Maya Angelou wrote six friends into her will, reports The New York Daily News. According to papers filed in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court, the late poet, who passed away earlier this year, left six of her New York friends unspecified “personal tangible property through a trust she set up before her death at 86 earlier this year.
The friends include former ESSENCE editor-in-chief Susan L. Taylor and her husband, screenwriter Khephra Burns, Valerie Simpson of Ashford and Simpson, and producer and dancer George Faison.
“We were part of her extended family,” Taylor told The Daily News, adding that her family had spent a lot of time at Angelou’s Winston-Salem home, celebrating birthdays and Thanksgivings. “I miss her every day,” she added.
Angelou’s estate is valued between $10 million and $34 million and is being administered by her son, Guy Bailey Johnson.
It’s still unclear what Angelou left her friends. And none knew she had made them beneficiaries. “We just had Thanksgiving with the family, and Guy didn’t say anything about it,” Burns said.