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Case file s395 · Hollywood and TV · 2004
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2004
Marlon Brando: Marlon Brando publicity for One-Eyed Jacks
Marlon Brando. None visible/Paramount Pictures. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
July 1, 2004
Place
Los Angeles, California · United States
Field
Film actor · Film and television on the timeline
Legal tradition
California probate law · Common law
Historical event
"The Godfather" (1972)
Hollywood and TVCut out of the willBodies, bones and burialsNowNorth AmericaUnited States

Marlon Brando's $21.6 million will left out one child, and a son's girlfriend scattered part of his ashes

Marlon Brando died at UCLA Medical Center on July 1, 2004, at 80. His will, signed on August 28, 2002, and filed on July 9, 2004, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, valued his estate at $21.6 million. It included his Mulholland Drive home and Tetiaroa, the Polynesian atoll he bought in the 1960s. The will named nine of his children as beneficiaries and left out a tenth, his adopted daughter Petra, a London lawyer. It made provisions for his longtime assistant Alice Marchak and Blanche Hall, a cook from the 1970s. Two weeks before he died, he named producer Mike Medavoy co-executor. The executors moved to trademark his name and likeness so the heirs could control how it was sold. His ashes were divided among several people; some were scattered in Tahiti and Death Valley. His son Christian died in 2008. In 2010 Christian's mother, Anna Kashfi, named executor of Christian's estate, went to court to recover his property, including a portion of Marlon's ashes, from Christian's former girlfriend Donna Lopez Geon. Geon said that when the family came after the property, she took some of the ashes and scattered them in Franklin Canyon in Beverly Hills.

What the law took from it

Ashes divided among many hands become property that heirs can fight over; a will should say who holds them and where they go.

Sources
  1. Los Angeles TimesPress
  2. nypost.comPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Marlon Brando's $21.6 million will left out one child, and a son's girlfriend scattered part of his ashes,” story s395, https://www.celebrity.estate/marlon-brando-2004, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Hollywood and TVCut out of the willBodies, bones and burialsNowNorth AmericaCommon lawUnited States