\n One year after the drowning death of Malcolm-Jamal Warner, his widow Tenisha Warner has filed a lawsuit against the actor\u2019s mother, who oversees his trust, seeking more than $1.2 million in what she says are owed funds.\n <\/p>\n
\n The suit was filed Monday in DeKalb County Superior Court in Decatur, Georgia against Pamela Warner, who the legal paperwork names as \u201csuccessor trustee of the Warner family trust.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The beloved actor died on July 20, 2025 in a drowning accident<\/a> while vacationing in Costa Rica. He was 54.\n <\/p>\n \n Warner and his wife married on May 23, 2022 and signed a prenuptial agreement on May 15 of that year, according to the suit. They share a daughter, who has not been publicly named.\n <\/p>\n \n The suit states that Warner, who came to fame playing Theodore Huxtable on the popular 1980s sitcom \u201cThe Cosby Show,\u201d had \u201cagreed to purchase and maintain a term life insurance policy on his life in the amount of $1,000,000.00\u201d naming his wife as the beneficiary, but failed to do so.\n <\/p>\n \n Tenisha Warner also alleges in the suit that the actor failed to make an agreed upon payment to her of $16,000 per year on their marriage anniversaries, which would now amount to $50,542.46; did not maintain a Roth Individual Retirement Account for her with the maximum contribution per year; and also did not pay her a promised salary of $5,000 per month for acting as his chief of staff, amounting to $195,000.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIn 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\u2019s attorney\u2019s fees and costs recoverable under the Agreement,\u201d the suit states.\n <\/p>\n \n All the agreements and the financial terms are also reflected in the prenuptial agreement, which is attached to the lawsuit.\n <\/p>\n \n In a statement to CNN provided by her attorney on Tuesday, Tenisha Warner said that for the past year she \u201cattempted to privately settle my beloved husband\u2019s complicated estate and honor his last wishes,\u201d that her husband \u201chad every intention\u201d to provide for her and their nine-year-old daughter and \u201cwas close to finalizing a new estate plan to replace the stale plan created in 1996 when he was 26 years old, 20 years before we met and well before we gave birth to our beautiful daughter.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cSadly, 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,\u201d she said in the statement. \u201cLegally, I had no choice but to take action to protect our rights before any potential statute of limitations expired.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n CNN has reached out to Pamela Warner for comment.\n <\/p>\n \n The star kept his wife and child\u2019s identity private while he was alive. In September 2025, Tenisha Warner posted a tribute to him on social media<\/a> and announced that she and their young daughter were launching a company in honor of him.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI can still hear my husband\u2019s laugh, still feel the way he made room for every part of me \u2014 every tear, every dream,\u201d she wrote at the time on a series of family photos.\n <\/p>\n