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Back in 2012, at the height of his NFL career, Aaron Hernandez was given a five-year, $40 million contract extension that included a $12.5 million signing bonus – the largest ever for a tight end. The $40 million extension was also the second most ever given to a tight end, only falling behind the $53 million his teammate Rob Gronkowski had received.
Unfortunately, Hernandez would play his last game in the NFL on January 20, 2013, putting an end to what could have been the greatest tight end tandem in NFL history.
Now, according to court records, as reported by the Boston Herald…
Hernandez did not leave a will and left an estate [his fiancee Shayanna] Jenkins Hernandez and [attorney George J.] Leontire said is worth “$0.00” with “no monies available and no identifiable personal assets.”
The Herald also reports…
An offer is on the table to buy Aaron Hernandez’s nearly $1.3 million mini-mansion in North Attleboro, with his fiancee given the power to close the deal by tomorrow because the ex-Patriot’s estate is down to zero, court records state.
After the house spent more than a year on the market, Shayanna Jenkins Hernandez’s attorney George J. Leontire filed an affidavit yesterday in Bristol Probate and Family Court stating, “I received an offer to purchase the former home of Mr. Aaron Hernandez.”
However, any proceeds from the sale of the house have already been attached in the wrongful-death lawsuit brought against Hernandez by the mother of murder victim Odin Lloyd.
However, according to a legal loophole in the state of Massachusetts, there is a small chance that the Patriots may have to pay his estate $6 million because of an archaic law that states if the person is dead then he is an innocent man, reports the Boston Globe.
In the eyes of the state of Massachusetts, the death of former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez could make him an innocent man, thanks to an archaic legal principle called “abatement ab initio,” said Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel to the Massachusetts Bar Association.
Though Hernandez was convicted in 2015 of murdering Odin L. Lloyd of Boston, Hernandez’s appeal was not complete. Abatement ab initio means “from the beginning,” Healy said, and it means that upon a person’s death, if they have not exhausted their legal appeals, their case reverts to its status at the beginning — it’s as if the trial and conviction never happened.
According to ProFootballTalk, the Patriots and the NFL are well aware of this odd situation…
The Patriots pin their case primarily on the notion that Hernandez allegedly committed two murders before signing the 2012 contract. Hernandez’s argument arises from the notion that he earned the payments, and that the Patriots cut him immediately after he was arrested for killing Odin Lloyd, instead of waiting for the league to suspend him.
Regardless of whether the Patriots end up having to pay or not, the wrongful death cases filed by the estates of Lloyd, Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado will more than likely result in none of that money ever seeing Hernandez’s family anyway.
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