Pavarotti Adds Another Wrinkle To Fight For Fortune

This week a third will was found in the Luciano Pavarotti Estate which has the daughters screaming for their rightful share. In this new handwritten will, the three daughters would control the majority of the $500M Estate and leave his most recent wife with practically nothing.

Daughters Lorenza, Cristina and Giuliana, from the Italian tenor's first marriage to Adua Veroni, were surprised to find their father had left two wills in September and now are thrilled to find this new handwritten will.

The handwritten note is believed to have been prepared six months before the other two legal documents, which were dictated to lawyers in the U.S. earlier this year. The later wills split Pavarotti's millions between his widow Nicoletta Mantovani, 37, who received 50 per cent, and his three daughters who split 25 per cent.

It also covered his American assets - including three New York apartments, bank accounts, paintings and furniture - which were established in a trust in Mantovani's sole name. But the elder daughters believe the first will (handwritten one), written by Pavarotti at his home in Modena, Italy, in December 2006, show his "true desire", leaving Mantovani just one property and a share in two of his companies.

The rest of the wealth was divided equally by his three children with Veroni, who he divorced in 2000, and his daughter by Mantovani, four-year-old Alice. A family source says, "They believe the earlier will showed their father's true intention." Pavarotti lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of 71 in September.

In California, a handwritten will would be legal. It is called a holographic will and as long as it is signed and dated and acts as a will, then it would be legal. HOWEVER, most wills performed by attorneys have a little clause almost at the beginning which revokes any and all prior wills made and therefore this little handwritten gem would probably not be valid since it was done six months prior to the formal wills done by the attorneys.