Key Takeaways
- Chadwick Boseman’s parents and brothers reportedly asked his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward Boseman, to release his medical and financial records and preserve data from his electronic devices less than three months after his 2020 death.
- The family later cited an alleged toxicology result showing hydromorphone in his system and an audio recording in which Boseman allegedly stated he wanted 90 percent of his residuals divided among surviving relatives.
- The widow’s attorney called the requests “misguided and aggressive,” while Boseman’s brothers have since petitioned a Los Angeles court to remove her as administrator of his estate.
Amid Chadwick Boseman’s family’s attempts to oust his widow, Taylor Simone Ledward Boseman, as the administrator of the late actor’s estate, it has been revealed that they emailed her asking for a full breakdown of his medical and financial records just weeks after his death in 2020.
As reported by TMZ, a letter dated November 16, 2020, from the lawyers representing Boseman’s family, was sent to his widow’s lawyers. The same letter said an autopsy completed on September 1, 2020 found 0.12 mg/l of hydromorphone in his body when he died.
“We are requesting that Simone voluntarily agree to execute a release for Chad’s medical records and that your firm digitally image his cell phones, computers, iPads, and any other electronically stored information to preserve any and all relevant information that may exist on any of these devices,” reads the letter. “We also request copies of any and all financial records from January 1, 2020 to present related to any bank accounts that were in Chad’s name.”
The attorney representing Chadwick’s parents and brothers—Leroy, Carolyn, Derrick, and Kevin Boseman—said that request was part of their efforts to “fulfill Chad’s actual intent and ensure that the distribution of assets aligns with the free will that God gave him.”
The email was sent less than three months after Boseman died following a private battle with colon cancer on August 28, 2020. Boseman was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016, but he kept the diagnosis private and continued to work up until his death. His final onscreen role, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, was released on Netflix posthumously.
In a letter dated December 1, 2020, his widow’s attorney hit back and described the letter requesting all medical and financial records as “misguided and aggressive” in nature. Her attorney added that Taylor Simone Ledward Boseman had been working with his brothers and attempted to include them “gratuitously in Ms. Boseman’s projects to honor her late husband’s legacy.” Her lawyer accused Boseman’s brothers of ruining the late actor’s image, which they described as “a magnificent role model.”
The correspondence between the two legal teams remained fraught in a letter dated August 23, 2021, in which the late actor’s brothers said they had pushed for an autopsy after hearing that he was found on the floor of his bedroom when he died. His widow was initially reluctant, they said, because his body had been through multiple surgeries and chemotherapy before he died and had already been through enough. An autopsy was ultimately completed.
They also claimed that they were made aware of an audio recording in which Boseman requested that 90 percent of his residuals should be paid evenly between his surviving family members.
“Perhaps the single most revealing detail, as case in point, is the fact that we heard nothing from you for nine months and now, within days of the one-year anniversary of Mr. Boseman’s passing, you chose to send this disturbing letter without any concern, sensitivity or even consciousness of what this time, or your letter, would mean to someone who truly loved him and suffers his loss every day and especially at this time of remembrance,” her lawyer wrote in a letter dated September 2, 2021.
Earlier this year, Chadwick Boseman’s brothers petitioned a Los Angeles court to remove her as administrator of the late actor’s estate. In legal documents, his widow’s lawyer, Adam Streisand, said that she has “gone well beyond what was required of her,” as Page Six reported at the time.
“She has always included the Boseman family in her efforts to ensure Chadwick’s memory would endure and flourish long after her husband’s tragic and untimely death,” Streisand further wrote. “This is how the family repays her: a petition replete with falsehoods under oath, purposefully used as a public-relations stunt to smear Simone in the tabloid press, not to mention the collateral damage it has caused to her husband’s legacy.”
