The widow of the late Grant Tinker has filed court papers asking to be appointed as the special administrator of her late husband’s estate.
Brooke Knapp needs to be named special administrator so she can file a creditor’s claim against the estate and assert her rights to $4 million under the former couple’s prenuptial agreement, her petition states.
Tinker, who was previously married to actress Mary Tyler Moore, died in Los Angeles in November 2016 at age 90. Moore died in January of this year.
Knapp is in a Los Angeles Superior Court legal battle with three adult children of the former NBC chairman and CEO by a previous marriage who allege she tried to impair their future interests in proceeds from the sale of Tinker’s multimillion-dollar Bel-Air mansion. John and Michael Tinker and their sister, Jodie Dilella, allege their father was subjected to undue influence and elder abuse by Knapp, whom the television executive married in March 2004.
“The charge of undue influence … is completely unfounded, without a shred of credible support and is nothing but a hammer intended to beat (Knapp) into submission and to gain for the Tinker children something which their father did not intend them to have,” according to Knapp’s court papers.
In April 2015, Tinker established a residence trust that not only complied with his premarital agreement with Knapp, but also protected his interests and those of his children by placing his half of his community property interest in the Perugia Way mansion in the new trust, according to his children’s court papers. Tinker’s lawyer had long wanted to make sure the executive’s children received the mansion or its sale proceeds after Knapp died, the children say.
The children further maintain that Tinker’s mental state was in decline — his death certificate listed dementia as one of the causes of his death — when he called his attorney two months later and said he wanted to revoke his residence trust and restore his home back to himself and his wife as community property.
Knapp sold the Bel-Air mansion in February for $10.2 million and bought a home in Mandeville Canyon, the children’s petition states. She also created a new trust with herself as trustee, according to the children’s petition, who allege their father did not revoke the residence trust under his own free will and that therefore a judge should invalidate the action.
–City News Service