Joan Crawford started out as a silent film actor and quickly became one of Hollywood's leading ladies. Today, the Mildred Pierce star is almost as well known for her turbulent personal life as she is for her glittering career, particularly when it comes to her children. Biologically unable to have kids, Crawford adopted her first child Christina in 1940. Two years later, she adopted a son with her third husband, the actor Phillip Terry, and named him Christopher.
When Christopher was reclaimed by his birth mother, the couple adopted another boy. For around four years, their son was known as Phillip Terry Jr – but when Crawford and Terry's marriage broke down, Crawford decided to rename him. Her choice? Christopher again. In 1947, Crawford also adopted twins Cathy and Cindy, and her family was complete.
However, Crawford's relationship with her children was far from smooth sailing. After the actor died of a heart attack in 1977, Christina and Cristopher claimed that their mother had been abusive, caring more about fame than her children.
Christina wrote about her experiences in Mommie Dearest, a tell-all memoir that was published in 1978. The book paints Crawford as a controlling alcoholic who would hit her children when they didn't behave, and was turned into a movie that starred Faye Dunaway in 1981.
The memoir attracted fierce criticism, not least from Cathy and Cindy, who claimed that they had never experienced any abusive treatment from their mother. Christina and Christopher's relationship with Crawford had clearly been strained, as was made evident by her will. While Crawford reportedly left Cathy and Cindy $77,500 each (around $380k/£279k today) from her $2 million estate, she didn't leave her two eldest children a penny.
Crawford wrote in her will: "It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son, Christopher, or my daughter, Christina, for reasons which are well known to them". Christina is pictured in 2013 at a photo call for her live show, Surviving Mommie Dearest, in New York City.
John Seward Johnson I was one of the directors of Johnson & Johnson. The pharmaceutical giant had been co-founded by his father, Robert Wood Johnson I, in 1886. John had already been married twice and fathered six children by the time he met Barbara Piasecka, the family chambermaid and four decades his junior.
Johnson divorced his second wife and made Barbara his third in 1971. His children weren't invited to the wedding, signalling the start of a family feud that would eventually end in a courthouse.
When Johnson died in 1983, he named Barbara as his chief beneficiary. She was set to inherit around $400 million, which is the equivalent of $1.1 billion (£807.9m) today. Excluded from their father's will, Johnson's six children decided to sue, believing that Barbara had used "undue influence" to secure her inheritance. The court ruled that they were entitled to around 2% of their father's fortune each, leaving Barbara with the bulk of the money.
Being disinherited hasn't done the Johnson family much damage though; John's grandson Jamie is pictured at the premiere of Born Rich, a documentary he directed in 2003. Exploring the effects of inherited wealth, the film received two Emmy nominations in 2004, including for Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming.
Another star of the silver screen, Bette Davis was often considered Joan Crawford's biggest rival. Despite this, she came to Crawford's defence when Mommie Dearest was published, claiming: "I was not Miss Crawford's biggest fan but... what she did not deserve was that detestable book written by her daughter. I've forgotten her name. Horrible".
In an ironic twist, however, Davis wouldn't have to imagine what that would feel like for long.
Davis' daughter Barbara (pictured here with her mother and adopted father Gary Merrill), known as B.D., was born in 1947. Bette and her daughter reportedly had a good relationship until B.D. became a born-again Christian and unsuccessfully attempted to convert her mother.
In 1985, Davis – who had had cancer and a series of strokes earlier in the decade – travelled to England to star in Murder with Mirrors, one of her final films. Upon her return to America, she learned that B.D. had published My Mother's Keeper, a shock memoir that painted her as an alcoholic bully.
Unlike Christina Crawford, B.D. didn't wait for her mother to pass away before publishing her tell-all memoir. The book was met with an indignant backlash, with many people assuming she'd copied Christina after seeing how Mommie Dearest had kickstarted her career as a writer.
B.D's brother Michael disowned her and never spoke to her again. Davis herself only spoke to her daughter via an open letter in her own memoir, where she condemned My Mother's Keeper as showing "a glaring lack of loyalty". Unsurprisingly, the movie icon disinherited her daughter, choosing instead to split her fortune, estimated to have been between $1 million and $3 million at the time of her 1989 death, between Michael and a friend.
According to Beverly Hills, 90210 star Tori Spelling, being raised by her wealthy film producer father Aaron (pictured) “set [her] up for not knowing too much about how to handle money a little bit”.
At the time of his death in 2006, Aaron Spelling had amassed a fortune of $500 million (£367m). But Tori and her brother Randy wouldn’t see as much of it as they had anticipated...
The Spellings lived in The Manor (pictured), a 123-room mansion that was, and remains, the largest and most expensive private home in California. Most recently, the jaw-dropping property sold for an astonishing $119.7 million (£88m) in June 2019; it was put up for sale by the Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone, who had purchased it in 2011.
Growing up surrounded by money meant that Tori and Randy Spelling were accustomed to a life of luxury. However, their parents worried that they wouldn’t know how to handle their own finances and would burn through their father’s fortune after his death.
To prevent this from happening, Aaron left both of his children a legacy that amounted to $800,000 after taxes. In today's money, these bequests would be worth around $1.1 million (£807.5k) each – a generous sum by most people’s standards. But as it represented less than 1% of Aaron’s total net worth, Tori (pictured to the left of her parents) and Randy had to wave goodbye to the luxurious lifestyle with which they’d grown up.
It was probably a wise move. By 2016, Tori was being sued by credit card companies after spending way beyond her means, so the Spelling family fortune may not have lasted long in her hands.
Some Like It Hot star Tony Curtis, pictured here with his first wife Janet Leigh and their daughters Kelly and Jamie Lee, was married six times and had six children in total.
Curtis reportedly had a good relationship with his children; in the 1990s, he and Jamie Lee even worked together to fund the building of the Great Synagogue in Budapest, Hungary. So when the contents of his will was revealed upon his death in 2010, it was a shock for almost everyone involved...
In his will, Curtis named his five surviving children and wrote: "I acknowledge the existence of my children... and have intentionally and with full knowledge chosen not to provide for them in this last will and testament".
His stunned children immediately suspected that his sixth wife Jill Vandenberg, who was 45 years younger than Curtis and inherited the bulk of his $40 million (£29.4m) fortune, had used 'undue influence' to persuade her husband to disinherit them.
To add insult to injury, Jill (pictured) auctioned off hundreds of her husband's personal belongings and items of Hollywood memorabilia just one year after his death.
The auction made over $1 million (£733.8k), but she didn't give any of the proceeds to Curtis' children. She didn't even give them the chance to keep anything themselves.
Apple founder Steve Jobs had an estimated net worth of $10.2 billion when he passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2011. In today's money, that's a huge $12.75 billion (£9.4bn).
Jobs had four children: three with his wife Laurene Powell Jobs (pictured) and a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, from a previous relationship.
Despite naming one of his first desktops the Apple Lisa, Jobs denied that Lisa was his real daughter for years – even after a paternity test confirmed that there was a 94.1% chance he was her father.
The pair eventually reconciled but their relationship remained fraught, with some sources claiming that Jobs occasionally withheld money from Lisa during her studies at Harvard. Lisa is pictured here with her book Small Fry, a memoir about her relationship with her father.
Lisa's mother Chrisann wrote to Jobs in 2005, requesting a gift of $25 million (£18.3m) for herself and $5 million (£3.6m) for her daughter. In the letter, Chrisann reportedly said: "I think you have made a lot of money for a lot of people over the years yet I wonder if anyone has done as much for you as I have with Lisa".
Jobs dismissed the letter as blackmail: Chrisann had implied that if he gave into her request, she wouldn't write a book about their relationship. However, he is believed to have left Lisa a small fortune in his will, although the majority went to his wife Laurene. The rest of his children received nothing.
After making his stage debut at the tender age of 17 months, Mickey Rooney embarked on an acting career that spanned nine decades. At the height of his fame, the actor was earning $65,000 a week, the equivalent of around $250,000 (£184k) today.
But despite having a catalogue of over 300 films under his belt, the megastar, who had fathered nine biological children by his death in 2014, met a sad and unglamorous end.
Rooney chose to have limited contact with many of his children. In his final years, he lived with his stepson Mark, who was the son of his eighth wife Jan. Rooney had originally lived with Mark’s brother Chris (far right), but took out a restraining order against him after accusing him of elder abuse.
When he died in April 2014 aged 93, Rooney left his meagre $18,000 (£13k) estate to Mark and his wife Charlene. His disinheritance of Chris was expected, but when his biological children discovered that they’d also been cut out of the will, they weren’t happy...
Pictured here (left to right): Mark, Jan, Mickey, and Chris.
The following month saw seven of Rooney’s eight surviving children file a lawsuit to challenge the will. They claimed the actor faced "undue influence" from his attorney and Mark, but an LA judge dismissed the challenge and upheld Rooney’s wishes.
Rooney is pictured here with his seventh wife Carolyn and their two children Jimmy and Jonelle at London's Heathrow Airport in 1974.
Hollywood lost another star in 2014 when Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a drug overdose aged 46. The Capote actor had three children with his partner of 14 years, costume designer Mimi O’Donnell.
Hoffman had battled drug addiction as a student at New York University but had been sober for over two decades before suffering a relapse in 2013.
Unlike Mickey Rooney, Hoffman had a close relationship with his children, and his family regularly joined him when he was shooting on location.
His decision not to leave any of his considerable fortune to Cooper (pictured), Tallulah, and Willa directly was motivated by the fact that he “did not want his children to be considered ‘trust fund’ kids”, according to probate documents.
Instead, Hoffman left his $35 million (£25.9m) fortune to O’Donnell so that she could continue raising their children without giving them direct access to his wealth.
American comic Jerry Lewis might have been known as "the King of Comedy", but his children certainly weren't laughing when the contents of his will was revealed in 2017.
Over the course of his eight-decade career, Lewis amassed a fortune of around $50 million (£36.7m). He had seven children; six with his first wife of 35 years, Patti Palmer, and one adopted daughter with his second wife, Sandra "SanDee" Pitnick.
Lewis, pictured here in 2011 with SanDee and their adopted daughter Danielle, chose to disinherit the six children from his first marriage as well as their descendants. It's worth noting that Joseph Lewis had already passed away by the time of his father's death.
Leaving no doubt as to his intentions, his will read: "I have intentionally excluded GARY LEWIS, RONALD LEWIS, ANTHONY JOSEPH LEWIS, CRISTOPHER JOSEPH LEWIS, SCOTT ANTHONY LEWIS and JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER LEWIS and their descendants as beneficiaries of my estate, it being my intention that they shall receive no benefits hereunder." Instead, he left his fortune to SanDee and Danielle.
Contrary to his comic image, Lewis' oldest son Gary Lewis (pictured) has reportedly described his father as "a mean and evil person. He was never loving and caring toward me and my brothers".
DNA testing confirmed that Lewis had probably also fathered a daughter, Suzan, in the 1950s. However, he never publicly acknowledged her and she was living on the streets of Philadelphia at the time of Lewis' death.
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