Jimmy Buffett’s adult children are fighting a court request that would force them to hand over records of their mother’s alleged ketamine and marijuana use, the newest turn in a two-year fight over the late singer’s $275 million estate. Richard Mozenter, Buffett’s former financial adviser and co-trustee of his marital trust, filed the discovery request against widow Jane Buffett as part of the ongoing trustee dispute.
Mozenter’s filing seeks any documents or communications about Jane’s prescription and nonprescription drug use, including ketamine and marijuana, dating from August 2023 to the present, according to court records reviewed by TMZ. Cameron and Sarah Delaney Buffett, two of the couple’s three children, objected to the request as overly broad, arguing in their own filing that it sought harassing documents unrelated to the core dispute over how the marital trust is managed.
Buffett’s death and the trust’s creation set the stage for the fight.
Buffett died Sept. 1, 2023, at his home in Sag Harbor, New York, after a private, four-year battle with a rare form of skin cancer. The trust was established in 1990 and amended in 2017 and again in 2023, shortly before his death, adjusting how its income and principal would be distributed to Jane.
The trust fight traces back to June 2025, when Jane Buffett sued in Los Angeles Superior Court to remove Mozenter as co-trustee, accusing him of withholding basic accounting records and mismanaging the trust’s assets. Her petition described Mozenter and the trust’s attorney, Jeffrey Smith, as “openly hostile and adversarial toward Mrs.
Buffett as they have worked in tandem against” her interests, and it said Mozenter “failed to perform even the most basic tasks required of him in his role as co-trustee,” according to Yahoo News. Jane had asked both Mozenter and Smith to resign; instead, Mozenter moved to remove her as co-trustee and countersued, denying wrongdoing and accusing her of trying to seize unilateral control of a trust designed to be jointly administered.
Court filings show the trust reported roughly $2 million in annual income even as Buffett’s stake in Margaritaville generated about $14 million over an 18-month period, a gap Jane’s side has pointed to as evidence of mismanagement. Mozenter has collected roughly $1.7 million a year in trustee fees, and the trust has spent about $300,000 annually maintaining a Bahamas property, according to filings in the case.
The Buffett children are split on the dispute. Savannah Buffett has sided with Mozenter, while Cameron and Sarah Delaney back their mother. Jane’s side has proposed decanting the trust, a legal maneuver that would move its assets into a new trust with different terms and trustees while leaving the underlying beneficiaries unchanged, a plan Mozenter has resisted on the grounds that it would strip him of his role without court approval.
A trial in the broader trustee dispute is scheduled for January 2027, and the discovery fight over Jane’s alleged drug use will likely be resolved by a judge well before that date since it concerns what evidence each side can gather ahead of trial rather than the merits of the case itself.
A Nearly Five-Decade Relationship
Jane, born Jane Slagsvol, met Buffett in Key West, Florida, in 1971, when she was a University of South Carolina student visiting on spring break. Buffett later said he noticed her at a bar two nights in a row, recalling that she wore “a long pink dress that made a lasting impression on me” the second night, according to Today. She left school to join him, and the couple married in 1977, the year his song “Margaritaville” made him a star.
Their marriage was not unbroken. Jane left Buffett for several years in the early 1980s, saying she needed to figure out who she was outside the relationship and to get sober. “I’d been with Jimmy since I was a child, through the craziest times, and I didn’t have a clue who I was,” she said of that period. The couple reconciled in 1991 and remained together until his death in 2023, giving them a relationship that spanned more than five decades. They raised three children together: Savannah, Sarah Delaney and Cameron, all of whom are now adults caught in the fight over their parents’ shared fortune.
How the Buffett Fortune Compares
Buffett’s estate extends well beyond his stake in Margaritaville Holdings, the hospitality company built around his music and brand that now operates restaurants, resorts, hotel properties and Latitude Margaritaville retirement communities across the United States and the Caribbean. It also includes his music catalog and publishing royalties, real estate holdings that include the Bahamas property named in the trust filings, and other investments accumulated over a five-decade career that made him one of the wealthiest musicians in the country.
The Buffett dispute is not the first time a marital trust or estate fight among wealthy entertainers has dragged on for years, and two recent cases show how differently they can end. Prince died in 2016 without a will, and it took six years and a $156 million estate valuation before his heirs reached a final settlement with the IRS and each other in 2022.
Michael Jackson’s estate, valued at roughly $2 billion, has faced its own recent turmoil: his daughter Paris Jackson accused longtime executors John Branca and John McClain of “skimming money” through irregular payments, and a judge ruled in her favor in May 2026, ordering more than $625,000 in bonuses returned to the estate. Both cases, like Buffett’s, involved competing family factions fighting over an ongoing business built around the artist’s name years after his death, and they offer a preview of how long the Buffett trust fight could still run if the January 2027 trial does not resolve it.
