Celebrity Estate Lessons – Burt Reynolds – Harrison Estate Law
Kate Marchewka
No one wants to be disinherited in their parent’s Will, especially if they are a celebrity. However, that’s exactly what happened to Burt Reynolds’ son.
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No one wants to be disinherited in their parent’s Will, especially if that parent is a celebrity. However, that’s exactly what happened to Burt Reynolds' son.

Reynolds was married to his second wife, Loni Anderson, when they adopted their son Quinton. He and Anderson divorced in 1994. This is often the recipe for disinheritance. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case here.

It seems that in Reynolds’ case, disinheriting isn’t as nefarious as it often seems. Reynolds had both a Trust and a Pour Over Will. The Pour Over Will is sort of exactly what it sounds – it takes care of anything that isn’t covered in a Trust. For example, if I bought a car, didn’t get a chance to put it in my Trust, and then died the next day, my Pour Over Will would cover that. Often times Trusts aren’t completely funded and a number of things are left over to be dealt with by the Will.

However, this was not the case for Burt Reynolds, whose Trust appeared to be properly funded with very little left outside the Trust. So, when Reynolds put that “I intentionally omit [my son] from this, my Last Will and Testament, as I have provided for him during my lifetime in my Declaration of Trust,” he may not have been completely leaving him out of his estate plan.

As we’ve mentioned before, putting your wealth in a Trust can help keep the distribution of your estate private, so we don’t know for sure that anything was left to Quinton. However, it seemed that father and son had a very close relationship, so it’s likely that at least part of Reynolds’ estate was left to him.