Who Is Kristoff St. John's Daughter?
The details over the battle for the late actor's fortune.
Getty Fans of the soap opera world mourned the passing of Kristoff St. John when he died tragically at the age of just 52. For years, we all watched him portray Neil Winters on the CBS drama, The Young and The Restless. For many of us, the characters in the soap operas that we watch become touchstones, cultural figures who take up tremendous space in our own interior lives. It was no different with St. John, which is what made his passing so hard to handle.
Tragically, the sadness surrounding his premature death has not yet dissipated, in part because of the fact that when he died he left no will behind. Now his family, including his father Christopher and his daughter Paris, are locked in a contentious legal debate over what will happen to his fortune.
So who is Kristoff St. John's daughter? Here's what we know about Paris St. John, and the case behind managing his massive estate.
1. The Death of Kristoff St. John
Kristoff St. John died young, at the age of 52. Though the cause of his death was kept under wraps for some time, it was eventually revealed to be Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This is a disease where the walls of the heart gradually thicken making it harder and harder for the organ to pump blood throughout the body. It is difficult to diagnosis making it hard to treat let alone cure.
The five years leading up to his death were trying ones for both Kristoff and his wife the boxer Mia St. John. They lost their 24-year-old son to suicide five years prior to Kristoff's death. Mia and Kristoff had struggled for some time to find treatment for their son Julian St. John, aware that he was in mental distress. At the time of his death, he was being treated at a hospital in Long Beach, California, PEOPLE reported in 2014. After his death, according to TMZ, Kristoff and Mia sued that hospital, and the case was later settled out of court.
Kristoff who first started acting when he was just a kid, joined the cast of CBS’s The Young and the Restless in 1991. He won Daytime Emmy Awards and NAACP Image Awards for playing Neil Winters on the long-running soap. On a personal note, he was legitimately the only character on Y&R who my mom and I rooted for constantly. Sorry, Victor. At his passing, Kristoff left behind two daughters, Lola and Paris.
2. The Handwritten Will
Tragically, Kristoff's sudden and heartbreaking death isn't the end of his story. I say tragically, because his name is in the headlines again, and it's not for the groundbreaking work he did on soaps as a person of color. He's making headlines because his family is officially fighting over all of the money that he appeared to have left behind.
You see, when Kristoff died, he did not have a will that was on file with his lawyer or with anyone else. However, his own father (and the grandfather to his daughters, it's important to remember) has come forward with news that changes all of that. Christopher St. John has recently come forward claiming that he is now in possession of a handwritten will, and what it has to say is a tough pill to swallow for the family. In it, Christopher claims that Kristoff wanted his daughter Lola to receive 75% of his estate, leaving his daughter Paris with the remaining 25%.
3. Paris St. John's Suit
As far as the public knows, Kristoff did not have any sort of falling out with Paris, which makes this new will being presented by Christopher more than just a little bit fishy. Something you should know, this will was only presented after Paris, the older of the two sisters, came forward and filed a motion to take control of her late father's estate. Paris and Lola are half-sisters, Paris being a product of Kristoff's first marriage, and Lola of the second.
Paris isn't taking this laying down and it looks like a battle over St. John's money is fast in the works. Paris is suing, and among her claims, she insists that the will her grandfather found was taken from “inside a private diary and was not intended to be seen by third parties,” adding, “The document would never have been found if someone had not opened the decedent’s private journal.”
4. The Missing Page
This certainly seems like family business, and arguably the St. Johns should be left to their own devices to figure out what to do with their relative's finances, but unfortunately when a member of your family is a celebrity, it means that stuff that is normally kept quite is being once again drawn out into the light for all to see and examine.
In addition to pointing out that the handwritten will seems fishy just because of what it is: a handwritten page ripped out of a journal that was presumably meant to be kept private, she also claims in her legal filing that a “page has been removed” from the will, which at the very least means that it should be perceived as suspect.
5. What Paris St. John Wants
Before you get any notions that Paris is a scheming sibling eager to get all of the money for herself, that's not what she's asking for in the suit at all. In fact, what she wants seems totally reasonable when you consider that there was no legally binding will left behind and that her own grandfather seems intent on stirring the pot.
Paris wants the court to transfer control of the late Kristoff's estate to a "neutral third party." She says in her filing that she believes this is exactly what her father would want given the circumstances that they all find themselves in. It's hard to find fault with that kind of logic! And you thought your grandparents were bad, yeesh.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cats, Batman and Margot. Her work focuses on relationships, pop culture and news. For more of her work, check out her Tumblr.