BELLEFONTE
The last will and testament is supposed to be the final word on a person's life, wealth and material assets. In almost all cases, after the required paperwork and court hearings, the document becomes a public record, on file at the local courthouse or county office for anyone to see.
Joe Paterno's will is, curiously, not among them.
In April, three months after the legendary former Penn State football coach's death from lung cancer at age 85, a Centre County judge ordered the will and all related court filings permanently sealed.
Even the judge's sealing order and the petition a Paterno attorney filed to request the order were sealed, erasing from the public record any explanation for the maneuver, which estate law experts and the Centre County register of wills called exceedingly rare.
"It's not common," the county's register of wills, Kimberly A. Barton, said.
In fact, Mr. Paterno's was the only last will and testament sealed in Centre County in the past 18 months, according to a Times-Shamrock newspapers review of the county's estate and orphan's court dockets.
Court officials on Friday could not determine which of the county's five judges ordered the Paterno will and case file sealed. A docket sheet for the case did not indicate the judge's name, either.
The county's president judge, Thomas K. Kistler, did not return telephone messages left Friday with his chambers and at his home.
The estate attorney who filed the petition to seal Mr. Paterno's will and all related court documents, Raymond P. Parker of Pittsburgh, did not return telephone and email messages.
Paterno family spokesman Dan McGinn returned an initial message Friday but did not respond to a subsequent call for comment.
Mr. Paterno died Jan. 22, less than three months after doctors diagnosed him with metastatic small-cell carcinoma, the most aggressive form of lung cancer.
His will entered probate - the legal process for validating the document - on April 5. Mr. Parker petitioned to keep the matter secret the same day and a judge ordered the record sealed four days later.
Jerry B. Chariton, a Wilkes-Barre attorney who has worked on estate law cases for four decades, called the decision, "very strange."
"Would there be reasons why any family would like to preserve confidentiality? Sure, but that would be true of lots of people," Mr. Chariton said. "I don't know what creates any special situation here."
Girard J. Mecadon, an attorney who has practiced estate law in Pittston for 21 years, said, "There has to be something highly sensitive" in the Paterno case file "for a judge to seal it."
He suggested several reasons a judge might have issued the order, including Mr. Paterno's role as a grand jury witness in the prosecution of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky on child sex-abuse charges and his family's concern over liability from Sandusky-related civil litigation.
Neither would warrant sealing the complete file, though, Mr. Chariton said.
"There's nothing there that would suggest that (the Paterno estate) is entitled to privacy," Mr. Chariton said. "Even if one assumes that Joe Paterno would have been an important witness in the pending criminal case involving Mr. Sandusky, it's hard to see why that would create a particular reason for privacy."
Mr. Paterno's fame alone would not warrant confidentiality, either.
In all but the most extreme cases, courts have treated the last wills and testaments of deceased celebrities as public records, no different from those of the fans who watch their movies and television shows and attend their concerts and football games.
A website, megadox.com, displays electronic copies of the wills of hundreds of stars, including the late singers Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston.
Judge Richard Hughes, head of the Orphan's Court in Luzerne County, said the public has the "general right of access" to court files, including last wills and testaments.
The sealing of records is within the "sound discretion of the judge," Judge Hughes said citing state law, but attorneys seeking confidentiality must show their client's privacy interest "outweighs the presumption of openness."
In the Paterno case, only a court docket sheet remained a public record. It offered limited details about the former coach's will, wealth and estate:
-âMr. Paterno completed his last will and testament in June 1997 and filed an amendment, known as a codicil, in February 2010.
-âHis widow, Sue, is the executrix.
-âThe estate paid a $200,000 inheritance tax on April 23. Depending on the applicable rate, the taxable portion of Mr. Paterno's estate at the time of the tax payment was worth between $1.35 million to $4.45 million.
Other details about Mr. Paterno's wealth, and that of his widow, came from Penn State and the state employees retirement system:
-âOn April 19, the university paid Mr. Paterno's estate more than $3 million in salary, television and radio revenue sharing, bonuses and death benefits. The university also said it would forgive $350,000 in unspecified outstanding loans and debt incurred by the Paternos.
-âOn May 22, the state retirement system revealed that Mr. Paterno had left Mrs. Paterno his $13.4 million in pension benefits. Mr. McGinn said at the time that she would give $1.5 million to charity, including $500,000 to the Susan Pohland Paterno Catholic Student Faith Center.
"Mrs. Paterno wanted to make sure all this information was out," Mr. McGinn said at the time, "to make it transparent."
Her husband seldom talked so explicitly about money.
For years, Mr. Paterno dodged questions about his salary, telling reporters, "I got all the money I need." State officials kept his privacy, repeatedly rebuffing media requests to reveal his compensation until late in his career.
In 2007, a court ordered the Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System to disclose Mr. Paterno's base salary of $512,664, saying it was a public record.
Mr. Paterno's last will and testament, in nearly all cases a public record, remains shrouded in secrecy by an unusual and unexplained court order.
"It's a public document because it's a public document," Mr. Chariton said. "All court filings are public documents except those related to juveniles. If that document is made non-public, and by that I mean not open for public inspection, someone must have given good reason to the court. But, if the petition isn't public, how can you tell if that reason is good or not?"
Contact the writer msisak@citizensvoice.com, @cvmikesisak on Twitter