A lawyer for Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin said on Wednesday that a legal fight over whether Aldrin is competent to manage his affairs is over.
Attorney Keith Durkin said Wednesday that two of Aldrin’s adult children have withdrawn their petition seeking guardianship of Aldrin’s affairs, and the former astronaut, the second person to walk on the moon, has dropped his civil lawsuit against his children and former manager. Aldrin had accused them of financial shenanigans and slandering him.
Durkin did not offer any further details.
Aldrin sued two of his children and a business partner last summer for elder exploitation and fraud while accusing them of “slander” for suggesting he had dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Aldrin, a fan of human exploration of Mars, claimed that his son Andrew and daughter Janice, who oversee a private company and a non-profit in Aldrin’s name, have been using his legacy along with company funds “for their own self-dealing and enrichment”. According to the suit filed in Florida, Andrew has pilfered nearly half a million dollars from his father’s personal account in the last two years.
Aldrin’s adult children deny the allegations and in a statement said they were “deeply disappointed and saddened”.
On Wednesday, the 89-year-old Aldrin said in a statement that the end of the legal fighting will help restore family harmony. In a separate statement, Andrew and Janice asked for privacy in allowing the family to work through their issues.
Previously, Aldrin’s children had applied for co-guardianship over their father on the basis that he is in “cognitive decline”.
“Nobody is going to come close to thinking I should be under a guardianship,” Aldrin said in an interview at the time, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The suit also accused Aldrin’s children of forbidding him to remarry and of having “undermined, bullied and defamed” all of Aldrin’s personal romantic relationships.
Also named in the suit was Christina Korp, who, like Aldrin’s children is an administrator in both the Aldrin organizations: the Buzz Aldrin Space Foundation and Buzz Aldrin Enterprises.
