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Jimmy Buffett built his fortune on the idea of the easy life — flip-flops, frozen drinks and a world without deadlines. But three years after his death, the family he left behind is locked in exactly the kind of bitter, expensive and very public estate battle that he almost certainly never envisioned.
At the center of it is a $275 million marital trust, according to the Wall Street Journal. Before he died on September 1, 2023, Buffett directed most of his assets into a trust naming his wife of 46 years, Jane Buffett, as sole beneficiary during her lifetime. Their three children are named remainder beneficiaries, meaning they inherit whatever’s left after Jane’s death.
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To manage the trust alongside Jane, Buffett appointed Richard Mozenter, an accountant who had served as his business manager and financial adviser for three decades.
Buffett’s co-trustee arrangement to split control between his widow and longtime professional adviser has become the fault line in the dispute.
A co-trustee conflict that went to court
Jane has accused Mozenter of locking her out of financial information, billing the trust for millions in fees she described as a “personal piggy bank” and operating without her input as co-trustee.
Mozenter, in turn, has painted Jane as someone unpredictable and hostile, who “wants to control everything and believes she is never wrong,” the Journal reports. He claims Jimmy had “repeatedly expressed concerns” about Jane’s ability to manage his assets.
Both have now filed lawsuits seeking to have the other removed as co-trustee. A Florida appellate court ruled in August that Mozenter can bill the trust for reasonable attorneys’ fees. A trial is set for January.
The trust assets include approximately $85 million tied to a 20% stake in the Margaritaville business empire, $35 million in real estate — including houses in Sag Harbor, Palm Beach, the Bahamas, St. Barts and Los Angeles — $15 million in airplane interests, $5 million in vehicles and $2 million in music equipment.
Mozenter has warned Jane that the trust may generate less than $2 million in annual net income — insufficient for her accustomed lifestyle — as much of the wealth is tied up in non-income-producing real estate and non-dividend-paying equity.
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What the Buffett case teaches about estate planning
The dispute illustrates a risk that estate planners frequently flag: choosing a co-trustee arrangement without clearly defined decision-making authority can create conflict, particularly when the co-trustees have fundamentally different interests, expectations and temperaments.
According to the Trust & Will 2026 Estate Planning Report, reducing family conflict was cited as a top motivator by 18% of Americans who have created an estate plan. Also, 42% of Americans say they wouldn’t know what to do if a family member died today — underscoring how much rides on getting the structure right.
The same report in 2025 noted 38% of Americans who shared their estate plans have experienced family disagreements over them, with trustee and executor decisions cited as the second most common source of conflict (16%), after asset distribution.
And, according to a Bank of America study, one-third of wealthy Americans said inheritance-related issues caused emotional strain in their families — a finding the Buffett case illustrates in striking detail.
The specific danger of a marital trust with a professional co-trustee is that it creates two parties with competing incentives: a surviving spouse who depends on the trust for income and lifestyle continuity, and a professional trustee whose fiduciary duty is to the trust itself — not necessarily to the surviving spouse’s preferences.
When those interests diverge, as they have in the Buffett case, litigation can often be the only path to resolution.
The family fallout
The legal battle has split the family. Buffett’s daughter Savannah has sided with Mozenter, creating a rift with her mother severe enough that the two were seated apart at Jimmy’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in October 2024. Jane later sent Savannah a text referencing her potential $75 million inheritance: “Say goodbye to that 75 mil.”
However, Jane later implied she didn’t mean it, stating, “I suspect everyone has sent a text message or two, that with the benefit of hindsight, they wished they had phrased differently.”
Mozenter has sought to “decant” the trust — transferring assets into a newly structured arrangement — that would remove Jane as co-trustee while adding Jimmy’s sister Lucy Buffett as a “consenter” with veto power over Jane’s inheritance decisions. Jane called it an “unconscionable power grab.”
A judge presiding over the case noted it lacked the typical characteristics of an estate dispute. Instead, he described it as something more mundane, and perhaps more instructive: a fight between a widow and a financial adviser, each convinced they know what the deceased would have wanted.
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This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: Jimmy Buffett’s widow and longtime adviser are battling over his $275 million trust — and it’s splitting the family
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