Tony Bennett’s daughters, Antonia and Johanna Bennett have filed a lawsuit naming Bennett’s sons D’Andrea ‘Danny’ Bennett. Daegal ‘Dae’ Bennett, and the singer’s widow Susan Benedetto as the defendants over his estate. This comes just under a year after the legendary singer passed away in July 2023 at the age of 96. His daughters are both seeing equitable relief.
The lawsuit was filed in New York on June 12th, and claims that, despite their father earning over $100m for his live performances in just the 15 years before his passing, his estate was valued at less than $7m at the time of his death. His daughters’ claim has alleged that their brothers and the singer’s widow failed to fully account for the totals in selling some of Bennett’s catalogue’s rights, name and image to company Iconoclast this past March, as well as some of Tony’s personal belongings and memorabilia from throughout his life. The claim continues to suggest that Danny ‘obtained personal benefits for himself and his company in the deals made of their late father’s assets’.
Danny was his late father’s manager and oversaw the family trust as the role of trustee. Regardless of these roles, the lawsuit claims that Danny has ‘persistently failed and refused’ to provide full details of the alleged transactions despite Bennett’s daughters also having a vested interest as beneficiaries. The claim also states that ‘it remains unclear what music was or was not sold’ as the singer’s daughters have not been provided with the requested information after querying this repeatedly.
In response to these repeated communication attempts from Antonia and Johanna, their lawyers have said that Danny’s legal team have only been able to provide ‘piecemeal information’ which ‘fall short in clarifying the issues at hand’.
The daughters’ lawyers have said that the information they were provided with only raises more questions than answers, which supports their ‘well-founded concerns’ in regards to the total value of Tony’s estate after he passed.
The filing has asked the court to force Danny, Dae and Susan to turn over all assets held by the late singer to be reassessed. This includes taxes, disbursements, principal interests, receipts and related expenditure. Antonia and Johanna are aiming for the lawsuit to allow them to be ‘inventoried, accounted for and distributed pursuant to the express terms of their family trust’.
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