As if two sole beneficiaries weren't enough, how about a third?
Another Gary Coleman will has surfaced, this one purportedly drawn up in 2005, in which the actor leaves everything to an Anna Gray, whose name hadn't even come up as an important person in the actor's life until now.
Coleman's agent, Robert Malcolm, told Entertainment Tonight, which first obtained the will, that Gray was a dear friend of the Diff'rent Strokes star who at one point had her own bedroom in Coleman's Los Angeles home and then moved to Utah when he met future wife Shannon Price.
And you can imagine how much Price liked that.
"When Shannon moved in, the relationship got difficult because Shannon didn't like the fact that there was somebody else in his life," said Malcolm, "and, of course, he sided with [Shannon], and Anna was asked to leave."
Maintaining that she was divorced yet still married, common-law style, to Coleman when he died, Price filed a petition yesterday to be appointed special administrator of her ex's estate, pointing to a 2007 document naming her sole beneficiary of his assets.
That handwritten document was a codicil to a 1999 will that appointed pal Dion Mial executor of his estate and left all known assets to the "Trustee of the Millennium Edge Trust." The codicil was rendered null and void when Coleman and Price divorced, according to Mial's attorney.
Got it so far?
Anyway, while the 2007 codicil left all assets, including his prized model train set, to Price, the 2005 will states that if Gray were to predecease him, Coleman wanted his trains dispersed among three train shops in California.
The '05 document does not mention Price or Coleman's parents, who backed off from taking any legal action of their own after the 1999 will surfaced, saying they wanted to respect their son's wishes.
Which, apparently, were all over the map.
(Originally published June 11, 2010, 3:56 p.m. PT)
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