Jerry Buss Prepaid His Estate Taxes. It Wasn’t Enough to Save His Legacy As Family Fights For Future Of Lakers
Jerry Buss spent the last decade of his life engineering a trust designed to keep the Lakers in family hands forever. Thirteen years after his death, that structure may be what finally tears the family apart.
Jerry Buss did what estate planners tell wealthy patriarchs to do. In the last decade of his life, according to reporting on his affairs, he prepaid the estate taxes so his six children would not inherit a bill. He placed his 66% controlling stake in the Los Angeles Lakers into a family trust split equally among Jeanie, Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse, an 11% economic interest each. He drafted buyout provisions, a grandchild clause functioning like life insurance, and a tontine-style survivorship term redistributing a deceased sibling’s share to the others. He wanted, as Jeanie later put it in a Hulu documentary, “peace”. This week, thirteen years after his death, that plan is being wrestled with.
The Structure That Guaranteed a Fight
The design flaw was straightforward. Because every sibling held identical ownership, control rather than equity became the real currency, and every consequential decision turned zero-sum. Equal shares did not produce equal say, and nothing in the trust allocated authority. The Lakers became, in one account cited in reporting, “a measure of influence, identity, and legacy”.
Fractures came on schedule. In February 2017, Jeanie fired her brother Jim as president of basketball operations along with GM Mitch Kupchak, installing Rob Pelinka and Magic Johnson. Jim and Johnny hired lawyers; a temporary restraining order settled it. Jim resigned as co-trustee. Johnny later said he had spoken to Jeanie “four or five times” since.
The 2025 Sale and the Bonuses
Commercial unraveling was faster. In December 2024, Jesse and Joey proposed selling only 5% to 15% of the family’s 66% stake, preserving majority ownership. By June 2025, Jeanie and team leadership instead brought a Mark Walter offer to buy roughly 50% of the family stake at a $10 billion valuation, netting each sibling roughly $500 million after taxes. The vote was unanimous. Jeanie received a five-year contract as governor.
Post-close, reporting details bonuses to Jeanie’s inner circle: Linda Rambis $24 million, Kurt Rambis $8 million, Joe McCormack $24 million, Dan Grigsby $24 million, Tim Harris $24 million, reported as totaling $114 million. Weeks later, Joey, Jesse, Jim and Janie were all terminated from their organizational roles. Walter has since sold his stake to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner at a $12.5 billion valuation.
This Week’s Fight
What remains outside Iger and Kushner’s control is a 17.8% interest held by the Jo Ann C. Buss 2006 Children’s Electing Small Business Trust, dated September 1, 2006, the JAB Trust, with Jeanie, Janie and Joey Buss as co-trustees. ESPN’s Shams Charania reported Monday that five siblings voted to sell that stake, with a joint statement calling it a chance to “exit gracefully”. Within hours, ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne reported Jeanie was contesting.
Jeanie’s attorney Adam Streisand sent a letter published August 17, 2026, calling the report of a sibling vote “falsely reported” and asserting “any ‘vote’ by any of the Buss siblings would be and is void ab initio.” He points to an April 2017 Los Angeles Superior Court Order on Petition for Instructions to Co-Trustees that instructs trustees to vote trust shares “to ensure that [Jeanie Buss] is elected as the Controlling Owner of the Lakers on an annual basis during [Jeanie Buss’s] lifetime absent a further order of this Court”. Streisand notes the trust requires the family to retain at least 15% for Jeanie to remain governor. The unresolved contradiction is on the face of the letter: Janie and Joey are named both as co-trustees whose approval is required and as siblings supporting the sale.
The Lesson
Any sale still requires NBA Board of Governors approval, and no ruling or litigation has been reported. What is clear is the estate-planning frame. Buss prepaid the taxes and wrote the survivorship terms specifically to keep the Lakers in family hands. The team is nonetheless close to passing almost entirely out of them. Funding and documentation cannot substitute for an agreed allocation of authority. A structure that treats heirs identically can guarantee conflict rather than prevent it (we put the full estate checklist, from titling to trustee authority, in a free report here).
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AJ has spent the past 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
