Current Trends - The Lakers, the Buss Family, and the $12.5 Billion Family Fight - Episode 271
Hey there, Legal Tea Listeners – This is your host, Jenny Rozelle. Welcome back for another episode. Episode 271 – today is a “current trends” topic where we talk about things going on currently that are relevant and pertinent to my estate and elder law world, and/or maybe things I’ve seen on the news or stumbled across on social media. Well today is about all those headlines that we’ve probably all seen about the LA Lakers and the Buss family – and this is an episode for those, like me before digging into things for this episode, who are like, “What’s going on in that whole situation?! Who’s mad at who? What’s happening?!” but also maybe a little too lazy to actually dig into answers to those questions. Like I said, that was me until I did this episode. I just didn’t care enough to go down the rabbit hole, until now. So, let’s dive in – shall we? Before we do so, I should mention this episode is a bit longer than episodes normally are – there’s just A LOT here.
Alrighty, well there are some family business disputes where you read the facts and think, “Wow, this is complicated.” And then there are family business disputes where you read the facts and think, “Someone needs to turn this into a television show.” Well, apparently we already did that, because the story of the Buss family and the Los Angeles Lakers is starting to sound a lot like that show, Succession, except this one involves a real NBA franchise, billions of dollars, multiple trusts, siblings fighting over control, a prior court battle, and a question that estate planning attorneys will immediately recognize: What happens when the person who created the trust has one plan, but the beneficiaries eventually have a very different plan?
So today on Legal Tea, we are talking about the Los Angeles Lakers and the Buss family. And I want to talk about this, of course, from an estate perspective, because underneath all of the headlines is a fascinating trust and family business problem. This is not really just a story about who owns the Lakers. It's about how a family fortune was structured, how control was supposed to work after the patriarch died, what happens when co-trustees disagree, and whether a court order from almost a decade ago can prevent five siblings from doing something that they apparently believe is entirely within their rights to do today.
Let's start at the beginning, because you really cannot understand the current fight without understanding Jerry Buss. Dr. Jerry Buss purchased the Lakers in 1979, and over the next several decades the franchise became one of the most valuable and recognizable sports organizations in the world. But Jerry Buss was not simply building a business for himself. He apparently envisioned the Lakers as a family business and structured his estate in a way that was intended to keep the family involved after his death. When he died in 2013, his ownership interest passed through a series of trusts for the benefit of his six children: Jeanie, Johnny, Jim, Janie, Joey and Jesse. That’s a lot of Js! So the family collectively held the Lakers' controlling interest, and the basic idea was that the children would continue to own and operate the team rather than immediately selling it off.
And here's where I think estate attorneys are going to perk up. The structure Jerry Buss created was not simply, “I leave one-sixth of the Lakers to each of my six children.” The trust arrangement was designed to control what happened to the ownership interests over time. Reporting on the trust has described it as essentially a “last man standing” arrangement, meaning that if one of the children died, that child's interest would not necessarily pass down to that child's own children. Rather, the interest could be redistributed among the surviving siblings. That is a very different estate planning philosophy from simply giving each child a separate, freely transferable piece of the family business. The goal was continuity: keep the asset together, keep the family involved, and keep the Lakers from being fragmented among a bunch of descendants over multiple generations.
And if you're an estate planner listening to this, you can probably already see the potential problem. Keeping a family business together sounds wonderful when everyone gets along. It sounds much less wonderful when everyone does not get along. Because the same provisions that can preserve a business can also preserve a family conflict. You can create mechanisms designed to prevent one child from selling, or to keep ownership concentrated, or to ensure that one person has management authority … and then, years later, the people involved may have completely different ideas about what should happen. The estate plan does not exist in a vacuum. It operates in the middle of real family relationships, changing financial circumstances, changing personalities, and changing ideas about what the person who created the plan actually intended.
After Jerry Buss died, Jeanie Buss, a daughter, emerged as the family's controlling figure for the Lakers. And this is where the story gets interesting, because apparently Jerry didnot just want his children to own the team collectively. There was a mechanism within the trust structure that resulted in Jeanie becoming the controlling owner, while the other siblings maintained economic interests. Jeanie has consistently maintained that this reflected her father's wishes; that Jerry intended for her to be the person actually controlling the Lakers while the family continued to benefit financially from ownership. And for a while, that arrangement worked. Jeanie became the face of the family ownership group, while her siblings had various roles with the organization.
But then came 2017, and this is where the family drama really escalated. Jeanie's brothers, Jim and Johnny, attempted to remove her from control of the Lakers. The dispute eventually ended up in court, and Jeanie prevailed. A 2017 court order is now incredibly important to the current dispute because it required the family co-trustees to take actions reasonably available to them to ensure that Jeanie was appointed and remained the NBA controlling owner of the Lakers. As part of resolving that fight, Jeanie's younger siblings, Janie and Joey, became co-trustees alongside her, replacing Jim and Johnny in those roles. So, put very simply, there was already a court proceeding addressing who within this family was supposed to have control over the trust and the Lakers.
Fast-forward to last year (2025), and the Lakers family business reaches another turning point. The Buss family agreed to sell its controlling interest in the Lakers to Mark Walter, in a transaction that valued the franchise at approximately $10 billion. This was historic because it marked the end of the Buss family's control of the Lakers after more than four decades. But, and this is an important “but,” Jeanie Buss remained the Lakers' after the transaction. So the family was giving up majority ownership, but Jeanie retained her role as the person serving as the NBA's controlling owner or governor for the franchise. In other words, ownership and governance were no longer completely synonymous.
And then, because apparently this story did not have enough plot twists, Mark Walter turned around and agreed to sell the Lakers again. Can’t make this up! In 2026, Mark agreed to sell his controlling interest to a group led by Bob Iger (eye-ger) and Josh Kushner at a reported $12.5 billion valuation. That's massive, and it represents a staggering increase in the value of the franchise over a relatively short period of time. But the bigger issue for the Buss family is that there was still one piece of the Lakers that the family owned: approximately 17.8% of the franchise. And that brings us to the current fight…
Five of Jerry Buss's six children apparently decided that it was time to sell that remaining family stake. The Buss Family Trust issued a statement indicating that the family had decided to sell its remaining approximately 17.8% interest to the new ownership group led by Bob Iger and Josh Kushner. The reasoning is actually understandable from a financial standpoint: the family has an opportunity to monetize an incredibly valuable minority interest in one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world. The family can take the money, diversify, and move on. And remember, they have already given up control of the franchise. From the perspective of five of the siblings, perhaps the question is simply, “Why are we continuing to hold this illiquid minority interest in a company we no longer control?”
But Jeanie Buss says, essentially, “Not so fast.” And this is where we move from sports news into trust litigation. Jeanie is contesting her siblings' attempt to sell the family's remaining stake. Her position is that the five siblings cannot simply vote to sell the interest because the 2017 court order and the trust structure require them to preserve her position as controlling owner. Remember that the trust still owns approximately 17.8% of the Lakers. The reporting indicates that the NBA's controlling-owner requirements involve a minimum ownership threshold of 15%. So if the entire 17.8% family interest is sold, Jeanie would no longer have the ownership interest necessary to remain the Lakers' governor. In other words, selling the family trust's entire remaining stake does not just mean the family gets a check. It potentially means Jeanie loses her position with the Lakers.
And Jeanie's argument is not simply, “I don't want to sell.” Her lawyers have taken the position that the other trustees and beneficiaries are violating the 2017 court order by attempting to sell the interest in a way that would cause her to lose her position. In August 2026, Jeanie went back to Court seeking to block her siblings' efforts to sell the remaining family interest. Her petition reportedly argues that the other family members did not properly consult her before moving forward with the proposed sale and that their conduct violates the obligations imposed by the earlier court order. So this is not just a small family disagreement. We're talking about an actual court proceeding over the authority of trustees and the interpretation and enforcement of a prior judicial order.
Now, here's the part that I find fascinating as an estate planning attorney: What exactly did Jerry Buss's estate plan intend to accomplish? Because there are two different concepts that can easily get commingled. One is economic ownership, and the other is control. Jerry could give his children economic benefits from the Lakers while establishing a legal structure that put control in the hands of one particular child. That's essentially what appears to have happened here. Jeanie's position is that her father intentionally created the structure so that she would be the controlling owner. Her siblings, however, appear to take the position that the family trust's remaining asset can be sold and that the five siblings have the authority to make that decision.
And that raises a classic fiduciary question: Who is the trustee supposed to be serving? A trustee does not get to say, “I personally think this is the best thing to do.” The trustee has duties to the trust and its beneficiaries, and those duties can become incredibly complicated when beneficiaries disagree about what is best. Imagine you're a trustee and the trust owns a 17.8% interest in an asset worth billions of dollars. Five beneficiaries say, “Sell it. We want the money.” One beneficiary says, “Don't sell it, because keeping it is necessary to preserve my control of the business and because that's what Dad intended.” Now you have to ask: What does the trust instrument say? What rights were given to the beneficiaries? What powers were given to the trustees? What did the prior court order require? What are the fiduciary duties? And perhaps most importantly, is the trustee's job to maximize the economic value of the trust, or is there some other purpose or restriction that changes that analysis?
This is also a great example of why “keeping the family business in the family” sounds a lot easier on paper than it is in practice. Jerry Buss apparently wanted the Lakers to remain a family asset. And they did for roughly 47 years. That's an incredible success by one measure. The family maintained ownership through one of the most successful eras in NBA history, and the Lakers became vastly more valuable during that time. But the very structure that helped keep the asset together also created a situation where the family had to make decisions together long after the original creator of the plan was gone. And once the siblings stopped agreeing about control, the estate plan became the battlefield.
There's another really important estate planning lesson here, and it's one I talk about with clients all the time: You cannot completely estate-plan away family dynamics. You can create trusts. You can name trustees. You can establish buy-sell provisions. You can create voting requirements. You can establish succession plans. You can provide detailed instructions. You can try to anticipate disagreements. But eventually, the people involved still have to live under that structure. And if you create a plan where six siblings own a valuable asset together, you have to ask not only, “What happens if they get along?” but also, “What happens if they do not?”
And I think this story demonstrates yet another point: sometimes the biggest estate planning problem is not what happens immediately after death. It's what happens ten or twenty years later. Jerry Buss died in 2013. The current dispute is happening in 2026. That's thirteen years after his death. The people, relationships, financial circumstances, and value of the underlying asset have changed. The estate plan may have been perfectly reasonable when it was created, and yet the family is now asking a court to interpret what that plan means under circumstances Jerry Buss obviously could not have fully anticipated.
And then there's the emotional piece. Jeanie has characterized the fight in terms of her father's wishes and legacy. She has argued that the trust was designed specifically so that she would remain the controlling owner and that her siblings' attempt to sell the remaining stake undermines what their father wanted. Her siblings, meanwhile, appear to be looking at the situation from a very different perspective: the family has already sold control of the Lakers, they still own a tremendously valuable minority stake, and now is an opportunity to cash out. Both sides can frame their position as protecting the family. One side says, “We're honoring Dad's plan.” The other says, “We're protecting the economic interests of the beneficiaries.” That's exactly why these disputes can become so difficult.
There's also a fascinating generational wrinkle here. Two of the Buss siblings, Joey and Jesse, have moved into ownership opportunities outside the Lakers. They recently joined the ownership group acquiring the San Diego Padres. So while the Buss family's relationship with professional sports is not necessarily ending, their relationship with the Lakers appears to be changing dramatically. The family that once owned and operated the Lakers is now potentially becoming a former ownership family, with individual family members pursuing their own investments and business interests.
So where does that leave us right now? As of today, I’m recording this in very early September 2026, the Buss family's remaining 17.8% stake has been voted for sale by five of the six siblings, but Jeanie Buss is challenging that decision in court. She is asking the court to enforce the 2017 order and prevent the sale because she argues that selling the stake would effectively strip her of the controlling owner position she was supposed to retain. The other five siblings are united behind the sale. And meanwhile, Bob Iger and Josh Kushner are positioned to become the new majority owners of the Lakers through their agreement with Mark Walter, in what has been reported as a $12.5 billion transaction.
I think the ultimate lesson here is not about the Lakers at all. It's about what happens when we use estate planning to try to control the future of a family business. Because the Buss family story is basically a giant case study in the tension between ownership, control, fiduciary duty, and family relationships. Jerry Buss tried to create a structure that would keep the Lakers together. The structure worked for decades. But ultimately, the question became: who gets to decide what “together” actually means?
So, let’s start to wrap up here… Jerry Buss created a plan. He apparently had very specific ideas about what he wanted to happen with the Lakers and his children. But thirteen years after his death, his children are fighting over what those instructions actually require them to do. And now a $12.5 billion transaction is hanging in the balance. Estate planning matters. Not just because we want to decide who gets our stuff when we die, but because sometimes the things we leave behind are complicated, valuable, emotional, and capable of keeping our families in court for years after we're gone. And if you think your family could never end up like the Buss family because, “Oh, we'd never fight over something like that,” let me just say this as an estate planning attorney: that's exactly why we're having this conversation. Nobody creates an estate plan thinking, “I'd like my children to spend the next thirteen years litigating over my intentions.” And yet… here we are.
Alrighty guys, it is time to wrap this episode up! Next week, we’re back to the “celebrity estate planning” type of episode – and on next week’s episode, we are going to dive into the estate of actress, Shannen Doherty, after her death in 2024 – which occurred just a day after she signed some divorce paperwork. We’ll see how that played out next week. Until then, Legal Tea Listeners, be well and talk soon!
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