Even the Motley Fool has Jackson Story

Michael Jackson Leaves a Money Mess

By Dayana Yochim
June 27, 2009 |

Michael Jackson's life was a series of extreme highs and wrenching lows.

He had the best-selling record of all time (Thriller sold more than 104 million copies), yet he narrowly escaped foreclosure on the vast Neverland ranch funded by his string of hits. He showed a Midas touch in 1985 by shrewdly outbidding Paul McCartney for a catalog of royalty-rich Beatles songs. Then a decade later, according to Reuters, he was forced to merge ATV with Sony's (NYSE: SNE) song library and sell its music publishing rights to raise some much-needed cash. And when that money was spent, he put up his share of the ATV assets as collateral in exchange for $200 million in loans from Bank of America (NYSE: BAC).

With Jackson's sudden death on Thursday, the billion-dollar boy king's musical contributions end, but, sadly, his legacy of debt will live on.

Comeback, unplugged
At the time of his death Jackson was readying for a 50-concert stint in London -- a sold-out extravaganza that would reportedly inject more than $50 million into his bone-dry bank account. Various media reports say that he owed between $400 million and $500 million.

Now ticketholders are left in the lurch and Jackson's heirs are stuck with a massive tab to pay. How his IOUs will be repaid is already up for speculation. Right on cue, just hours after Jackson's death, questions surfaced about the will: Does it exist? Is it up-to-date? Who gets what and how much (if anything)? Brace yourself for a repeat of the Anna Nicole Smith debacle.

Jackson's messy state of financial affairs should come as no surprise to anyone with just a passing familiarity with the singer's strange life trajectory.

Running up a tab in la-la land
The details of Jackson's financial woes were made public during a 2005 trial for child molestation charges (of which he was acquitted) where a forensic accountant testified that the singer suffered from a common money malady: Overspendingitus, also known as "spending more money than you make."

According to the accountant's testimony, Jackson blew through $20 to $30 million more per year than he brought in.

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