Marilyn Monroe's executor told tax officials she lived in New York, so a court barred her estate's company from claiming California image rights

Marilyn Monroe signed her will in New York on 14 January 1961, naming her lawyer Aaron Frosch executor. She died in the Brentwood house she had bought for $75,000 six months earlier and was found on 5 August 1962. After $40,000 to her secretary, 25 percent of the remainder went to her psychiatrist, Marianne Kris, and 75 percent to her acting coach, Lee Strasberg. Kris died in 1980, leaving her share to the London clinic now called the Anna Freud Centre; Strasberg died in 1982, leaving his to Anna Strasberg, whom he married in 1968. In 2001 the estate passed to Marilyn Monroe LLC, owned 75 percent by Anna Strasberg and 25 percent by the centre. In 2005 the company and CMG Worldwide sued the Shaw Family Archives under Indiana's 1994 Right of Publicity Act. In May 2007 a New York federal judge ruled Monroe could not bequeath a publicity right that did not exist at her death. California changed its law in September 2007 to deem such rights to have existed at death. In January 2011 Authentic Brands Group and NECA bought the company's intellectual property, with Anna Strasberg as a minority partner. On 30 August 2012 the Ninth Circuit barred the company from claiming Monroe lived in California, because for 40 years Frosch had told courts and tax officials she lived in New York, and the estate had paid $777.63 in California inheritance tax. In 2023 Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank bought the house for $8.35 million, planning to demolish it. In June 2024 the Los Angeles City Council unanimously made it a Historic-Cultural Monument. Judge James C. Chalfant rejected their state-court challenge in September 2025. US District Judge Percy Anderson dismissed their federal takings suit on 6 May 2026 and again on 28 September 2026. Status: state-court ruling on appeal as of April 2026; in September 2026 the owners' lawyer said they would appeal the federal ruling.