Casey Kasem's Children Fight Legal War Against Stepmother for Right to Visit Their Father

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:

 Amid competing charges of cruelty and neglect and with an $80 million fortune at stake, the "American Top 40" legend's children tell why they have waged a legal war against their stepmother for the right to visit their 81-year-old father, who is frail with Parkinson's.

Department 29 in the Stanley Mosk Courthouse of the Los Angeles Superior Court is a 50-square-foot box of dirty-blond wood and fluorescent light and a disheartening place of hard-luck stories and forlorn conclusions. On a Friday morning before Christmas, a long succession of civil cases involving special-needs trusts, disputed inheritances, stricken families and various other probate calamities passed in a dull parade before Judge Lesley Green, who announced her decisions, one after another, with a swift dispatch.

But the courtroom stirred and the spectators sat forward when Case No. BP145805 was called, and no fewer than six attorneys lined up before the judge in the matter of Julie Kasem et. al., petitioner, v. Jean Kasem, respondent, in respect to a "conservatorship of person" -- that absent person being 81-year-old Casey Kasem, the radio legend. For decades, Kasem counted down the weekly hit singles on American Top 40 and its spinoffs, exhorting his listeners to "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars." Several generations of kids also knew him as the voice of the teenage Shaggy on the Scooby-Doo series. He had taped his last broadcast in 2009, then quietly retired.

The courtroom spectators were primed to witness the latest legal skirmish in a tabloid melodrama that had erupted three months earlier and just kept getting more lurid and sad. On Oct. 1, Kerri Kasem, 41, the entertainer's eldest daughter from his first marriage, along with Casey's 78-year-old brother, Mouner Kasem, and many longtime friends, held a protest outside the Holmby Hills estate where Kasem lives with his second wife of 33 years, actress Jean Kasem, best known for her TV role as the harebrained bombshell Loretta Tortelli on Cheers. Casey met Jean in 1980 when he was 47 and she was 24; today, she is perhaps better remembered for her eye-popping outfits -- often involving headbands, turbans and tiaras -- she liked to wear to galas and awards shows.
It had been an open secret in the music industry that Kasem was ill, but now the family went public with the news that their octogenarian father was suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease, could no longer walk and had lost much of his ability to speak. Holding signs that read, "JEAN, WHY WON'T YOU LET ME SEE MY DAD!?" and "I MISS MY BROTHER," Kerri and the protesters told reporters that for months, none of them had been allowed to see or communicate with Casey. A week later, Julie Kasem, 38, Casey's middle child and a licensed physician assistant with advanced training in palliative and hospice care, and her husband, Dr. Jamil Aboulhosn, a cardiologist at UCLA Medical Center, filed a conservatorship petition in Superior Court, charging that though her father had signed a medical directive in 2007 placing the couple in charge of his care if he were incapacitated, Jean Kasem had blocked them from finding out about his condition since the previous spring. As one leering headline put it: "CASEY KASEM HELD CAPTIVE BY HIS OWN WIFE."

The Kasem kids repeatedly told reporters that they weren't after their father's money -- his fortune has been estimated at $80 million -- but that they desperately missed him and simply wanted to see him again.

At a hearing Oct. 15, Jean Kasem struck back. Although she never appeared in court, her attorney, Marshall B. Grossman, declared that a document signed by Casey Kasem in 2011 had given his wife power of attorney, superseding the 2007 conservatorship. For Jean Kasem, he said, the protest and legal action had been "a sham." In an affidavit submitted to the court, Jean called the situation "a living nightmare," writing, "It is my sincere hope that Casey's physical surroundings coupled with the attentiveness of the medical providers and the love of his own home and wife and child are comforting to him." (Casey and Jean have a 23-year-old daughter together, Liberty Jean.)

In mid-November, Jean Kasem and her attorney filed another written statement with the court, charging that her stepchildren had "single-handedly and irreparably shattered the lives of their father, his wife and youngest daughter. … They are doing so with a professionally orchestrated media and legal campaign that has disgraced their father and vilified their stepmother. … These children falsely claim that their stepmother is wicked and is keeping her husband prisoner in his home behind closed doors and that they no longer have access to him through no fault of their own. … For reasons they know all too well, their presence at this stage would be toxic and extremely distressing for Casey, Jean and their daughter, Liberty, who have had enough of their cruelty."

It was the last time Jean Kasem has told her side of the conflict.

On Nov. 19, the court upheld the validity of Jean Kasem's role as her husband's conservator and ordered the two sides to iron out a visitation agreement.

Despite her decisive legal victory, Jean Kasem was, as she had seemed to realize, getting crushed in the court of media coverage. Even as the "wicked" stepmother storyline stuck, she steadfastly declined to speak to journalists. Kerri Kasem announced that in honor of her father, she was creating a foundation, Kasem Cares, to lobby on behalf of visitation rights for adult children. In early December, a former maid and caretaker, Hilda Loza, won a $10,000 judgment against Jean in small-claims court after accusing her employer of abusive behavior (Loza alleged that Jean routinely berated her and falsely charged her with stealing such items as silverware and toilet paper). On Dec. 18, Kerri and her brother, Mike, appeared on CNN with Piers Morgan to tell their story. As the host listened sympathetically to their account of Jean's refusal to permit the children to spend time with their father, his umbrage mounted. "It seems to me utterly cruel!" he exclaimed. "It's utterly horrendous." Mike revealed that he recently had been allowed to see his dad for five minutes and had rushed to say everything he needed to, "just in case that was the last time I'd ever see him."
Two days later, the case was back before Judge Green. But it quickly emerged that there would be no further fireworks. The attorneys confirmed that Jean and two of the Kasem children, Julie and Mike, had reached a confidential agreement granting them visitation. Kerri, however, had refused to sign the new agreement.
After the hearing, Mike Kasem told reporters that his father now was in a hospital (he reportedly remains there today) and that all three children -- including Kerri -- finally had seen their father again, briefly, in separate visits. A few weeks later, Mouner Kasem traveled from his home in Michigan and was permitted to see his brother for the first time in more than a year.

Julie Kasem was reluctant to comment on the outcome. "Obviously, we came to our settlement agreement, and that's all that I can really say," she told THR. "It is what it is. I am so concerned about preserving my visitation with my dad, and I cherish it so much that I just don't want to screw anything up. To me, the most important thing is to see my dad."

Mike Kasem, 40, who lives in Singapore, where he is a successful radio DJ, likewise sounded wearily resigned to the situation. "The deal that Julie and I signed, I don't think it would honor our father's wishes," he says. "But there comes a point when you have to decide how far you want to go. We felt things weren't going to get better."

Kerri Kasem, however, was livid and remained determined to fight. She, too, is a longtime radio talker and co-host of the syndicated Premiere Radio show Sixx Sense, with Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx.

"I'm not afraid of her; they are," she says of Jean and her siblings. "This visitation agreement not only treats us like criminals, it treats my dad like an inmate. It's about money for her. It's about love for us."

Source.... http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/casey-kasem-sad-strange-family-678902

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