Add Page Six on Google Dolly Parton may have sung about working “9 to 5,” but the country queen clocked a six-decade shift that leaves behind a massive $450 million empire.
Her meticulously crafted estate plan is set to determine who gets the keys to the kingdom — and what happens to the fortune she spent a lifetime building.
The music legend’s assets include a 3,000-song catalog estimated at $120 million, an estimated $165 million stake in Dollywood, a sprawling Tennessee property valued at roughly $10 million and, potentially, decades’ worth of personal possessions, including her famously extensive wardrobe and memorabilia.
How that fortune will be divided, and who ultimately controls the pieces of Parton’s empire, could remain private for some time.
“We know Dolly did not have any children of her own, so it is difficult to predict who she planned to leave it to,” Robert Strauss, expert estate lawyer and director at Los Angeles estate planning firm Weinstock Manion, told Page Six.
Whatever Parton’s estate plan says, her business savvy could make the transition of her music catalog considerably smoother.
“Because Dolly Parton famously owned her own publishing instead of selling it off to a major, her passing shouldn’t disrupt the management of the catalog itself,” Guy Blake, managing partner at Granderson Des Rochers, LLP, told Page Six.
“The copyrights — and the income they throw off — pass to her estate, which can keep managing them exactly as she did,” Blake said.
Neither Strauss nor Blake are directly affiliated with Parton’s estate.
Raised in a large family alongside 11 brothers and sisters, Parton is survived by six siblings: Willadeene, Robert Lee, Stella, Cassie, Freida, and Rachel.
Parton – who secretly battled cancer before she passed away — also leaves behind numerous nieces and nephews, as well as her goddaughter, Miley Cyrus.
Bryan Seaver, her nephew and longtime head of security, announced her death on behalf of the family on Tuesday.
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Still, the details of the estate were apparently so closely guarded that even some of Parton’s longtime business associates were left scrambling to figure out what came next after her death, according to the Daily Mail.
A source who worked with the star for nearly 40 years shared that Parton kept her estate planning details fiercely under wraps, though her extended family isn’t expected to launch a nasty courtroom battle over the fortune.
“She’s taken care of all of them,” the insider told the outlet, adding, “I don’t see there being any fight with all of them because I think… they’re all being treated very fairly.”
The Daily Mail source expects the bulk of Parton’s fortune to go to charity, continuing the philanthropic work that was so central to her life.
That could mean her music and business empire ultimately helps fund causes including the Dollywood Foundation and its Imagination Library, a program inspired by her father’s illiteracy that has since put more than 300 million free books into children’s hands.
“She was one smart lady, as gifted in business as she was in music,” the source said.
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