and out of court with Motown over royalty payments ever since Paul committed suicide by gunshot at the age of 34 in 1973. They have come out on top in some instances and sometimes they have not, but overall, there are a total of seven children (2 of whom didn’t surface until after Paul died) and a wife who have been getting their fair shares of Paul’s earnings that still seem to flow in to this day.

At one point Paul’s family claimed they were owed $195,000, but Motown argued that the family couldn’t legally pursue royalties that were older than 6 years. They eventually settled in March 1988 for $96,520, which covered a portion of Paul’s royalty payments for the years 1981 through June 1987.

Paul had two sons and three daughters with his wife, Mary Agnes- Sarita, Paula and Mary, and Kenneth and Paul Jr.; and his other two children, Paul Williams Lucas and Derrick Vinyard, were born outside of his marriage. All kids get a share of money every year from Paul’s royalties.

Now that we broke down the division of Paul’s ends, let’s get back to his son Kenneth. After a neighbor found his aunt’s body shot in the head with a telephone cord wrapped three times around her neck, Kenneth Williams had plenty of time to sit in prison and analyze what happened. Here’s what was reported via estateofdenial:
“I was out of my mind on crack cocaine,” Williams said. “I was out of control. Prison basically saved my life.”

Young Kenneth had lived a charmed life before the death of his father. Kenneth spent nights on the road with his father and the group in Las Vegas, Miami and Atlanta.

“Where the show went, I went,” he said.

Kenneth, nicknamed “Bossman” by his dad, spent afternoons learning from Temptations frontman Dennis Edwards how to make paper airplanes, which he threw out a window from an upper floor of Motown headquarters along Woodward.

Kenneth was 11 when his father died. The outgoing youngster turned angry, rebellious and “was put out of every school in Detroit. I was lost,” he said. “I lost my best friend.”

At 19, he smoked his first joint. At 25, he tried cocaine. At 27, “that —- took me to another place,” he says.

That’s how old he was when he strangled his great-aunt. He turned 28 just before heading to prison.

“I was trying to deal with why I was in prison and what made me go there,” he said. “The money? I wasn’t even thinking about it.”

He thought the cash was safe during the 7,536 days he spent in prison. He was released July 23, 2011.'

WHEN HE LEARNED HIS MONEY WAS GONE

He soon learned his cash was gone and confronted his sister, who admitted spending the money, he alleges in a court filing.

“She thought he was never going to get out of prison,” his lawyer Kenneth Burger wrote in a lawsuit.

Paul Williams Jr., told The Detroit News he hasn’t received his full share of royalties in years from Paula.

“She’s doing it to all of us,” Paul Jr. of Sterling Heights said. “She did right by us for 10 years, but she’s been slipping since then. It’s greed.”
 Kenneth, meanwhile, works 15-hour days at construction sites while his lawsuit against his sister and Motown successor Universal Music Group is pending in federal court. He alleges breach of contract, negligence, fraud and conspiracy, among other charges, and wants unspecified damages.

Kenneth Williams has asked Universal to send future payments directly to his house.

He refuses to be bitter or angry despite the fight with his sister.

“I’m still there for her if she needs me,” Williams said. “But I don’t trust people after what I’ve been through. We live in a wicked world.”

The bottom line is the law is the law, so if the judge says Kenneth should get his money, so be it. Of course his sister shouldn’t have allegedly spent his inheritance, but on the flip side, sometimes certain folks just need to be grateful they’re alive and got a second shot at life. Does Kenneth actually deserve to walk out of prison and be handed a silver platter after murdering his great aunt? I say no, he deserves to work from the very bottom, back up to the top and redeem himself, but hey that’s just my humble opinion. Anyways, if he does get his money, he probably should donate a chunk of it to some type of drug rehab facility to help someone else out and prevent them from making the same mistake he did.
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