A year after Malcolm-Jamal Warner‘s death, his widow, Tenisha Warner, has filed a lawsuit against her mother-in-law. Filing the lawsuit on Monday in DeKalb County Superior Court in Decatur, Georgia, Tenisha said Pamela Warner, who oversees Malcolm’s trust, owes her more than $1.2 million.
What did Tenisha Warner say in the lawsuit against Pamela Warner?
According to the lawsuit, Tenisha married Malcolm in 2022 and signed a prenuptial agreement that year. Per the complaint, Malcolm “agreed to purchase and maintain a term life insurance policy on his life in the amount of $1,000,000.00” and to name Tenisha as the beneficiary.
The lawsuit alleges that Malcolm did not pay the $16,000 per year promised to his wife and that the total owed now exceeds $50,000. The complaint also alleges that the former “Cosby Show” star did not establish a Roth Individual Retirement Account for his wife with the maximum annual contribution and did not pay her $5,000 per month for serving as his chief of staff.
“In total, the amounts due and owing to Plaintiff under the Agreement total no less than $1,276,042.46, together with prejudgment and post-judgment interest and Plaintiff’s attorney’s fees and costs recoverable under the Agreement,” the suit states, per CNN.
In a statement to CNN, Tenisha said she attempted to privately settle her “beloved husband’s complicated estate and honor his last wishes” over the past year. She also said Malcolm “had every intention” of providing for his wife and their 9-year-old daughter. Per the statement, the former child star “was close to finalizing a new estate plan to replace the stale plan created in 1996 when he was 26 years old.”
“Sadly, he was unable to do so before we lost him. I have been struggling to care for our daughter as a single mom and now as her sole provider,” Tenisha told CNN. “Legally, I had no choice but to take action to protect our rights before any potential statute of limitations expired.”
What happened to Malcolm-Jamal Warner?
Malcolm, who played Theodore Huxtable on The Cosby Show in the 1980s, died in a drowning accident on July 20, 2025, while vacationing in Costa Rica.
Pamela went to social media on the anniversary of Malcolm’s death to pay tribute to her son.
“It is the parent that leaves first and leaves the child/children to continue on with their lives. But what do you do when this is out of order and the child/children leave first?” she wrote. “This is where I found myself July 20, 2025. And this is what I awoke to July 20, 2026. How can I be here and my child is not?”