Epstein signed his will two days before his death.

Jeffrey Epstein signed his will two days before he hung himself in a Manhattan correctional facility, and the paperwork later was filed in the U.S. Virgin Islands — a move that some legal experts believe could complicate future lawsuits against his estate.

Epstein’s wealth was reported as a little over $577 million in the will, which is close to $20 million more than what was previously reported in court records released shortly after his arrest in New York in July.

According to the will, which was obtained by the New York Post on Monday along with other records, Epstein left all of his holdings in a trust, called The 1953 Trust. Epstein was born in 1953.

Because Epstein declares himself a resident of the Virgin Islands in the will, Adam Horowitz, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who settled eight civil lawsuits against Epstein on behalf of victims a decade ago, said the trust will be interpreted under Virgins Islands law.

While states like Florida and New York have a welldeveloped body of laws around issues related to trusts and avoiding creditors — such as Epstein’s sexual assault victims — Horowitz said he is not sure that there is as much of a body of law in the Virgin Islands.

“The creditors are going to have to become wellversed in Virgin Islands law,” Horowitz said. “It could be very different from Florida or New York law.”

The records released on Monday said Epstein’s only potential heir was his brother, Mark Epstein. However, it is not immediately clear how much Mark Epstein would receive as part of the new trust, nor is it clear if there are any other beneficiaries to the trust.

The will appoints Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn as the executors of Epstein’s will. Each executor will receive $250,000 in compensation at the completion of the probate of Epstein’s estate under the terms of the will.

Epstein’s surprise death on Aug. 10 cast almost immediate uncertainty onto the management of the considerable assets the wealthy financier left behind.

Lawyers who had negotiated past settlements on behalf of Epstein’s victims cautioned that new victims seeking claims would face an uphill battle to unravel his vast estate, which likely had money tied up in trusts or offshore accounts.

Horowitz said he was not surprised to see that Epstein left all of his assets in a trust.

After reading the will and supplementary documents on Monday, Horowitz said that a possible challenge to the will is whether Epstein was “sound of mind” when he signed the will and created the trust.

“The fact that he took his own life just two days later suggests he may not have been of sound mind,” Horowitz said. “On the other hand, it can be argued that it was all very calculated by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.”

Horowitz said that the will is interesting in that it lists Epstein’s assets, but does not say how much of those assets are in the trust. “I have to assume he put everything in there,” Horowitz said.

Michael Marquez said that based on the documents released on Monday, he would be surprised if any of the assets listed were actually in the 1953 trust just yet.

Marquez, an associate at Therrel Baisden LLP, a Miami law firm specializing in estate and trust planning, said that in Florida you wouldn’t normally see assets listed in records like the ones released on Monday if they were already held in a trust.

Marquez said he believes the assets listed simply were in Epstein’s name, and the will on Aug. 8 was a way to title them under the trust in order to control where the assets would go in the event of Epstein’s death. Without the will, Marquez noted, the assets would have gone to Epstein’s brother. “Therefore, he needed to do something so they went where he wanted them to go,” Marquez said.

Marquez said it would be unusual for someone with Epstein’s wealth and connections to put everything in his name into a last-minute trust.

“If you are worth that kind of money, you’re regularly speaking to highlevel planning attorneys, and you have assets in protected structures so that should you get sued, they are not reachable by creditors,” Marquez said.

Horowitz, who has speculated about the hidden nature of Epstein’s wealth based on his personal dealings with Epstein’s estate, said that a key question for parties interested in challenging the trust will be whether a previous version of a trust existed before Aug. 8, and whether a significant amount of assets were transferred to the new version.

“If this trust is dramatically different, there are going to be a lot of questions to answer,” Horowitz said.

For one, if a legal team is able to make a case that Epstein transferred assets to avoid claims from creditors, such as victims suing his estate for damages, the transfer could be challenged as fraudulent, Horowitz said. Horowitz believes the timing of the new trust — two days before Epstein’s suicide and less than a month after his first suicide attempt while under custody — could add weight to that argument.

However, Marquez said that, in his experience, the only credible way to challenge the will and the trust is to prove that someone influenced Epstein to sign the documents, or that someone who has not been associated with Epstein in the past will stand to benefit from the way his estate is arranged.

Marquez said he doesn’t expect either argument to stand up. “From everything we’ve read about him, it sounds like he knew what he was doing up until the day he died,” he said.

Ultimately, Marquez said that whether the trust stands shouldn’t impede victims suing his estate. Even if the assets are in a trust, Marquez said they should be reachable by creditors in Florida after a trial is completed. Marquez said he would be “surprised” if the laws in the U.S. Virgin Islands differed greatly from those in Florida, thereby impeding a trial, but he wouldn’t say anything with certainty.

“I don’t imagine they will be too different,” Marquez said. “But there could be little differences that mean something big.”

When it comes to how the will and the trust may affect the claims of Epstein’s victims moving forward, Horowitz drew a conclusion about the battle that will play out in courtrooms in the months and years to come. “It’s going to get messy and ugly,” he said.