{"id":7004,"date":"2025-07-22T13:45:58","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T13:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/widow-says-manager-is-spending-estate-money\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T13:45:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T13:45:58","slug":"widow-says-manager-is-spending-estate-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/widow-says-manager-is-spending-estate-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Widow Says Manager Is Spending Estate Money"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tJ<\/span>immy Buffett\u2019s widow says her late husband\u2019s longtime business manager is improperly using her inheritance to bankroll his legal battle for control of the singer-songwriter\u2019s $275 million estate.<\/p>\n

\n\tJane and Mozenter, co-trustees of the $275 million estate, have each brought lawsuits seeking to remove the other due to supposed mismanagement and hostility. Responding to Mozenter for the first time on Tuesday, Jane says the accountant only brought his case as a \u201cretaliatory maneuver\u201d after she notified him that she planned to sue unless he resigned from managing the estate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMr. Mozenter did not resign,\u201d write Jane\u2019s lawyers in the filing, obtained by Billboard<\/em>. \u201cInstead, he raced to a different court and filed two separate actions against Mrs. Buffett, including this one, as retaliation for her attempt to remove him \u2014 presumably using marital trust assets to fund his retaliatory campaign, without ever seeking approval from his co-trustee, Mrs. Buffett, to use marital trust money intended for her benefit to litigate against her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJane Buffett<\/strong> makes the claims in a Monday (July 22) court filing against Rick Mozenter<\/strong>, an accountant who served as Jimmy Buffett\u2019s financial adviser before the singer\u2019s death in 2023. Jane and Mozenter are locked in litigation over who should control Jimmy\u2019s hefty estate, which includes a stake in his successful island-themed hospitality company, Margaritaville.<\/p>\n

\n\tJane claims Mozenter\u2019s use of the estate\u2019s funds for legal fees is a \u201ctactic\u201d to improperly gain leverage in the dispute; the move is \u201cclearly intended to drain\u201d Jane\u2019s inheritance so that she\u2019ll back off from her attempts to remove him as trustee, says the court filing.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Jane isn\u2019t surrendering. Instead, she\u2019s opted to re-assert her allegations against Mozenter \u2013 which she originally filed in California \u2013 as counterclaims to the accountant\u2019s Florida lawsuit in order to \u201cminimize Mr. Mozenter\u2019s waste of trust funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA lawyer for Jane, Matt Porpora<\/strong>, says in a statement, \u201cJane will not play into Mr. Mozenter\u2019s hands by litigating this dispute in two separate courts across the country, which would drain the very trust money that Jimmy specifically set aside for her care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cInstead, Jane is bringing the fight to Florida, where she and Jimmy called home,\u201d adds Porpora. \u201cJane is confident she will prevail regardless of where her claims are heard, and her decision to move her claims from California to Florida illustrates that she is the only co-trustee looking to conserve \u2014 not waste \u2014 trust assets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAn attorney for Mozenter did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tJane and Mozenter\u2019s lawsuits, both filed in early June, tell markedly different stories about the management of Jimmy\u2019s estate after his death at the age of 76.<\/p>\n

\n\tMozenter says Jimmy\u2019s will purposefully limited Jane\u2019s control because the singer had concerns about his wife\u2019s ability to manage the family inheritance. Jane grew \u201cvery angry\u201d about this situation and as a result became \u201chostile\u201d towards Mozenter, claims the accountant, refusing to do what he asked and interfering with his duties.<\/p>\n

\n\tJane, meanwhile, alleges Mozenter is actually the one acting hostile. She says that after months of refusing to provide her with details about Jimmy\u2019s finances, Mozenter told her that she should only expect to earn $2 million in annual income from the $275 million estate \u2013 a \u201cremarkably poor return\u201d that indicates Mozenter is mismanaging the funds, Jane claims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jimmy Buffett\u2019s widow says her late husband\u2019s longtime business manager is improperly using her inheritance to bankroll his legal battle for control of the singer-songwriter\u2019s $275 million estate. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[70,2511,1106,4055,1473],"class_list":["post-7004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-estate","tag-manager","tag-money","tag-spending","tag-widow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}