The adult children of Canadian icon, Leonard Cohen, are in a court battle for complete control of the assets of the late singer, poet and author..It’s a battle that includes accusations of forgery, secrets and allegations Cohen didn’t trust his own offspring to run his estate, according to The New York Post..Cohen’s daughter Lorca Cohen, 48, and son Adam Cohen, 50, have been battling in Los Angeles Superior Court for more than a year to remove attorney Robert Kory, appointed by the musician before his death, as a trustee to the Leonard Cohen Family Trust, according to court documents..The trust controls tens of millions of dollars in royalties for Cohen’s music as well as poetry, novels, photographs and 243 journal notebooks that Cohen, 82 when he died, had kept since he was a teenager. .The so-called Leonard Cohen Archive is valued at more than US$48 million, court filings say..The Cohen children say in court documents their father “came to appreciate in his waning days that he had made a grave error by allowing Kory to insinuate himself into Leonard’s affairs and take control over virtually every aspect of Leonard’s finances and legacy.”.Attorney Adam Streisand, hired two months ago by the Cohen heirs, said he has proof Kory forged documents in 2005 to control the singer’s legacy..“Leonard Cohen’s lawyers and manager forged his trust so they could fleece the estate of millions of dollars and steal the Hall of Famer’s legacy from his own children,” Streisand told The Post..Streisand, a cousin of Barbra Streisand, said there are two versions of the trust document signed by Cohen before his death. .In the version that benefits the children, the trust document designates Lorca, Adam and Anjani Thomas, Cohen’s former lover and Kory’s former wife, as trustees after his death. .Streisand tells The Post that after Cohen died, a lawyer “swapped out the page that says Adam, Lorca and Anjani, with a new page that says Kory is designated trustee.”.“The one and only true version of the Trust appoints Adam, Lorca and Anjani Thomas,” according to court papers seen by The Post..The Cohen siblings claim they have not been kept apprised by Kory of recent efforts to monetize his estate, including the posthumous publication of a Cohen novel, “A Ballet of Lepers” published earlier this year, and the opening of “Everybody Knows,” an exhibit at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, which opens to the public Tuesday..The siblings also claim Kory employed his son, Ryan Kory, among others, to archive Cohen’s personal papers, which include copious notes on his greatest hits, “Hallelujah,” for which he originally wrote 82 verses. The archive is also said to include more than 8,000 photographs..Cohen died on Nov. 7, 2016, after a fall in the middle of the night at his Los Angeles home..“The death was sudden, unexpected and peaceful,” Kory said at the time..Kory, 72, denies any wrongdoing in court papers, attributing any confusion in the documents to “a scrivener’s error”(an unintentional mistake in the drafting of a contract). .He said he has kept Lorca and Adam in the loop, providing monthly statements on the finances and work of the LCFT, according to court documents. He also said in a declaration to the court earlier this fall that he set up numerous meetings informing Lorca and Adam about the art show as well as the publication of Cohen’s novel..“In 2016, without Mr. Kory’s request, Mr. Cohen instructed me to change the successor trustee to Mr. Kory,” writes Reeve Chudd, a lawyer for Cohen in an April 8, 2021, letter included in court papers..“He [Cohen] was concerned his children didn’t have a sufficiently comfortable relationship to work together upon the complexities of the artist’s estate.”.“While Mr. Cohen didn’t wish for this change in succession of trusteeship to be revealed to his children, Mr. Kory insisted, and this was explained to Adam and Lorca at a meeting in September 2015,” Chudd wrote in his letter..In 2005, the musician sued his former longtime manager Kelley Lynch, claiming that she had stolen more than US$5 million from a fund set up for his retirement. .“What can I do?” Cohen told Canadian news magazine Macleans at the time. “I had to go to work. I have no money left.”.Cohen returned to touring, performing at concert venues around the world as a septuagenarian in order to recoup his losses..In 2012, Lynch was sentenced to 18 months in prison and five years probation for what a Los Angeles court judge called “long, unrelenting barrage of harassing behavior” towards Cohen.
