THE FINAL WORDS OF HULK HOGAN (BodySlam Briefs 9.16.25) w/ @DosEvil

What happens when a will runs wild? This week, we're joined by Dr. Jeff Lippman of Body Slam Briefs to unpack the legal chaos and family drama surrounding Hulk Hogan's final will.In this episode, we cover:

• The shocking details of Hogan’s beneficiaries and why his wife was left out.
• A legal look at the role of co-executors and what it means for the estate.
• The potential fallout for the Hogan family and what happens to them now.
• The business question of the hour: Who gets control of REAL AMERICAN BEER? 
• Did Hulk Hogan have other assets? 

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/wrestling-soup--1425249/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
She's a sound Scott. What is everybody? This is Dose
Evil or Evil Dose, the in house resident legal counsel
for the Wrestling Soup Network, and I'm here to talk
to you and provide another body slam breeves. What's going on?

(00:39):
So I guess I should say my real name, Jeff Lippman,
esquire I got. Actually, I actually found out ascertain there's
absolutely nothing wrong with calling myself doctor Jeff Lipman. That
actually went into it. Well, you mentioned that because there
were other networks where they called me that and I
would always correct them. You know, it's not that kind

(01:00):
of doctor. But apparently there's nothing wrong with it. It's
just custom and industry. So if you want to call
me doctor Jeff, call me doctor Jeff. That is not
what the subject of this body Slam Briefs is. However,
right off the get go, I want to thank Anthony,
Missionary Thomas and Joseph E. Noneless for allowing me this
platform to get to you, find folks, and to hopefully

(01:23):
spread a little bit of information, a little bit of knowledge,
maybe clarify some situations, maybe complicate them, but in a
way that informs so that you understand that there are
complications to things, and what do I want to talk
about today the estate of Hulk Hogan. So, for those

(01:44):
of you who follow me on X, I predicted that
there would be problems with the estate of Hulk Hogan,
and we don't know that there are or will be.
I'm still predicting that. I'm just predicting it because somebody
who's been a Carnie that's had a lot of people
McCarney stuff in there in there past and present with

(02:04):
business that you know, they may not take care of
things that well, or maybe not everyone can trust each other,
or you know, maybe some of these deals aren't so great.
We learned in the estate that the sole beneficiary of
k Cogan's will was his son Nick. His wife was
just listed as his surviving spouse. I think his son

(02:28):
Nick and his lawyer Terry McCoy are the co executors
and the handle the business aspects. Brooke, his daughter, asked herself,
asked to be removed from his will affirmably. In other words,
she herself asked, That's what I was trying to say earlier.

(02:50):
I think everybody knows all of this, and so I
think there was a lot of eyebrows raised a lot
of question marks when it came out as will A
didn't provide for a surviving spouse provided that Nick is
his sole heir and that his assets in the estate
were listed at five million dollars. I was surprised too.

(03:11):
I figured hul Cogan's worth a whole lot more than that,
you know. I you know, I was told that Real
American beer was doing well. It was skeptical about that,
but just based on merchandise sales and how pervasive he
has been and royalties and his image and likeness being

(03:31):
in video games, and let's face it, the Gawker suit,
which which you know, a lot of the money went
back to Peter Teel who financed it, and to the lawyers,
et cetera, but it was widely reported I think confirmed
that Hulk Hogan took got thirty one million dollars out
of that, and depending how that was structured, it was
probably mostly tax free, if not all tax free, because

(03:53):
it was probably pain and suffering, which is not flexible.
Anyone who's been in a car accident the knows I
need to pay for your pain and suffering. Maybe you
did for your lost wages, but not for your pain
and suffering anyway. So there's a whole myriad of possibilities
here as to why Hull Covin's estate is in air quotes.

(04:16):
Only five million dollars, I mean, and I air quote
that for a couple of reasons. One because I'm sure
most of us would our lives would be radically different.
We consider ourselves wealthy if we had five million dollars,
especially if we inherited it in bulk as I'll say
air quotes, because that's not necessarily everything that was involved

(04:37):
in his finances. So when we talk about a state,
we're talking about something that goes through probate, which is
a court as administration basically accounting, and a place to
air grievances in the court in the public forum of
any outstanding matters of the decedent. So if people have

(05:00):
lawsuits or claims against the deceited in this case, Terry
boleyahol Cogan, they could file claims against the estate, but
only to the extent that there is an a state.
So the estate right now be an estimated five million dollars, which,
by the way, you know, I'm not a Florid attorney.
I'm licensed in Maryland and DC and Maryland DC have
extremely similar processes for a state administration. So in the

(05:24):
beginning here you and by here I mean both Maryland
and d C. You do an inventory. You you well,
you do an estimate of the inventory of what the
assets in the estate will be. But you have ninety
days before you file a formal inventory which would list
all of the assets of the estate. It may go up,
it may go down, it may stay exactly the same,

(05:46):
So this may or may not be the last word
on things. In Maryland. You have to pay for a
surety bond DC also based on that amount to cover
claims and any inheritance taxes and the other expenses, and
also the good behavior of the executor. They have a
fiduciary duty. You have to put an ad in the

(06:09):
local paper for three weeks, which is the legal fiction
of giving the public notice so that any creditors or
interested parties can file claims against the estate. You have.
The creditors have six months from the date that ad
runs to file claims against the estate, and then no
earlier than three months after that, basically nine months from

(06:31):
the date the estate is opened that you can file
your administrative accounting to close the estate. To show all
the money was accounted for in every and any outstanding
matters we're dealt with. The first administrative counting for most
estates is the first and final. It doesn't have to be.
There might be a second administrative accounting, a third administrative accounting,

(06:52):
could BBSs litigation. The estate might be a plaintiff in
the litigation. There's talk of a malpractice medical malpractice case.
I don't really want to get it. I'm not going
to get into that today. Maybe another time you might
be a defendant. The estate might be a defendant in
a case maybe just maxed out as black card, if
there is such a max out, you know. So maybe

(07:15):
there's a claim for you know, two hundred and fifty
thousand for American Express and they want to get paid back.
Whatever case might be. It might be trying to sell
a house and it's just taking longer to find the
right buyer or a buyer all to get the price.
I mean anyway, any reason that can delay anything can
cause further administrative accountings, and they're generally done in three

(07:36):
month increments though. I mean with again, I'm talking from
Maryland DC and their exceptions here as well. Through motion practice.
I don't know Florida, but let's just assume it's similar enough,
and that's where we are with the estate. But the
whole point of that, other than to give a little
briefing on the probate process, is that not everything falls

(07:56):
within probate. So what are things that don't fall within probate?
And again, not a Florida attorney, but some of these
precepts are national to an extent, maybe international. So if
you own something with your spouse as tenants by the
entirety or as husband and wife once the once one
spouse dies, the other spouse is automatically the one hundred

(08:18):
percent owner that does not go through probate. It's non probate.
That could apply to land. That could apply to interest
in land like a timeshare or condo or co op.
That could apply to bank accounts, cars, boats, planes, and
anything that a husband and wife can jointly own together

(08:39):
that automatically goes to the other spouse automatically operational law.
You can also have joint tenants with radio survivorship, similar situation,
except it's for non spouses. So I could jointly own
something with rido survivorship for anyone. My best fround of
my worst enemy, my kids, whatever, it doesn't matter, same thing.

(09:02):
By operation of law, the survivor is now the one
hundred percent owner. Sort of think of like divisible assets
as what we normally call tenants in common. It's like
a slice of bread. You can you can cut it
up and divide it up, but joint tenants right as
survivorship or tenants by the entirety is like a glass
of water. You can put a knife through it as
many times as you want, but it's still the same

(09:24):
glass of water. There's forgetting about breaking the glass. We're
just talking about trying to divide water. You can't do it,
and don't get tricky and say we can freeze it
like ice. Now that's this is not physics. This is
this is just a colorful or visual analogy. In addition
to that, there's pay on death or transfer and death.

(09:44):
So most common example of that is life insurance. There's
usually a pay on death designee or designees. You know,
almost all qualified retirement accounts have that. But you can
do it with a regular bank account, checking savings account,
your brokerage account, pretty much anything. You can name a
transfern death pod. Again, outside probate goes straight to that beneficiary.

(10:08):
Life insurance, in fact, is a gift. It's not even
taxable if your state is over any state inheritance tax
or federal estate tax thresholds, which in Maryland there's a
five million dollar exemption per person. If you're married, it's
ten million dollars. Lineal ayers are generally exempt. The federal

(10:29):
estate tax exemption I think is like fifteen million dollars
per person, so you can double it to like thirty
million dollars. Those figures might be a little bit off,
but you get the point. So there's a lot of
non state property. Now this is not an exposition with
authority on taxes, but generally speaking, inheritance taxes are based

(10:51):
on what's in probate. Federal estate taxes can be based
on a whole lot of other stuff. We're not talking
about that here, So say few or whatever. There's other
ways of avoiding probate and state taxes or deferring that

(11:11):
as trusts. It is extremely likely that there were trusts involved.
In fact, trusts, which are very popular these days, were
basically originated well I don't know where they were originally,
but popularized in three states California, New York, and Florida.
People have been using trust in Florida as long as
I can remember. And I only know that because my
family has long ties to being snowbirds and moving to

(11:35):
Florida using trust. So this is going back thirty forty years,
you know, maybe even earlier. So if you create a trust,
generally speaking, it becomes irrevocable at certain point, or it
can be irrevocable right from day one, and that's outside

(11:56):
your state. Why am I telling you all this? Because
Hulkoke might have had tons of assets that were nonprobate.
They would not be accounted for in this. It might
not be that he was terrible with his money, or
that Real American Beer was a flop or you know,
or you know, he got fleeced by someone, but it
could be. I mean, we don't know. We don't know

(12:19):
what was going on. Now. The reason I expect litigation
other than what I said at the top, is that,
you know, I don't know what's going on with Real
American Beer. I don't know what else he was invested with,
the Real American Freestyle Wrestling, any other business ventures he had,
the stuff going on with Bubba the LUNs love Sponge,

(12:39):
and you know, if Brook is going to make some
sort of claim, if the wife is going to make
some claim, I don't know if any any of that
exists or not, or if he had. If they sign
releases here in Maryland, the only person you can't disinherit
is your surviving spouse. But they have to affirmatively make

(13:00):
a spousal election in the probate court to claim it.
So Sky may or may not do that. Sky may
have signed something waving her rights. There might have been
a prenuptial where she waived such rights. All of that
is legal. Also very likely is that he had some
asset or assets co owned with her and or where

(13:20):
she was the pay on death beneficiary that took care
of her. And the same might apply to Brook even
if she's out of the will. If he had an
IRA with you know whatever, seven million dollars in it,
where Brooke was the pay on death beneficiary, how money's
going to her now? She may put it all to
charity or whatever. She may keep it and say I

(13:40):
was out of the will, but that they may and
I was going to be a fool. But whatever the
case is, there's a lot of stuff there and we
may or may not ever find out about any of it.
How are we likely to find out about it? Someone
releases it, someone slips, But the most likely way would
be litigation or some sort of audit from a state
or federal body of the estate. I don't think the

(14:04):
ladder is likely. I don't think there's gonna be an
IRS audit for a host of reasons. But the litigation
may open some of these doors, you know, and litigation
you can ask for a whole lot of things, you know.
I've discussed that before. Almost anything is theoretically available for
information to find out if it is or isn't relevant.

(14:25):
So sometimes you're looking to see if a transfer was
made fraudulently. So usually if it was done after some
claim came up, or some dispute came up, or when
one was reasonably foreseeable, that can be argued as being
fraud You were trying to impoverish yourself or lessen the
amount that could be claimed. Most people probably hear about

(14:46):
this mostly in the medicaid. I feel like when your
grandma whatever goes into assisted living, and you know, folks
don't want to lose the house and they are looking
into you know, creating a trust or transferring the title
to you know, the adult children or whatever, you know,
but she's already in assisted living in medicates like uh
uh uh that house is still are is and you're like, no,

(15:09):
she transferred it to me, And they're like, well, that
was a fraudulent transfer to do that, and then there's
a whole thing about it. So that's you know, that's
just the most common example of the fraud look back.
In fact, the government has a longer period of time
to do it. Of course they have. They basically any
transferrept to five years that they're going to probably come
from the position that it was probably fraud. But so

(15:31):
that's why if you ever talked to attorneys about estate planning,
they're going to talk to you about five years as
being sort of a sank or sanct amount of time
for a trust even irrevtable to last to be completely
insulated from those types of claims. But usually three to
five years is the magic. Now, there's also a totality circumstances.

(15:55):
If the person was engaging in the state planning early on,
they were doing a gifting strategy. They did one trust
twelve years ago, the second trust seven years ago they
made you know, they started you know, you know, basically
a state planning was in the forefront of their mind
all around, and they did they did this transfer and

(16:15):
then they got sick and then went into you know,
you can sort of say, you know, maybe it was
within the three years or the five years, but clearly,
you know, my client was engaged in a state planning
and a strategy well before they knew they were going
to get sick, and you know, so it wasn't fraud.
It was It's just the timing wasn't ideal, you know,

(16:37):
by the government standards. But your honor, this is not fraud.
And if it's not for audit, it's covered. So anyway,
I know I said a lot there. I hope that
I explained why things might be more complicated then they appear,
how they might still get more complicated, there may be
more action and noise coming. But I also hope they

(17:00):
made it clear enough that you understand the whys and
that's really not all that complex necessarily, and that if
you hate whole Cogan maybe unfortunately he has a whole
lot more money than you think, but maybe he didn't,
because we don't know. If you love hull Cogun. You're
like him enough and you just you know he's deceased
and you just want his family to be okay, and

(17:21):
you're like, ugh, you know, he screwed his wife in financially,
maybe he didn't or maybe she accepted that. So there's
just so many factors in that. I don't feel need
to repeat anything more than I said, But as always,
if you have questions or you want to have a
follow up discussion about it, you can reach me at

(17:43):
Dose Underscore Evil on the X. My dms are generally open.
Just tell me who you are so I know you're
a real person, you know, don't start with high or
how you're doing. I'm immediately going to think that you're fake. There.
Follow me on Facebook. I generally will accept friends that
I recognize their names from Wrestling super or if we
have like six mutuals or whatever that's usually the case,

(18:04):
from you know, the Wrestling World or expanded podcast Friend
of the podcast World, or on Discord. I'm on Discord
a lot, so yeah, So if you have any quot
or if you don't feel like talking to me and
you want to funnel them through mister Joe, I mean,
I think they would prefer that you come straight to
me rather than using them as a messenger. But I'm

(18:26):
sure that's okay as well. I mean, as far as
I'm concerned. But I'm telling you just come straight to me.
It's no problem. In fact, I it's probably best to
come straight to me rather than they got their own
stuff to do. They don't need to be intermediary here
all right, Where else can you find me? Well, I've

(18:46):
got a family podcasts podcasts called Garden of Thought. I
really love if you would try them out. I would
really love if you subscribe to them. Even if you
don't like them, just download them, don't listen. But I
really think that that you'll like them. Maybe not every show,
but they are definitely shows in there for everyone. I
will say that if you like Joe Rogan or you

(19:08):
at least like the variety you know, certainly not the personality.
I think you'll like the variety I offer you. Plus,
I've got, you know, fun shows where I've had about
ten or eleven shows with where my cost was PJ. Black.
He was also a guest ones, as was Vincent from
The Righteous. You know, they're sort of people's minds right now.
Aaron Stevens. Damien Santra has been a guest on Gardener
Thought twice. He was the first book a guest on

(19:30):
Book of Black Garden. I'm sorry. Gospel of Thomas is
with mister Thomas from Major League Wrestling as the co
host and we've probably done like twenty shows together and
we've had a couple of guest co hosts or I
have in Vinnie Pacifico who was also a guest, and
Akiro Kwan, who's guest co hosted twice. He was also
a guest, so you know, cool stuff there. And we're

(19:53):
usually talking to people in wrestling, so everyone from Tyris
to probably indie wrestler who you haven't heard from, but
several that have gone on to bigger and better since
you know, I'm sure you've heard of Vicious, Vicky Venudo,
You've probably heard of Tiffany Nuevez, Big Trouble. Ben Bishop

(20:15):
was on. He's blowing up the internet as is well,
I'm not going to give up the farm, but he
has he created his own troll account basically and another,
so there you go. I've talked them off. Thanks very much,
appreciate your support. Check out the LFG show that I
do with Lafisto and Wrestling Soup and the Evolve review

(20:38):
show called Dose of Chocolate which me and why Chocolate Do.
We've had some guest co hosts there that's on the
Wrestling Soup and Friends feed where there's some Mossort or
the other shows as well. And also do an MLW
review show with Marie Shadows basically after their show airs
on YouTube, which i'd arned you all to watch because
it's free and it's cool video show usually within the week.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
All right, that's it. Yah bye.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
M