Like many people, you were likely shocked when you heard about the sudden death of Matthew Perry. It may have taken some time to process the information, but now we have moved on and are beginning to talk about money.
There is no doubt that Matthew Perry was a very wealthy individual, thanks to his part in Friends and all of the royalties that have been coming in ever since. Now that he is gone, there are questions as to who is going to inherit the fortune.
Many people say that his father will never play a part in getting any of the inheritance because of an argument they had. Lawyers, however, are starting to pick apart the estate and determine who is going to get what.
Since Matthew Perry was never married and didn’t have any children when he passed away, you might think that his parents would be the first option for inheriting the money.
There was one time, however, when he said that his father, John Perry, would never inherit his fortune. This came on the heels of his struggle with substance abuse, and one time he brought alcohol into his father’s house who was married to someone at the time.
In his memoir, Perry said that his stepmother was upset because he brought the alcohol into the house and his father asked him in a calm way to leave. He didn’t voice his opinion out loud, but he does remember saying to himself: “Oh, I’ll leave, but neither of you will ever see a dime of my money, ever, I thought, but I did not say.”
Unfortunately, now that Perry died on October 28, there is some new news about the possibility of people inheriting his wealth. According to Lovell, he and the other cast members make $20 million per year in residuals, and as long as the show continues in reruns, they will receive residuals.
Even after one of the actors dies, they would continue to receive residuals and someone else would be the one who collected them. This would typically be offspring, but he didn’t have any offspring.
That is why there has to be a designee who will say where the royalties go from this point forward. They don’t know at this point whether he had a trust set up for his estate or who was going to handle his assets.
If he didn’t have any of the details in place, then his next of kin, his father and mother would receive the inheritance.
More than likely, Perry has at least some of his money going to addiction recovery charities that he supported. He did speak about his finances over the years, saying that he had spent about $9 million trying to recover from his addictions.
At this point, there aren’t any solid answers but it will be interesting to see where it goes from here.
