that stemmed from this is what lead Larry King to provide his firstborn son with money in a secret join bank account that Shawn didn’t learn about until after her late husband’s death. Apparently, Larry had given his son over $250,000, a gift that he had kept secret from his wife. Along with demanding that her late husband’s newly revealed handwritten will be deemed unworthy by the courts, Shawn is also demanding that her late husband’s cash gift to his firstborn son be returned.
Larry King’s learning of his firstborn son is certainly a strange tale, with Larry King Junior having been officially revealed to the public in 2009. The strange part wasn’t the reveal so much as how Larry phrased his reasoning for not being a part of his firstborn son’s life. According to the late television host, he “knew there was a Larry King Junior out there. but. didn’t know [that the child] was [his]”. He went on to say that “the marriage [to Annette] was very short” and that Annette had promised to name her firstborn son after him. However, he claims that he never heard from her again after the marriage dissolved, prompting him to assume that the child named after him was someone else’s. When prompted for further explanation, the late talk show host said that he “didn’t think about it”. He didn’t reexamine the situation until his ex-wife reached out to him many years later with affirmation that Larry King Junior was, in fact, his son.
Larry King Junior is now over 60, with a wife and children of his own. He is married to a woman named Shannon, and the two have three children. Larry King Junior’s marriage to his wife seems to be a bit more successful than the one his father shared with his mother. Larry King and Annette Kaye were married in 1961, and the marriage lasted for less than a year.
The reveal of Larry King’s new handwritten will was made in conjunction with a larger ploy on Larry King Junior’s part to overtake Shawn as administrator of his father’s estate. Along with the new will, his argument is largely dependent on the simple fact that Shawn and his father had been living apart and were quite obviously undergoing divorce proceedings at the time of his death. Shawn’s continual insistence that her late husband didn’t appear to be “serious” about the divorce proceedings doesn’t hold much weight when one takes the whole situation into account. However, the strange nature of the new handwritten will can’t be denied. A hearing will soon determine whether or not this new handwritten will has any merit in overriding the prior will that had been officially documented in 2015. In the meantime, both Shawn and Larry King Junior are likely scrambling to think of anything they can to convince judges that the late Larry King either was or was not in sound mind when he supposedly drafted it.
If the new handwritten will is considered viable, that doesn’t mean that Shawn’s side of the family won’t see any of her late husband’s wealth. Her two children with Larry, Chance and Cannon, will stand to inherit a third each of their father’s $2 million estate. Shawn shouldn’t be too upset to see her two children get such a large part of their father’s wealth. Still, her legal team remains confident that they will have the legality of the new handwritten will overridden, although it’s hard to argue that Larry King Junior doesn’t have a fairly sound argument.
From an outside perspective, it’s very hard to determine whether or not Larry King’s secret new will should hold up in court. Comment down below to share whether or not you think Larry King Junior is being honest, or whether you think that Shawn King is in the right. As always, like this video to show your support, and subscribe and hit the notification bell if you’d like to be among the first to know when more Facts Verse content is on it’s way!
