Hackard Law
August 27th, 2018
The name John Seward Johnson probably means very little to you, but you likely know of the company that Johnson’s father, Robert Wood Johnson, co-founded.
That’s right – Johnson & Johnson, the maker of baby products we’ve all used for generations.
By the time Johnson died of cancer in 1983 at the age of 87, he left an estate of more than $400 million. Unfortunately for his heirs, he also left behind a complicated estate battle that took years and millions of dollars to sort out, mostly because his six children from two marriages alleged that Johnson was not mentally competent when he left his fortune to his third wife, Barbara Piasecka, a chambermaid, 42 years his junior, whom he married in 1971 with none of his children in attendance.
The contested will stems from a decision Johnson made in the last year of his life. He changed his will at the age of 87, leaving everything to Piasecka.
When millions of dollars are on the line, the stakes are high, and families pull out all the stops to get what they believe is warranted. In the Johnson case, or should I say, cases – because there were at least three separate lawsuits filed – lawyers and their clients for the disinherited family members, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce witnesses willing to corroborate their version of the facts.
Hackard Law, Mather, California
