Tenisha Warner is taking legal action against the financial advisor who managed her late husband's affairs for nearly three decades, alleging he failed to carry out crucial estate planning and insurance decisions Malcolm-Jamal Warner intended to make before his death.
According to TMZ, Tenisha filed a professional negligence lawsuit against Malcolm's longtime business manager and financial advisor, who handled the actor's finances from 1996 until 2023. The suit alleges the advisor failed to finalize estate plan changes Malcolm had directed him to make—changes that would have shifted provisions away from his mother and toward his wife and daughter—and never completed a $2 million life insurance policy Malcolm wanted in place for his family.
The estate plan the advisor helped create in 1996 left the majority of Malcolm's assets to his mother, Pamela Warner. Under the Warner Family Trust established that year, 70% of the estate was designated for Pamela, while 15% each was left to Malcolm's late father, Robert Warner Jr., and his half-sister, Collage. Malcolm and Tenisha had not yet met when those documents were drafted.
"Malcolm had every intention to provide for our nine-year-old daughter and me," Tenisha said in a statement. "He was close to finalizing a new estate plan to replace the stale plan created in 1996 when he was 26 years old, 20 years before we met."
Tenisha alleges updated estate planning documents were prepared but never executed before Malcolm's death. She also claims the advisor failed to complete the $2 million life insurance policy Malcolm intended to secure for his wife and daughter. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Malcolm and Tenisha welcomed their daughter in 2017 and married on May 23, 2022. Their premarital agreement, signed eight days before the wedding, allegedly required Malcolm to maintain a $1 million life insurance policy naming Tenisha as beneficiary, fund a Roth IRA for her, and pay her $5,000 per month for her work as his chief of staff.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner died on July 20, 2025, at age 54 after drowning in a rip current off the coast of Costa Rica. Costa Rican authorities later determined his death was accidental and caused by asphyxiation by submersion. Warner had been swimming with his 8-year-old daughter when they encountered trouble in the water. A surfer brought the child safely to shore, while Warner was pulled from the water and later pronounced dead.
The negligence lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions Tenisha has filed over Malcolm's estate. In related litigation involving Pamela Warner and the Warner Family Trust, Tenisha is seeking at least $1,276,042.46 in alleged unpaid obligations under the couple's premarital agreement. She has also challenged Pamela's handling of the trust, including the reported sale of the family's Studio City, California, home over Tenisha's objections—a home she says holds many of her daughter's earliest memories of her father.
On the first anniversary of Malcolm's death on July 20, Pamela posted a tribute on his memorial Instagram account.
"It is the parent that leaves first and leaves the child/children to continue on with their lives,” she wrote. “But what do you do when this is out of order and the child/children leave first?"
