Liam Payne died with an estate worth tens of millions of dollars and no will directing where that money should go. So while a British court makes its final decision, it has reportedly granted administrative responsibilities to the singer’s ex-girlfriend, Cheryl Tweedy, and a music industry lawyer, Richard Bray.
In the U.K., when a person dies without a will, the spouse and then next of kin have first claim on their estate, according to the Guardian, which reviewed the court documents. Tweedy and Payne, who never married, had a son together. Bear is now 8 years old.
Tweedy and Bray will have limited authority over the estate and cannot distribute any money, the BBC reported after reviewing probate documents. They are tasked to “preserve the deceased’s estate until a general grant is made” by the court.
Payne and Tweedy — who was known as Cheryl Cole, or simply Cheryl, when she was a judge on the U.K. version of “The X Factor” and he was a contestant in 2008 and 2010 — started dating in 2016 and broke up in mid-2018, a little over a year after Bear was born.
The One Direction singer fell to his death from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last October after ingesting various intoxicants. Payne had traveled to Argentina to see fellow One D member Niall Horan perform solo two weeks before, making the trip with girlfriend Kate Cassidy. Cassidy, who left the country several days before Payne died, has no role in management of his estate.
Authorities found Payne’s hotel room strewn with drug paraphernalia, and an autopsy showed “pink cocaine,” a mix of designer drugs, in his bloodstream. The room had “various destroyed objects and furniture,” including a smashed TV screen, police said.
Police had been dispatched to the hotel prior to the 31-year-old’s fall in response to an emergency call about an “aggressive man who could be under the influence of drugs or alcohol.” Arriving police heard a thud and found Payne’s body in the hotel courtyard. An assessment of the scene would later indicate that Payne may have been semiconscious or unconscious when he fell.
A police spokesperson said at the time that the “That’s What Makes You Beautiful” singer had “thrown himself from the balcony of his room.” Payne died from multiple traumas and internal and external bleeding.
Five people were charged in December in connection with his death, including two hotel employees and a friend of Payne’s. But in February those three were cleared after a court concluded that their conduct did not result in the singer’s death. The other two people allegedly involved in the singer’s demise — another hotel employee and a waiter — remained in pretrial detention. They were charged in December with allegedly supplying Payne with narcotics before his death.
A different ex-girlfriend, Maya Henry, wrote a book published in 2017 about a member of a popular boy band who threatens to throw himself off a balcony. In the book, the character’s girlfriend stops him from killing himself.
Staff writers Alexandra Del Rosario, August Brown and Jessica Gelt and former staff writer Amy Kaufman contributed to this report.
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