Who is nanette kinkade

The headline explains much of the story. Kinkade, a los Gatos resident, is a national phenomena, selling millions of limited edition prints of his work. With a talent for art since he was a child, Kinkade left an impoverished home in Placerville for an art scholarship at UC Berkeley, where he experienced a religious awakening that prompted him to drop out and begin to create the bland but soothing images for which he has become rich and famous.

The home of the late artist, Thomas Kinkade, where lawyers of the estate have hired around-the-clock security guards because Kinkade's girlfriend, Amy Pinto, refuses to move out, in Monte Sereno on Monday, Aug.

The guards will remain posted to ensure Pinto does not attempt to steal anything from the property. The Foundation focuses on making art accessible to youth around the world to foster creativity early in life. By partnering with other nonprofits in the U. For more information on The Kinkade Family Foundation visit www.

All pages on ThomasKinkade. Court papers lay out a tangled fact pattern worthy of a law school exam. It's a cautionary tale about personal finance and estate planning. Dal Cielo, when asked whether his client, Pinto, might settle. Both the wife and the girlfriend have applied for probate—the process through which a court determines that a will is legally valid and approves the distribution of assets covered by that will.

The couple had four daughters, two of whom are minors. The living trust, which unlike a will is not a public document, already contains most of the assets that Kinkade left behind, says Daniel L. Casas, the Los Altos, Calif. That includes original art, intellectual property rights, and shares in Thomas Kinkade's business. Why the discrepancy in the numbers?

She assumes the family underestimates how much Kinkade owned outside the trust. Handwritten, or holographic, wills are valid in about half the states, though they are most common in situations involving sudden death, and exact requirements vary. In California, for example, a will must be written completely in the person's own handwriting and be signed.

In court papers, Pinto argues that the holographs are valid. If a court agrees, the burden of proof will shift to Kinkade's family to raise the two most common grounds for contesting a will. One is undue influence, which refers to efforts to coerce someone to sign estate-planning documents that favor one beneficiary over others. Another is the argument that the person lacked capacity when signing the document. The court could toss out the holographs on either of these grounds.

Meanwhile, the scrawl is so difficult to read that court documents include a transcription. This is the one dated Nov. Assuming this document is valid, Pinto still isn't home free. The same goes for retirement accounts such as an IRA or k.

Instead, the payout at death is distributed to the beneficiary named on the policy. To make Pinto a beneficiary, Kinkade would have needed to change the policy directly--something he didn't do. There's a stronger argument that the house and the adjacent building with a different address that Kinkade used as a studio, were his to give away, but it's complicated. California is one of nine community property states.