The estate of Liam Payne, the late One Direction singer who died after falling from a Buenos Aires hotel balcony in 2024, will pass entirely to his son, according to court documents released this week.
Payne, who made millions at a young age while performing with the highly successful boy band, died in October 2024 without a will. Because he left no instructions for the handling of his estate, the total — recently listed at $28.9 million in the latest administration letters, reflecting the settlement of further debts and costs — is being administered under British intestacy rules.
Last May, the singer’s former partner, Cheryl, was named in court documents as administrator of his estate alongside lawyer Richard Mark Bray. Payne and Cheryl shared a son, Bear, who was 8 years old at the time of his father’s death.
Court documents obtained via the British government’s probate search website show that the total value of the One Direction star’s UK estate was $38 million with the net worth falling to around $32.2 million. Under UK law, the property of a person who dies intestate passes to his or her legal spouse, or, if unmarried, to his or her next of kin – in Pyne’s case, Bear Gray Pyne.
The BBC reported that the administrators “manage the funds, but their powers are currently limited and they cannot distribute them.” Bear is expected to receive part of the money soon, with the rest to be disbursed on his eighteenth birthday.
Cheryl (42 years old) issued a statement following Payne’s death, which occurred on October 16, 2024, when he fell from the balcony of the Casa Sur Hotel in the Palermo neighborhood while drunk. He had traveled to Argentina with his girlfriend to renew his visa and attend a concert by fellow One Direction alumni Niall Horan at the city’s Movistar Arena.
Payne fell to his death just after 5pm on Wednesday. His body was transported to the city’s judicial morgue, where an autopsy determined the cause of death to be multiple injuries with internal and external bleeding.
Two and a half months after Payne’s death, five individuals were charged in connection with the incident, including a man who claimed to be a close friend of the pop star and several employees at the Casa Sur hotel.
