Ray Charles’ children seek probe of estate

Several of Ray Charles’ children called Sunday for an investigation of the management of the late entertainer’s estate, including a charitable foundation he set up and a profit-making company that manages rights to his music.

There are “many unanswered questions,” said Lisa Nkonoki, a spokeswoman for family members.

The dispute over Charles’ musical and financial legacy was the subject of an article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. The article reported that the rights to Charles’ music had become the subject of several lawsuits in state and federal courts. The litigation pits several of the children against Joe Adams, 86, Charles’ long-term manager, who after Charles’ death in 2004 ended up in control of Charles’ company, his foundation and the trusts set up for the children’s benefit.

Adams’ stewardship of the foundation, which Charles established as the Robinson Foundation for Hearing Disorders, came under the scrutiny of the California attorney general’s office in 2006. At the time, the office instructed Adams that his multiple roles at the charity, which he served simultaneously as chairman, president and treasurer, violated state law.

He relinquished the treasurer’s post and later added a majority of independent outsiders to the foundation’s board, evidently also at the office’s behest.

The attorney general’s office apparently took no further action. When Ray Charles Jr. and Robert Robinson, two of Charles’ eldest children, complained that Adams and other managers of the estate were withholding financial records and other documents from the family, the state authorities told them that they had insufficient written documentation of Ray Charles’ wishes to proceed.

“Before my father passed away he did not intend for his estate to be solely controlled by Joe Adams,” Ray Charles Jr., the performer’s eldest son, said Sunday.

Nkonoki said the family would ask for a “formal audit and accounting of the books [of the foundation and Ray Charles Enterprises, which controls rights to the recordings] and, if necessary, a criminal investigation.”

She said the investigation should cover, among other issues, whether the estate had disposed of any recording master tapes, which Charles carefully safeguarded during his career, and whether any estate documents ostensibly signed by Charles were actually signed by Adams in Charles’ name. The Times reported that Adams acknowledged signing at least one document with Charles’ name. The document covered the treatment of Charles’ masters after his death. Adams said in a court document that he had signed Charles’ name as an exercise of his power of attorney.

Nkonoki said Adams had refused to give the family “any accountings of any type,” including “bank statements, interest payments, reported tax payments and/or updates as required and requested to the heirs.”

A spokesman for Adams, who had declined to comment for The Times’ article, could not be reached Sunday.

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michael.hiltzik@latimes.com