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177: Inside the Heated Padres Inheritance Feud: What It Teaches Us About Sound Estate Planning

April 15, 2025

In this all-new episode of Absolute Trust Talk, Kirsten Howe and her associates, Jessica Colbert and Ariana Flynn, delve into the complex estate battle surrounding the late San Diego Padres owner, Peter Seidler. The MLB team finds itself at the center of a legal dispute as Seidler’s wife, Sheel, contends with his brothers over control of the franchise. With allegations of breached trust, fraud, and self-dealing, the case highlights the intricacies of estate planning for high-net-worth individuals and the potential pitfalls of ambiguous or informal documentation. While largely speculation, the conversation also explores the crucial role of trustee selection and the challenges of navigating ownership agreements in the context of professional sports. Tune in for expert insights on safeguarding your legacy, minimizing the risk of litigation, and ensuring your estate plan is as airtight as your favorite team’s defense.

Time-stamped Show Notes:

0:00 Introduction

1:08 To kick things off, let’s dive into the complex estate battle of the late San Diego Padres owner, Peter Seidler. Listen in for a discussion of how Seidler’s wife, Sheel, takes on his brothers in a heated legal fight to control the MLB team.

1:20 Breached trust, fraud, and self-dealing – the hosts break down the allegations and their implications for estate planning.

3:00 Next, let’s examine the role of the Padres’ “control person” and how it complicates the case and its potential outcome.

4:06 The function of a trustee is vital in estate planning. Here are some tips on how to avoid family feuds and ensure impartiality in estate administration.

7:05 Learn how Major League Baseball’s unique ownership regulations can complicate estate planning for team owners.

7:59 Handwritten wills and informal estate documents: Why they often lead to legal disputes and how to avoid them.

9:12 Tune in now for what you need to know about recognizing the importance of following proper legal procedures to ensure estate plans are legally sound and enforceable.

10:36 Gain insights into how emotional reactions and unexpected human behavior can significantly impact estate disputes and learn strategies to mitigate these risks.

11:03 Key takeaways from the Padres’ estate battle for creating effective and resilient estate plans.

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to Absolute Trust Talk. This is our podcast at Absolute Trust Counsel, and I’m Kirsten Howe. My two associates, Jessica Colbert and Ariana Flynn are joining me today. Today, we have one of our—well, I think these are my most fun episodes, personally—where we can have some celebrity gossipy kind of thing that ties into estate planning somehow. Because they’re fun, they’re fun to talk about.

This is a case that’s been in the news. I think it first came up early in the year, and we didn’t get a chance to talk about it because we had other guests scheduled. Also, Gene Hackman died, and that took precedence in terms of our celebrity estate planning. But here we are. We’re going to talk about the late owner of San Diego Padres, Peter Seidler, and some of the stuff that’s happening in his estate.

Ariana, do you want to give our listeners some background on what’s going on there?

Definitely, so there’s some drama going on in San Diego right now. Or should I say it’s taking place in Travis County in Texas?

Texas probate court?

Yeah.

The San Diego Padres, you know, MLB professional baseball team—the owner had passed away. His name was Peter Seidler. His wife—I’m not sure how this is pronounced correctly—Sheel Seidler sued her two brothers-in-law, who were the trustees of Peter’s trust, to prevent another brother from taking control over the team.

She argues, you know, kind of the whole gamut: breaches of trust, fraud, conversion, acts of self-dealing. Kind of throwing the book at them. She’s stating that she should be the owner of the San Diego Padres because there was an alleged handwritten note by Peter during his lifetime listing Sheel as the owner, followed by their children. But we don’t know how legitimate this handwritten document is.

On the flip side of that, the two brothers—Matthew and Robert—argue that the trust rules and terms are pretty explicit. They allege that the trust says they are the trustees exclusively responsible for designating the next owner of the San Diego Padres, the control person. They appointed the third brother as the control person and stated that Sheel does not have any standing to contest the trust documents.

So that’s kind of the overall argument in a very condensed nutshell. I’m sure there’s more to it than that and a lot more details, but that’s the general picture.

Yeah, I’m sure that a lot of pleadings have been filed in this case since we first heard about it. That’s not what we’re here to talk about. Our audience doesn’t want to hear what the pleadings say because, a lot of times, that’s very technical and procedural.

I just want to clarify one thing. The issue is about who will be the Padres’ control person, not their owner. Sheel is saying, “Oh, my husband wanted me to be in control of the San Diego Padres. Here’s this handwritten note where he said that,” and the brothers are saying, “No, no, no, no, no. We’re following the trust document, and we’re going to select a control person appropriately.”

So okay, that’s the background. Jessica, what do you see here as something worth pointing out to our audience, who always wants to learn about estate planning?

Yeah, one thing that immediately jumps out is we’re always talking about the issue of making sure that you pick the right person to be your trustee. In a case like this, Peter probably thought that his brothers were a good choice—and maybe they were. We don’t really know what the story is. But in a situation like this, where there’s a lot of family drama and a lot at stake, this might be a situation where we would suggest a disinterested trustee, someone who’s not in the family, perhaps a professional, just to kind of avoid these sorts of conflicts.

Yeah, I mean, there’s an argument definitely to be made for someone disinterested. Although, when you think about this particular asset, you just think, “Oh, you don’t want some bank in charge.” So… apologies, bank trustees. Sorry, Wells Fargo—we love you. But you know, I’m just saying I don’t know how you solve this problem. Maybe a committee of trustees? I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer is.

So yeah, that is a very valid point. Picking the right trustee is so important, and you can’t always predict who’s going to turn out to be a good trustee.

Ariana, why don’t you talk about—well, I’m going to talk about the business aspect of this. And then, Ariana, I want you to talk more from your litigation side, which we always love to hear.

What I understand is Peter Seidler was not the 100% owner of the Padres. He owned an interest in the Padres. There are other owners. And when a business is owned by multiple owners—especially a very valuable business owned by smart, wealthy people—they’re going to have an agreement among the owners. And that agreement is going to say what happens if an owner dies. It probably says how to select who is the controlling person of this team.

If we have 25 owners, we can only have one person sort of representing the team. So there’s all of that, which kind of goes against Sheel’s case. It probably doesn’t matter what Peter wrote down—“I want my wife to be the controller.” He probably can’t do that. The business documents probably don’t permit that.

Again, we are purely speculating. We haven’t seen these documents. It’s just based on what we do know.

And the last thing about that is—hang on, let me think of what I was going to say about that.

Oh! The last thing is that Major League Baseball itself controls what happens in Major League Baseball to a large extent. So there are probably rules about this. Perhaps Major League Baseball has to approve whoever they select as the controlling person. I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure that the rules of Major League Baseball ownership are intricate and beyond my comprehension.

That’s what I would just posit: that there probably is that also. Peter doesn’t just get to write down on a piece of paper, “This is what I want.”

Okay. That’s enough from me. Ariana, let’s talk about that handwritten instrument. That is a pure estate planning issue.

Absolutely. And we all kind of know the riskiness of handwritten instruments, whether it’s a trust amendment or a will. There are certain formalities that you have to follow. Anytime you see something that is handwritten, it just opens up that door to litigation and to speculation: Did he really draft this? When did he draft it? Was he in his right mind?

It just brings up so many questions rather than solving any problems. It’s really just opening up that door to a plethora of litigation, which is the case here.

It kind of emphasizes the importance of making sure that if you do want to have an amendment to your trust, you follow the correct procedures legally. Working with a legal professional, obviously, is the best way to ensure that the document will be procedurally correct—under California law, in our case.

That’s the riskiness there. Whenever you see a handwritten document, that’s the biggest thing in litigation. Anytime you see handwriting—The lawyers are rubbing their hands together.

Yeah. And so, following good practice and the formalities required by the Probate Code at least gets that issue off the table—like, was this a legitimate change? You still might have the issue of, “Was she threatening him? How did she coerce him to do this?” But at least the authenticity and the legally binding nature of it wouldn’t be in question.

But now she’s got that too. And so it’s just kind of a messy way to do it.

Yeah.

Okay. Does anybody else have any last issues that we didn’t hit on here?

I just wanted to mention, you know, because Mr. Seidler did create an estate plan—and I’m sure his trust was pretty complicated—yet he still didn’t avoid litigation. I’m sure that was probably one of his goals while creating the estate plan.

So just kind of a PSA: even if you do create an estate plan, if it’s not solidified and nailed tight, it could still potentially be litigated in court, too, on interpretation.

Right. That’s a really excellent point. And I’m just going to add—even if everything is done correctly and looks nailed down tight, you can still have litigation because people start litigation. And people do things that we can’t predict. They aren’t always reasonable.

People are people.

So we don’t know what they’ll argue.

Especially when there’s, I’m sure, many hundreds of millions of dollars we’re talking about here.

Anyway—okay, thank you both. This was a fun episode. I hope you listeners at home enjoyed it as well, and we look forward to connecting with you next time.

Resources Related to This Episode:

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Categories: Business Succession, Celebrity Estates, Estate Planning, Litigation, Podcasts, Probate, Sports, Trustee, Trusts Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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