Laeticia Hallyday returns to the most sensitive issue of post-Johnny. More than two years after the legal agreement found around the rocker’s legacy, her widow evokes this legal battle that divided the Hallyday clan for years.
“I hope things calm down,” he said into the RTL microphone on Saturday. “They are already appeased, but it is still a long way.”
Johnny Hallyday died of cancer on December 5, 2017, at the age of 74. Two months later, his eldest daughter, Laura Smet, denounced the will drawn up by her father in the United States in 2014.
These provisions excluded him from the inheritance, as well as his half-brother David Hallyday, in favor of Laeticia and the two daughters she had with the rocker, Jade and Joy. A multi-year legal battle ensued over the singer’s estate.
Johnny Hallyday’s “lack of courage”
“The only one who could settle these resentments is Johnny,” Laeticia Hallyday says today. “He left and didn’t fix some things… He certainly knew I was strong enough to get there, but he left me with a lot of problems that he didn’t solve, due to lack of courage. But it was him, we couldn’t change him. I forgive him today.”
French law does not allow you to disinherit your children. Throughout the trial, Laeticia Hallyday tried to make the case that Johnny Hallyday’s life was now in the United States and that therefore American law prevailed in this case.
David Hallyday and Laura Smet won a first round on May 28, 2019 when the Nanterre court declared itself competent to resolve this dispute, considering that Johnny Hallyday was a French resident at the time of his death. It was not until July 2020 that the two parties finally reached a “definitive” agreement, which did not erase the family tear, as Laeticia Hallyday recently confided to AFP:
“I do not despair of having a signal from (David Hallyday) and his sister (Laura Smet), and above all that they reconnect with my daughters, Jade and Joy, their sisters.”
“I am thinking above all of my children, these two girls who have already experienced abandonment,” he explains to RTL. “It is also a form of abandonment, having forgotten them, having left them in this mourning. The three of us were in this mourning, and there was no one left. While we didn’t live like this, that’s what hurts. “
New projects around the singer
And to conclude: “I can’t fix the problems that Johnny left. He’s gone and obviously I’m taking care of that as I’ve always assumed everything from him. He’s my life, my destiny. He’s the man I’ve loved and will love forever. my life, with its flaws and flaws”.
M6 will broadcast the documentary next Thursday Johnny de Laeticia. The singer’s widow has entrusted director William Karel with 740 hours of family films, most of them never before seen, shot since 1995. She is also overseeing a major exhibition dedicated to the singer in Brussels (Johnny was born in Paris to a Belgian father), from 20th December to June 2023, before Paris in 2024.
Source: BFM TV
