The three children of late rocker Robbie Robertson are suing his widow, whom he married five months before his death last August at age 80.
In legal documents obtained by ABC News, Robertson’s three children from his first marriage — Alexandra, Delphine and Sebastian Robertson — claim that Janet Zuccarini committed elder abuse by taking advantage of the fact that their father’s declining health had impaired his cognitive ability.
Specifically, they claim she forced The Band guitarist and songwriter to sign documents granting her financial privileges that they claim Robertson would never have agreed to.
The main claim in the lawsuit involves a home Robertson and Zuccarini jointly purchased for $6 million in 2021. Each of them owned 50% of the home and, the children claim, Robertson wanted them to inherit his 50% when he died. They would then have the choice of either selling it to Zuccarini, buying her out or jointly selling the home with her.
Instead, the children claim that after Robertson died, Zuccarini told them she was entitled to stay in the home until she died and that they were required to pay the mortgage, property taxes, insurance and maintenance on it for the rest of her life. Her claim is based on a document the children say Zuccarini had Robertson sign in March 2023.
However, the children argue that after undergoing cancer surgery in 2022, Robertson had used powerful drugs to manage his pain, which “severely impaired” his mental state. This allowed Zuccarini to “coerce him into executing documents that were oppressive, abusive, and contrary to his expressly stated intentions.”
As proof, the documents cite a text exchange between Alexandra and Zuccarini, in which Zuccarini “expressly admitted in writing that she knew Robertson did not understand what he was signing,” as well as a similar conversation between Zuccarini and Delphine.
The Los Angeles Times reports an attorney for Zuccarini has dismissed the complaint as “meritless fiction.”
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