TOM PETTY FAMILY BREAK
Widow & kids in ugly court fight over control of $100M legacy
ROCKER Tom Petty’s widow and two grown daughters continue to lob grenades at each other in a ferocious legal firefight over his $100 million estate!
Sources tell GLOBE Petty’s second wife, Dana York, insists the girls are destroying his legacy-but the girls charge Dana;s just greedy! "The
family war has gotten even more brutal,” spills a music industry source. “Tom would be very upset to see his family feuding like this — over his music!”
Petty’s daughters won’t back down — and have filed suit against Dana, claiming she’s deprived them of their rightful role in determining how his work is released.
Adria and AnnaKim, Petty’s kids with first wife Jane
Benyo, are seeking at least $5 million in damages.
Their attorney, Alex Weingarten, tells GLOBE: “Dana has refused Tom’s express wishes and insisted instead upon misappropriating Tom’s life’s work for her own selfish interests.”
Seeds of discord
But Dana’s attorney, Adam Streisand, blasted her stepdaughters’ suit as “misguided and meritless,” declaring: “Dana will not allow destructive nonsense like this to distract her from protecting her husband’s legacy.”
Dana filed a petition in probate court in April, seeking to put Petty’s catalog in the hands of a professional manager, arguing Adria was erratic, making it difficult to conduct business.
Adria filed a separate probate petition in an effort to claim control of the estate.
Since Petty’s death, two compilations of his music have been released — but sources say the three women were at each other’s throats over the projects.
In her probate petition, Dana also accused Adria of interfering with plans to release a third expanded album to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Petty’s Wildflowers disc.
As GLOBE has reported, Petty — who died at age 66 in 2017 of an accidental drug overdose — sparked the feud by putting Dana in charge of his estate, but then giving his daughters a say in how it’s handled. Based on their reading of the will, Tom’s daughters insist they and Dana each have one vote on how the estate is handled, so the kids would have majority control. But Dana disagrees.
“That was just a recipe for disaster,” says a legal source. “And it appears that it’s only going to get worse!”