Leonard Cohen heirs accuse former manager and lawyers of forgery

The children and heirs of the late Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen have accused his former manager and his attorneys of forgery.

A motion filed by 48-year-old Lorca and 50-year-old Adam Cohen and reviewed by Variety indicates that Cohen’s two adult children accuse Cohen’s former manager Robert Kory along with his legal representatives of forgery of Cohen’s signed trust that is valued at $48m.

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The motion includes an excerpt of a deposition filed by the Cohens’ attorney Adam Streisand in which Kory’s former attorney Reeve Chudd admits to removing a page from Cohen’s signed trust and replacing it with one that indicated Kory is the primary trustee of Cohen’s trust.

At one point in the deposition, Chudd is asked: “And if you take a look at the next page, PET 1-28, you see your notarization of Leonard Cohen’s signatures, right?” to which he replies, “Yes,” Variety reports.

“You did not notarize Leonard Cohen’s signatures to this version of the restatement of the Leonard Cohen family trust, right?” Chudd is then asked.

“Yes. It was a horrible mistake on my part to create this document,” he responds.

Chudd then admits that he physically created the document after Cohen died in 2016 at 82 years old. “I substituted pages in the original document,” he said.

According to the motion, “There is no valid instrument by Leonard designating Kory to serve in that capacity. Since Leonard’s death in 2016, Kory has been holding himself out as trustee and exercising control over the trust and its assets solely on the basis of forgery and fraud.”

The motion is requesting the court to remove Kory from the trustee role, compel him to turn over Cohen’s estate’s assets, as well as return the money that he earned during his role as trustee, Variety reports.

Kory claims that he did not look or read the trust documents before signing them, the motion quotes him saying. Nevertheless, the Cohens argue that even if Kory did not review the documents before signing them, it is further evidence that he is not equipped to be the trustee of Cohen’s trust.

The motion quotes Kory blaming Chudd for the forgery, who he said “modified a document unbeknownst to anybody”. It added that Kory’s claims “strain credulity”, according to Variety.

“The motion also claims that Kory backdated a document enabling him, as purported trustee, to stage and profit from an exhibition and book of Cohen’s drawings, poetry and other ephemera at the Art Gallery of Ontario, claiming the trust solely owned the materials, when they are actually owned by the heirs and the trust,” Variety reports.

“It … claims that Kory paid himself and others, including his son, hundreds of thousands of dollars to store and maintain Cohen’s archive,” the outlet continued.

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

Cohen, who was born in Montreal, came to prominence in the 1960s as a poet, novelist and singer-songwriter. He died in 2016.