When Anne Heche died in 2022, after inexplicably crashing her car into a house in Los Angeles, she didn’t just leave behind stunned and grieving family and friends, the troubled actor left behind debts and a legal mess that her young son is still trying to sort out.
More than two years later, the son, Homer Laffoon, 23, has given an update to the court, and it shows that what remains of his late mother’s estate will never come close to reaching the $4.1 million in outstanding legal claims, Us Weekly reported.
The bulk of those claims — some $2 million each — come from, respectively, a woman renting the home and the owner of the property Heche crashed into on Aug. 5, 2022. The crash sparked a “towering” fire that surrounded Heche’s Mini Cooper and heavily damaged the home, according to the renter’s lawsuit. A comatose Heche, 53, died nearly a week later after being taken off life support.
Thus far, Laffoon, the oldest of Heche’s two sons, said he has found nearly $200,000 in total assets left behind by his mother, Us Weekly reported. That includes money in her bank account and in a corporation used for her business projects. There’s also residual income from her acting work and other personal property.
“Tangible personal property,” including Heche’s piano, has been moved into a storage facility, while a “well-respected company” has been hired to help facilitate the sale of those assets, Laffoon told the court, according to Us Weekly.
Laffoon, the general administrator of his mother’s estate, also agreed to a contract to re-release Heche’s memoir, “Call Me Anne,” in January 2023, but, unfortunately, “sales (were) not strong.”
“Based on the anticipated value of the combined inventories and appraisals and the filed creditors claims, the estate is insolvent,” Laffoon wrote in a court filing, Us Weekly reported.
Laffoon said he will still try to find other assets, including any royalty payments his mother was owed for acting. But the $200,000 found thus far would only cover the $149,000 claim from Heche’s ex-boyfriend, “The Punisher” star Thomas Jane, who said he loaned Heche that amount before her death.
Homer Laffoon is Heche’s oldest son from her marriage to Coleman Laffoon, which lasted from 2001 to 2007. Heche also had a son, Atlas, now 16, with actor James Tupper, whom she dated from 2007 to 2018. After his mother died without a will, Homer Laffoon, then 20, successfully petitioned the court to be named administrator for her estate.
Heche suffered severe burns and other injuries on the morning of Aug. 5, 2022. She was behind the wheel of a Mini Cooper and reportedly driving erratically through the west Los Angeles neighborhood of Mar Vista before she crashed into the home.
After a fire broke out, Heche couldn’t immediately be freed from the wreckage. She was initially transported to UCLA Medical Center, and then to another hospital’s burn center, where she remained until being removed from life support, NBC News reported.
Her death was ruled an accident, and toxicology results released by the L.A. County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner found that she was not impaired by drugs or alcohol at the time of her crash.
But the accidental nature of Heche’s death didn’t stop the renter and the owner of the house she crashed into from filing lawsuits to recoup their losses.
In her lawsuit, renter Lynne Mishele said the “violent impact” of the crash left her “terrified, severely traumatized, and without a place to live,” NBC News reported. She also said she lost “irreplaceable tokens and mementos from her deceased parents.”
The troubling details of Heche’s death was upsetting to many of her Hollywood colleagues. A number of them paid tribute to the film, TV and stage actor, who was considered one of the finest of her generation but who didn’t seem to get the opportunities she deserved.
Producer James Gunn said that Heche’s Broadway performance in the play, “Proof,” was among the “best acting” he had ever seen, while Alec Baldwin, who co-starred with Heche several times, said she was a “brave” an “amazingly talented” actor, Us Weekly also reported.