Leonard Cohen’s kids in inheritance battle with his manager after attorneys forged Trust document

Leonard Cohen’s manager has been charged with plundering the late singer-songwriter’s estate after it emerged that his former lawyer forged a document putting him in charge of the $48 million fortune.

Robert Kory is embroiled in a nasty inheritance battle with Cohen’s children who claim he acted as trustee of their father’s estate on the basis of “forgery and fraud.”

50-year-old Adam Cohen and his 48-year-old sister Lorca are now fighting to remove Kory from their father’s estate, make him hand over his assets and return all the money he earned from his activity in the role.

However, Kory – who says he was unaware of the forged document – claims he made the kids “massively rich” through commercial deals he oversaw during his time managing Cohen’s assets.

It comes as Kory’s former attorney Reeve Chudd admitted to removing a page from Cohen’s signed trust and replacing it with one stating his client was the primary trustee.

It makes Chudd guilty of a felony – though he claims it was a “terrible mistake.”

Cohen, who is best known for his song Hallelujah, died in 2016 at the age of 82 after a fall in the middle of the night at his home in Los Angeles.

He left behind an archive worth more than $48 million, including 250 diaries he kept since childhood, books of poetry, photographs, and millions of dollars in royalties.

In December, it was revealed that Lorca and Adam had filed a lawsuit against 72-year-old Kory in Los Angeles Superior Court.

They then accused him of forging documents in 2005 to get their hands on the singer’s belongings.

Their lawyer Adam Streisand in December accused Kory and his lawyers of trying to “evade the multimillion-dollar estate.”

Kory has blamed attorney Reeve Chudd for the forgery, who he claims “modified a document without anyone knowing.”

But a motion filed by Lorca and Adam says his claims “get in the way of credulity.”

Earlier, Kory had labeled the discrepancy a “writer’s error,” meaning an unintentional mistake by the court.

In a statement seen by VarietyChudd is asked, “You didn’t notarize Leonard Cohen’s signatures for this version of the Leonard Cohen family trust reformulation, did you?”

He replied, ‘Yes. It was a terrible mistake on my part to make this document.”

The lawyer then admits that he physically made the document after Cohen’s death in 2016.

“I replaced the pages in the original document.”

According to the motion, the children claim there is no “valid instrument of Leonard.” Designate Kory to serve in that capacity.

“Since Leonard’s death in 2016, Kory has represented himself as a trustee and has exercised control over the trust and its assets solely on the basis of forgery and fraud.”

Kory claims he did not read or review the trust documents before signing them.

However, Cohen’s heirs say if his story is true, it still proves he’s not fit to be a trustee.

Kory allegedly paid himself and others, including his son, hundreds of thousands of dollars to store and maintain Cohen’s records.

The motion also alleges that the manager retroactively dated a document that allowed him to organize an exhibition and book of Cowen’s drawings and poetry at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

The exhibition is currently on display at the gallery, opening in December and scheduled to close in April.

The document claimed that the trust owned the materials when they actually belonged to the heirs and the trust.

But the matter is complicated by the fact that Kory claims to have generated large returns for the estate that made the children “hugely rich.”

The manager negotiated a deal in 2022 in which Hipgnosis Songs acquired the rights to 278 songs and derivatives written by Cohen, including songs such as “Hallelujah,” “Suzanne,” and “Bird on the Wire.”

An earlier document claimed the deal was worth $58 million.

The lawsuit alleges that Cohen was “dying” and “on heavy drugs” when he signed an agreement in July 2016 that gave Kory a 15 percent commission on such sales.

Kory is charged in full with illegally entering into business ventures and agreements on behalf of the Trust without the consent of Cohen’s children; by refusing to provide them with material information about those transactions; of misappropriating assets owned by them and transferring those assets to the trust; of the refusal to distribute the Trust’s assets to the heirs ‘for continued enrichment’.

A trial is scheduled for March 29.

In a report to the New York Post last December, Streisand said, “Leonard Cohen’s lawyers and manager forged his trust so they could plunder the multimillion-dollar estate and steal the Hall of Famer’s legacy from his own children.”