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184: From One Direction to No Direction: What Liam Payne’s Estate Teaches Us About Planning

June 24, 2025

In this episode of Absolute Trust Talk, host Kirsten Howe examines the estate complications following One Direction member Liam Payne’s tragic death in Argentina in fall 2024. At just 30 years old, Payne left behind a $32 million estate—but no will. His complex assets include performance income, solo artist earnings, brand deals, music publishing rights, and venture investments. Without estate planning, his 8-year-old son Bear becomes the sole intestate heir, inheriting the full amount at age 18. Kirsten analyzes the cascading problems: massive probate fees (at least $376,000 in California), no designated asset management for the minor child, potential displacement of Payne’s live-in girlfriend, substantial estate taxes on $18 million (a 40% rate), and no provisions for parents or siblings. This case illustrates how even young, successful individuals require comprehensive estate planning to safeguard their loved ones and preserve their wealth. The key lesson: don’t die intestate—unexpected death can happen at any age, making proper planning essential for anyone with assets and people they care about.

Time-stamped Show Notes:

0:00 Introduction

0:57 Listen as we discuss the untimely passing of Liam Payne and his $32 million estate with complex assets and no will

2:16 While Liam is a citizen of the UK, we’re going to analyze his case as if it were under California law, and why probate is problematic for large estates

3:19 The massive cost of probate: $376,000+ in statutory fees alone for complex assets such as those like Liam’s

4:33 Estate Planning Lesson #1: No chosen asset management for minor child – court appoints ex-girlfriend and music lawyer

5:52 Estate Planning Lesson #2: 18-year-old inheritance age – few parents think this is appropriate for $32 million

6:35 Estate Planning Lesson #3: No provisions for other family members – parents, siblings get nothing

7:24 Estate Planning Lesson #4: Live-in girlfriend faces potential eviction with no inheritance rights

8:16 Estate Planning Lesson #5: Massive estate tax liability – 40% on $18 million could have been minimized

9:16 Key takeaway: Estate planning is essential at any age when you have assets and loved ones

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to the Absolute Trust Talk. I am Kirsten Howe, and I am the managing attorney here at the Absolute Trust Council. I’m really glad that you’re here today, because we are going to be talking about one of my favorite things, which is celebrity estate planning, or lack thereof. And of course, we are always talking about what we can learn from celebrity estate plans. This, this plan that we’re going to be talking about, or lack thereof, is a young man named Liam Payne, and he was a performer. He was a member of the band One Direction. You may remember that last fall, he died very tragically while staying in Argentina. He fell from a hotel room window, and this is of interest to us because he died without a will.

He’s a very famous person. His estate is estimated to be worth about $32 million—a very complicated estate. He had income that he’d earned as a performer. He had income from the band and income he earned as a solo artist. He had brand deals. He had music publishing rights. He was involved in various venture deals, so not your basic, you know, house and a bank account type of estate, a very complicated estate. And he died without a will.

He had a child, an eight-year-old son named Bear. And he was not married, but he had a girlfriend that he lived with, and, as I said, died intestate. So, we’re going to talk today about what we see, what I see in that situation as problematic.

The basic problem is that he did not have a written estate plan. And why is that a problem? Well, number one, we’re always worried about probate in California. Now I’m going to point out this conversation is this, this discussion is being—let me start over. I’m talking to you as a California lawyer, so I’m presumably talking to California listeners. Primarily, we will be discussing this under California law. You know, he was a resident of the UK, so the laws of the UK apply to him. However, we will analyze this case as if it were under California law.

So in California, we have a probate process. We’re always trying to help our clients plan to avoid that process because it’s very lengthy and very expensive. In this case, a $32 million estate. We don’t know what the probate fees would be, because in California, there is a statutory fee that the attorney and the executor receive—it doesn’t apply to estates exceeding $32 million. The code just says, after $25 million, the court will figure it out. If this were a $25 million case, those statutory fees would be $376,000—okay, so most families would choose to avoid that if they could.

And that is pretty basic planning, avoiding probate fees. That’s basic planning. It’s not complicated. It’s nothing fancy. It’s what we do all day, every day, and that’s not the end of it. As I said, the court would figure out what the fee should be for that extra amount above $25 million, and the attorney fee and executor fees are not the end of it. In a probate, you have court fees, and you have appraisal fees. And in this case, the assets are very complicated. They’re it’s not a bank account. It requires licensed appraisers to value these various unusual, alternative types of assets. You know, how do you evaluate music publishing rights? Things like that. That’s going to cost money, too. It’s also going to take time. Our California probates are taking a year to a year and a half. I would imagine a complicated one like this is going to take a bit longer just to get control of all the assets and to get valuations on all of the assets.

Okay? So he did not plan to avoid probate because he didn’t have a plan. He also did not plan who was going to manage these assets for the benefit of his son, who is his intestate heir. Some of these children are eight years old. He, he’s not going to manage his own assets. He, you know, cognitively, can’t, and legally, he can’t until he’s 18. In California, you have to be 18, so a guardian has to be appointed, or a court has to create a trust for his benefit. Once he turns 18, he gets the money in California, he would get that $32 million when he turned 18, or whatever’s left of it by that time.

By dying intestate, Liam Payne did not choose who was going to be managing his son’s money for the next 10 years. He did—who ends up managing it is his ex-girlfriend, who is the mother of the child, plus a music industry lawyer. They’re going to work together on managing that money for the son. But Liam Payne didn’t choose those people. Maybe he would have chosen them, but maybe he wouldn’t. He didn’t have a chance.

Also, the 18 years old—very few parents, and I’m going to say in my practice of you know, a lot of years, I can probably come up with just one handful of parents who said to me, oh, yeah, I think 18 years old is perfectly fine to inherit a whole bunch of money. The vast majority of my clients would say 18 is too young. Let’s maybe wait till 25 or something like that. This child’s going to get $32 million or whatever left of it at the age of 18. And you know, we’ll see what happens there.

Also, by not planning for this inheritance for his child, he didn’t leave anything to anybody else, because this child is his intestate heir. This child gets all of it. This Liam Payne was a young man. He is survived by both his parents. He has two siblings. I think I read, I would guess that, given the size of his estate, he might have wanted to be generous with other family members, and especially when you think about an 18-year-old getting $32 million—no 18-year-old needs that much money. It would have been prudent, from a lot of perspectives, to spread the money around a little bit.

And he’s also got the girlfriend that we mentioned, who lived in his home. I don’t know that it was his home. I’m just assuming, because he’s got $32 million that he owned, the home that they lived in together, and as an executor of this estate, you owe a duty to the beneficiary of the estate, which is the child, not the girlfriend, who lives there. So legally, the girlfriend either has to leave or start paying rent if she’s going to stay there. So that’s a whole thing that he probably wouldn’t have wanted—he wouldn’t have wanted his girlfriend thrown out the day after he died. If he had written an estate plan, he could have planned for all of that, and perhaps he would have wanted to leave something to her, too. So a whole lot of things went wrong here because he did not have a written estate plan, not the least of which is taxes in the US. A $32 million estate would be subject to estate tax.

There would be, what is it? Close to $20 million—$18 million in excess. Estate probably 18 to $18 million, subject to a 40% estate tax. That’s a big check that this family is going to have to write to whatever the British equivalent of the IRS is in the US. That’s how it would work in the US. If he had done planning, he could have limited, minimized, or even avoided that estate tax. That’s what wealthy people do, but he didn’t do any written estate planning. The tax is going to be the full 40% on $18 million.

A lot of things could have been better. In this case, the basic lesson is, don’t die intestate. And I think an even more important lesson here is that these kinds of things can happen at any time. He was a young man. He was in his 30s. He wasn’t expecting to die, but he did, and the outcome is not great. It’s not ideal. Everybody with any kind of wealth and people that you care about, no matter how old you are, needs to do planning.

Okay, I hope you enjoyed this. I hope it was entertaining. We always like to look at our celebrity estate plans. And I hope you learned something, so thanks for joining me, and I look forward to connecting with you next time.

Resources Related to This Episode:

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Categories: Celebrity Estates, Estate Planning, Estate Taxes, Intestate Succession, Liam Payne, Minor Beneficiaries, Podcasts, Probate Process Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

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