Leonard Cohen’s Children In Dispute With Lawyer Over Control of His Estate

Leonard Cohen’s children are in a dispute with Cohen’s lawyer over the control of the late Canadian singer’s assets, according to the NY Post.

Adam Cohen and Lorca Cohen have been fighting to remove attorney Robert Kory as a trustee to the Leonard Cohen Family Trust for over a year in Los Angeles Superior Court. Before his death, Leonard Cohen had appointed Kory to oversee the estate and handle the royalties. Cohen died in 2016.

The trust currently holds numerous assets including millions of dollars in royalties for Cohen’s music, poetry, novels, and photos, as well as 243 journal notebooks, per the Post.

A court document wrote that Cohen had come “to appreciate in his waning days that he had made a grave error by allowing Kory to insinuate himself into Leonard’s affairs and take control over virtually every aspect of Leonard’s finances and legacy.”

Adam and Lorca claim Kory had been avoiding updating them about his attempts at further monetizing Leonard Cohen’s estate, including the posthumous release of his novel, “A Ballet of Lepers,” which came out in October.

Cohen’s children hired attorney Adam Streisand who also alleged that Kory had forged documents in 2005 in an attempt to seize control of Cohen’s assets.

Streisand added that two versions of the trust document Cohen had signed existed. One version benefited the children and designated Lorca, Adam, and Anjani Thomas⁠—who the Post notes is Cohen’s former partner and Kory’s former wife⁠—as trustees to the estate. Streisand further explained that once Lenoard Cohen had passed, a lawyer “swapped out […] the page that added Lorca, Adam, and Anjani Thomas with a new page that designated Kory as the trustee to the estate.

Lawyer Reeve Chudd wrote, in a letter made accessible through court documents, that Leonard Cohen instructed him to “change the successor trustee to Mr. Kory.”

“[Cohen] was concerned that his children didn’t have a sufficiently comfortable relationship to work together upon the complexities of the artist’s estate.”

Kory, Chudd, as well as Adam and Lorca Cohen all denied the Post’s attempts to contact them for comments.