Malcolm-Jamal Warner died tragically one year ago. Now his widow is suing his mother

Malcolm-Jamal Warner, pictured here in February 2020, died in a drowning accident in July 2025. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images for SCAD aTVfest 20 via CNN Newsource)

One year after the drowning death of Malcolm-Jamal Warner, his widow Tenisha Warner has filed a lawsuit against the actor’s mother, who oversees his trust, seeking more than US$1.2 million in what she says are owed funds.

The suit was filed Monday in DeKalb County Superior Court in Decatur, Georgia against Pamela Warner, who the legal paperwork names as “successor trustee of the Warner family trust.”

The beloved actor died on July 20, 2025, in a drowning accident while vacationing in Costa Rica. He was 54.

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.

The suit states that Warner, who came to fame playing Theodore Huxtable on the popular 1980s sitcom “The Cosby Show,” had “agreed to purchase and maintain a term life insurance policy on his life in the amount of $1,000,000.00” naming his wife as the beneficiary, but failed to do so.

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.

“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.

All the agreements and the financial terms are also reflected in the prenuptial agreement, which is attached to the lawsuit.

In a statement to CNN provided by her attorney on Tuesday, Tenisha Warner said that for the past year she “attempted to privately settle my beloved husband’s complicated estate and honour his last wishes,” that her husband “had every intention” to provide for her and their nine-year-old daughter and “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.”

“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,” she said in the statement. “Legally, I had no choice but to take action to protect our rights before any potential statute of limitations expired.”

CNN has reached out to Pamela Warner for comment.

The star kept his wife and child’s identity private while he was alive. In September 2025, Tenisha Warner posted a tribute to him on social media and announced that she and their young daughter were launching a company in honour of him.

“I can still hear my husband’s laugh, still feel the way he made room for every part of me — every tear, every dream,” she wrote at the time on a series of family photos.

The actor’s mother posted a lengthy note on his memorial Instagram account Monday to honour the one-year anniversary of his death. “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,” his mother, who early in Malcolm’s career also served as his manager, wrote. “How can I be here and my child is not?”

By Lisa Respers France, CNN