Legendary rocker Robbie Robertson might not have been the biggest name in rock’s golden age, but Americans of all ages are familiar with the work of his decades-long career.
The frontman for The Band was the artist behind 1960s hits like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “The Weight” and “Up on Cripple Creek” as well as film scores for Martin Scorsese works like 1980’s “Raging Bull” and 2019’s “The Irishman” and 2023’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
But since his death in August 2023, his legacy has been caught up in vicious family discord over potentially millions of dollars.
The dispute was covered in a lengthy article in The Hollywood Reporter published Friday — the anniversary of Robertson’s death from metastasized prostate cancer at the age of 80.
It’s an “all-out war,” according to the publication, pitting Robertson’s three adult children against his second wife, Janet Zuccarini, a celebrity Los Angeles restaurateur who was in a relationship with Robertson for five years, but married him only five months before his death.
At its heart is the contention of Robertson’s children that their father was not competent in his final days to understand the couple’s pre-nuptial agreement, which gave Zuccarini the right to live for the rest of her days in a home the couple purchased in 2021 — a purchase Robertson paid for almost entirely.
Under the couple’s legal agreements, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Robertson’s children would inherit their father’s wealth from his music career, but would be on the hook for paying half the costs of the property, including mortgage payments and expenses such as security and property taxes.
Zuccarini is only 58 — just slightly older than Robertson’s children — Alexandra Robertson, 56, Delphine Robertson, 54, and Sebastian Robertson, 50.
“Given Zuccarini’s age and superb health — she plays tennis seven days a week — Robertson’s kids did some quick math: Payments to Zuccarini over the next decades would cost them upward of $7 million. They concluded they had inherited a raw deal,” The Hollwyood Reporter’s Seth Abramovitch and Winston Cho wrote.
Did you ever listen to ‘The Band’?
It didn’t help that the money from Robertson’s career was not anywhere near what the daughters and son expected after their father sold his catalog for $25 million in 2022, the article noted, with the total “in the low seven figures.”
In short, a sizable part of their father’s fortune is tied up in the property issue.
In a lawsuit, they “insist their father was far too addled on a cocktail of powerful pain-killing drugs — Oxycodone, methadone, anti-nausea medication Zofran and appetite-stimulating antipsychotic Olanzapine — to fully comprehend what he was doing” in his final months, Abramovich and Cho wrote.
Zuccarini would not comment for the article, the reporters note, so it relies heavily on a Zoom interview with the Robertson family. However, it quotes extensively from a countersuit filed by Zuccarini and comments from her attorneys.
The article states the Robertson children say Zuccarini began “hounding” Robertson to marry in February 2023 as his health deteriorated.
They also claim that Zuccarini forced them to go through a legal process just to get access to their father’s personal effects, including his cremated remains.
In addition to the financial claims, they accuse Zuccarini of elder abuse in her treatment of her father, Abramovitch and Cho wrote.
Zuccarini, for her part, claims in legal documents that the fault is squarely with Robertson’s children.
“Robbie sat his children down before he died to explain exactly what he and Janet agreed she would receive after his death; and in that very meeting they shed tears of gratitude because Robbie told them that Janet would not be inheriting the entirety of his estate, but rather an interest in the house they shared and purchased together,” one of her legal filings states, according to Abramovitch and Cho.
“The Adult Children now come looking for more because the millions that they are expected to share are not enough. It is the epitome of greed and entitlement.”
The legal morass could take years to unravel.
“There’s going to be many witnesses,” Kevin Leichter, an attorney representing Robertson’s estate told The Hollywood Reporter.
“The medical history is very relevant here. There’s a lot of people involved and a lot of records to go through.”
