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Tenisha Warner filed two lawsuits against her mother-in-law a year after her late husband accidentally drowned while on a family vacation in Costa Rica.
Key Points
- Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s widow, Tenisha Warner, seemingly hinted at the distance between her and her mother-in-law, Pamela Warner, in a CBS Mornings interview with Gayle King.
- The interview was filmed before news broke on Tenisha’s $1.2 million lawsuit against Pamela over alleged unpaid obligations tied to Malcolm’s estate.
- King told viewers that she hadn’t known about the legal dispute when she interviewed Tenisha.
A CBS Mornings interview with Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s widow, Tenisha Warner, seemingly hints at the tension between her and her mother-in-law that led to a $1.2 million lawsuit over alleged unpaid obligations tied to the late actor’s estate.
In a preview of the sit-down, teased on Wednesday and filmed before Tenisha’s lawsuit became public, Gayle King asked the mother of the couple’s 9-year-old daughter about her relationship with Pamela Warner, who now controls the family trust at the center of their legal dispute. Malcolm, beloved for playing Theo Huxtable on the 1980s sitcom The Cosby Show, accidentally drowned while on a family vacation in Costa Rica on July 20, 2025, leaving behind Tenisha and their daughter.
“Do you communicate with his mom? Are you close to his mom?” King asked, noting that Pamela lives in Los Angeles.
“Yeah... Right now, everybody — all of his family members and everyone who has lost him — they are grieving,” Tenisha answered, not directly responding to whether the two remain close. “You know, it’s been the biggest loss for all of us. Right now, my daughter and I are just like....”
King then interjected, “You guys are a unit.”
“Yeah,” Tenisha continued. “It’s … the emotional capacity that I have can be very limited sometimes, you know? And so, I have to, for myself, decide, ‘What do I have to give right now in this moment?’ And whatever I have to give, the first person to get that is my daughter. And then the second is myself.”
After showing the preview, King emphasized to viewers that neither she nor the CBS Mornings team knew that Tenisha, who married The Cosby Show actor in 2022, had filed two lawsuits against her mother-in-law.
“We did this interview without knowing about this lawsuit. I was really just asking this question in passing because Pamela had spoken out — she and her son were very, very, very close,” King said.
However, King added that she thought Tenisha’s answer was “telling.” She noted that Tenisha did not respond by saying she and Pamela were regularly communicating or grieving together. “But I did not know that all of this was going on,” she added.
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Entertainment Weekly reported on Tuesday that Tenisha is seeking $1.2 million from her husband’s trust, allegedly in accordance with a premarital agreement. She claims she is owed $1 million in life insurance obligations, $50,542.46 for anniversary payment obligations, $30,500 for a ROTH IRA obligation, and a $195,000 salary obligation for her employment as Warner’s “chief of staff.”
“Malcolm provided for his family during his lifetime, and intended to provide for them in the event of his death,” Tenisha claims in her first lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on July 17. “Unfortunately, Malcolm’s intent has been thwarted by an outdated revocable trust, the Warner Family Trust, dated October 7, 1996.”
According to the L.A. complaint, the Trust divides Malcolm’s estate between his mother, father, and half-sister, “which effectively disinherits his 9-year-old daughter, MacKenzie, and his widow, Tenisha, from the entirety of the 1996 Trust, and leaves them without adequate financial support… This was not Malcolm’s intent.”
Tenisha’s second lawsuit was filed in DeKalb County, Georgia, where Malcolm was a resident, on July 20, the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death.
The complaint alleges breach of contract against Pamela in her capacity as trustee of Malcom’s estate and requests a declaratory judgment to settle the ongoing legal matter. Additionally, Tenisha seeks to “recover her attorney’s fees and costs” from the Trust.
Tenisha shed some light on her litigation with the trust in a statement to PEOPLE.
“For the last year, I have attempted to privately settle my beloved husband’s complicated estate and honor his last wishes,” she said. “Malcolm had every intention to provide for our 9-year-old daughter and me. He was 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.”
Watch the preview of Tenisha’s interview with King above. The full interview airs Thursday on CBS Mornings.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
