The Buss household’s 47-year possession of the Los Angeles Lakers, 17-time NBA champions, may quickly come to an finish regardless of their patriarch’s clear needs earlier than he died. A gaggle of buyers that features former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner – the brother of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law – desires to buy the basketball team for US$12.5 billion.
The pending deal would set a record: No different sports activities franchise has ever fetched that top a worth.
After information in regards to the pending sale broke on Aug. 12, 2026, Jeanie Buss, who has run the Lakers since her father, Jerry Buss, died in 2013, stated she wasn’t on board. Her 5 siblings, nevertheless, are able to promote their stakes.
This transaction isn’t solely proof that buyers are keen to pay eye-popping sums to purchase groups. It additionally illustrates how arduous it was for the late Jerry Buss to construction his property in order that his household may proceed to personal and run the Lakers for years to come back. And it raises a thorny legal question: Who has the authority to promote property held collectively by a number of family in a household belief?
The succession plan
As law professors who examine what happens to property after somebody dies, we’re fascinated by questions like this as a result of they solid gentle on the complexities of household dynamics and the challenges that come up when folks collectively personal uncommon belongings, resembling skilled sports activities groups.
And we’re not alone. Jeanie Buss’ management of the Lakers impressed a tv sequence, “Running Point,” starring Kate Hudson. Netflix renewed the comedy for a 3rd season in Could 2026.
The Buss household has owned the Lakers since Jerry Buss bought it in 1979. Jerry Buss put the household’s Lakers shares into trusts for his six kids.
A belief is a legal arrangement for owning and managing property and other assets. The one who creates the belief should fund it with property and supply directions to the trustee for a way the property must be managed and distributed.
Trustees have legal control over property within the belief. Beneficiaries have the right to receive and benefit from the property. You could be each a trustee and a beneficiary of a belief.
Following the succession plan that Jerry Buss reportedly wrote into the household belief, Jeanie Buss turned the workforce’s controlling proprietor and the Lakers’ “governor” after he died. Within the NBA, the governor has the final say over a team and represents it to the league. And the NBA’s board of governors has to approve any team’s sale.
The Lakers were worth about $1 billion when Jerry Buss died in 2013, and the Buss household owned about two-thirds of the workforce on the time.
Harry How/Getty Images
Most of their stakes already bought
The Buss siblings sold most of their majority stake within the Lakers in 2025 to businessman Mark Walter in a deal that valued the workforce at $10 billion. However they stored a 17.8% share, and Jeanie Buss was to remain on as governor until 2030.
Walter has now agreed to promote his share to the Iger-Kushner group, though the NBA nonetheless must approve the deal.
Jeanie Buss’ 5 siblings reportedly wish to promote the household’s remaining stake, however she doesn’t. If the household sells its remaining stake, Jeanie Buss would in all probability lose her place because the Lakers’ governor as a result of NBA rules require {that a} governor maintain not less than a 15% possession stake.
2 sides of the household battle
Jerry Buss’ six grownup kids share the workforce’s monetary advantages, however solely the trustees have the authorized energy to handle the property.
Three of the siblings – Jeanie Buss, Janie Buss and Joey Buss – at the moment function co-trustees.
Jeanie Buss’ place seems to relaxation on situations written into the belief itself. In keeping with her lawyer, it requires the trustees to do every thing potential to make sure that she stay the controlling proprietor of the Lakers for her lifetime.
That was apparently what their father wished. In 2017, based on Jeanie Buss’ lawyer, when a previous dispute arose over the belief, a California court reaffirmed that Jeanie Buss stay as controlling proprietor.
Jeanie Buss’ siblings might counter that the 2017 order doesn’t expressly prohibit a sale and that the belief, based on a previous court docket submitting, permits the trustees to act by majority vote, which they seem to have finished.
The 2025 deal struck with Walter additionally reportedly included a “tag-along” provision that may permit the belief to promote its curiosity for a similar valuation as Walter. The siblings might argue that the at the moment proposed sale is strictly what was contemplated within the tag-along provision as a result of it exceeds the 2025 valuation.
In the end, who prevails will rely upon the phrases of the belief and the 2025 settlement – neither of which is public – and the 2017 court docket order.
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
Household feuds over franchises
Proudly owning a sports activities workforce has grow to be a well-liked asset for billionaires, who sometimes see them as a way to strengthen family ties.
The Buss household drama exhibits that sharing possession of knowledgeable sports activities workforce can as an alternative trigger household disputes that play out publicly. One inheritor would possibly want to stay actively concerned in managing it, whereas the others might wish to promote their stakes.
The Denver Broncos have been managed by a household belief till 2022. The household bought the soccer workforce as a result of the siblings could not agree on which ones would in any other case personal it.
One other dispute involving the Los Angeles Chargers arose in 2021 when one sibling, who served as co-trustee, sought to power a sale of the household belief’s stake within the soccer workforce, whereas her brother and different siblings sought to protect household management.
An analogous belief dispute cropped up in 2022 over household possession of the Baltimore Orioles, when one of many proprietor’s sons sued the opposite over management of the belief and the baseball franchise, together with whether or not to promote the workforce.
These circumstances underscore an essential lesson for property planning: Giving a number of heirs equal shares of an property doesn’t imply that they are going to amicably resolve handle the property they personal collectively.
Sibling disputes aren’t uncommon
Anyone can establish a trust, and disputes over trusts normally don’t have anything to do with skilled sports activities.
One in all us (Weisbord) labored with two colleagues on a study of trust lawsuits filed in California that can be revealed in September 2026. It discovered that in 25% of these 640 circumstances, siblings have been preventing one another in court docket.
Conflicts when mother and father do what Jerry Buss did by naming a few of his kids as each trustees and beneficiaries, however leaving others with beneficiary standing solely, have been the commonest kind of dispute.
For the Buss household, the query of what occurs to its belief may resolve whether or not a basketball dynasty ends.