Joseph Brooks (1938-2011)

Can't Buy Me Love

Songwriter Joseph Brooks lit up the lives of many people with his song "You Light Up My Life," which brought him overnight fame and fortune and an Academy Award in 1977.

Early success led to a later life that was plug ugly.

Brooks married Playboy model and actress Susan Paul and had two children with her, Nicholas and Amanda. They lived in London and New York, and divorced in the early 1990s.

Older and unmarried, Brooks resorted to an unusual method for pulling women - actually, young girls. Helped by a female personal assistant, he would lure aspiring actresses to his home on the pretext of a screen test. He would then ply them with alcohol before making his move.

In 2009, he was arrested and arraigned on nearly 100 counts of rape, sexual abuse, assault and similar charges involving about a dozen women.

His son faced even more serious charges. In 2008, swimsuit designer Sylvie Cachay was found dead, drowned in a Manhattan hotel bathtub. Her boyfriend was arrested and charged with her murder. The boyfriend was Nicholas Brooks. He is in prison, awaiting trial (as of July 2011).

His father avoided trial by killing himself. His assistant, Shawni Lucier, pleaded guilty to ten felony and misdemeanour counts.

In his will, Brooks, who had four children in all, left nothing to them and everything to his personal trainer Danielle Radosti or, if she predeceased him, her husband. Also left out, presumably, was his brother, Gilbert Kaplan, a wealthy publisher and amateur orchestra conductor who frequently performed Mahler's Second Symphony with top-rank professional musicians whom he hired.

Uncertainties

Brooks' personal trainer has a strong claim to his estate by virtue of being names as his beneficiary. However, the estate's finances are complicated.

The estate is poorer by $2 million due to court order that Brooks to pay that amount to one of his casting-couch victims.

On the other hand, it has $1.24m that was almost lost. While awaiting trial, Brooks posted bail to stay out of jail. After his suicide, the prosecutor sought to have the bail forfeited on the grounds that Brooks voluntarily failed to show for his trial. The judge wasn't persuaded by this unusual argument, and the bail bond was returned to Brooks' estate.

Nevertheless, his assets may not go where Brooks intended them. He had established a trust for Nicholas but then used the fund as collateral for a large loan. Nicholas sued to have this money restored to him, and won - and much, perhaps all, of his father's estate may be his regardless of the will. But he may not get it, whatever the outcome of his murder trial: it has been reported that the dead woman's family will sue Nicholas for monetary damages.