Klitschko Asks a Court to Guard Kaya’s Inheritance

Wladimir Klitschko asked a Los Angeles probate court on Sept. 24 to make him temporary guardian of 11-year-old Kaya’s estate after Hayden Panettiere died without a will. The six-page filing in Los Angeles County Superior Court says he needs that title so he can open probate, name an administrator, and hold whatever Kaya is due.

Klitschko, 50, has had full custody since 2018, and Kaya lives with him in Ukraine. The papers seek a separate power: standing over California assets that, 39 days after the actress’s death, still have no personal representative.

Klitschko Wants Standing to Open Probate

Panettiere, a U.S. citizen and California resident, died on Aug. 16, 2026, in Greenville, South Carolina, at 36. The petition states she died intestate, leaving Kaya as the sole heir of the probate estate. Kaya is a U.S. citizen living abroad, so her father cannot simply walk into a California file room and collect what she is owed.

The temporary ask is the bridge. With it, Klitschko says he “may receive, manage and hold, on Kaya’s behalf, the assets to which Kaya is entitled from Hayden’s probate.” He also wants the right to nominate an administrator. A later petition seeks to keep him in the estate-guardian role on a lasting basis. A hearing is set for Dec. 7.

The filing fee to start a guardianship of the estate in California is $450. That is a money case, not a parenting case. State courts already treat the two jobs as distinct: one adult can raise a child while another, or the same person under a second order, is told to manage the child’s money or property after a parent dies.

It is urgent and essential that Wladimir be immediately appointed temporary guardian of Kaya’s estate, to afford Wladimir the necessary standing to file Hayden’s probate petition, and the power to nominate a proposed administrator of Hayden’s Estate.

Wladimir Klitschko, petition filed Sept. 24, Los Angeles County Superior Court

Without that appointment, the papers warn, “there is a high probability that property belonging to Hayden’s Estate may be lost, damaged or dissipated before a duly appointed personal representative can be in place to protect it.” Celebrity Net Worth has put her fortune near $6 million; that figure is a net-worth estimate, and the court papers do not value the estate.

Jewelry, Emails and a House With New Locks

The urgency argument is not abstract. Klitschko says he “is informed and believes that non-family members previously connected to Hayden have accessed and destroyed Hayden’s emails.” He also says jewelry and other personal property “have disappeared or remain unaccounted for,” and that some items sit with law enforcement while the death investigation continues.

Federal agents, the petition says, entered her Los Angeles home after she died and removed estate property. Nobody is authorized to take those pieces back once investigators are done, or even to speak for the estate in that process. That is the hole the temporary order is meant to fill.

WHAT WE KNOW

• No will: The petition states Panettiere died intestate on Aug. 16, 2026, and names Kaya as the sole probate heir.
• No administrator: The papers say there is still no personal representative who can recover seized items or talk to investigators for the estate.
• Security already moved: Before her death, Panettiere and Klitschko hired a security service after an unnamed person gained unauthorized access; after she died, locks were changed and storage units of stage clothes were relocated.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The unnamed visitor: The filing does not identify the person who allegedly entered the house, and it does not charge anyone with theft.
• What left with agents: The petition does not inventory what federal officers removed from the Los Angeles residence.
• The dollar value: No official appraisal of the probate estate is in the papers.

Even with new locks, the filing expects the same person “will continue to try and misappropriate property belonging to Hayden’s Estate.” High publicity, it says, is itself a reason to put a personal representative in place at once.

California Law Sends the Estate to Kaya

Panettiere was unmarried. Under California intestacy, when there is no surviving spouse, the entire intestate estate passes to her issue. Kaya is that issue. Parents and siblings take nothing while a child is alive.

WHO INHERITS IF THERE IS NO WILL

That order is why a fight over stud earrings already looked backwards. After the autopsy in Greenville, deputies logged the earrings Panettiere was wearing, sealed them, and then heard from both of her parents, Lesley Vogel and Skip Panettiere, who did not agree on whether the jewelry should go to North Carolina or California. The coroner held the pieces. Children take first under intestacy, so those earrings, like the Los Angeles house and any residuals that pass through probate, belong in Kaya’s column, not her grandparents’.

Residuals from Heroes, Nashville and the Scream films, plus book royalties, may sit in that same pile if they were not already in a trust. The petition does not map those streams. It only asks for someone with the legal right to find them.

The Heir Lives in Ukraine, the Assets Sit in California

Kaya was born in December 2014. She is 11. The petition is careful on geography: she is not a California resident, yet the Los Angeles court still has a hook because she is entitled to the assets that will go through Hayden’s California probate. That sentence is the whole case in one line. The child is abroad. The property is here. The father needs a local title to touch it.

People close to Panettiere’s family have said they support the request and have called Klitschko a devoted father, treating the paperwork as a formality required because he lives outside the United States. The petition itself is blunter. It says the delay “directly and adversely affects Kaya.”

He is also asking the court to help keep the Los Angeles property in the estate once investigators finish with it. A house with no owner of record, in a death that drew federal agents, is an easy target even after the locks change.

Full Custody in 2018 Did Not Cover the Fortune

They met in 2009, when she was 19 and he was 32, got engaged in October 2013, and had Kaya the next December while she was working on Nashville. The relationship ended for good in 2018. That year she signed full custody to him during postpartum depression and addiction, and he moved their toddler to Ukraine. She later called that choice the hardest thing she could do.

In May she said they were still “very close” and “still best friends,” and that few people knew her as well as he did. A deputy coroner, speaking with her father after the death, was told she had planned to spend her birthday in Greenville and then go to Ukraine to see Kaya. She died five days before that birthday.

FROM CUSTODY TO THE ESTATE FILE

1. December 2014: Kaya is born during Panettiere’s run on Nashville.
2. 2018: Panettiere signs full custody to Klitschko; he raises Kaya in Ukraine.
3. May 2026: Panettiere says she and Klitschko remain close and still love each other.
4. August 16, 2026: She is found unresponsive at Judson Mill Lofts in Greenville; a 911 call comes in at about 1:51 p.m.
5. August 18, 2026: Klitschko writes that she “left this world far too soon” and vows to speak of her with respect to Kaya.
6. September 22, 2026: The Greenville County Coroner’s Office rules the death an accident from the toxic effects of fentanyl, 4-ANPP, Alprazolam, Methocarbamol and Quetiapine.
7. September 24, 2026: Klitschko files the temporary estate-guardian petition in Los Angeles.
8. December 7, 2026: A judge is scheduled to hear the guardianship request.

Custody solved who raised the child. It did not name who could inventory a California closet, call a federal agent, or cash a residual check written to a dead woman with no will.

Who Can Touch the Property Before Probate?

Until a personal representative is seated, the people with actual hands on Panettiere’s things are not the heir. They are investigators, a coroner, a security crew, and, if the petition is right, at least one outsider who already got in. Brian Hickerson, her on-and-off boyfriend, and his brother Zach were at the Greenville apartment when she was pronounced dead. Hickerson has not been accused in her death. The petition does not name him as the person who entered the Los Angeles house.

HANDS ON THE PROPERTY NOW

• Federal agents: The petition says they entered the Los Angeles residence and removed estate property as part of the death investigation.
• Greenville authorities: Stud earrings taken at autopsy were logged and held after her parents could not agree on a mailing address.
• The security service: It changed locks and moved designer clothes and accessories worn to public appearances.
• An unnamed individual: The papers say this person gained unauthorized access before she died and is expected to try again.
• Non-family contacts: Klitschko says he has been told they accessed and destroyed her emails.

Investigators have also been examining whether the fentanyl came from Southern California or from South Carolina. The Greenville Police Department said in late September that the criminal file remained open even after the coroner closed the manner of death as an accident. Counterfeit blue pills that tested for fentanyl, a cut straw, and white powder in a sunglasses case were found in the rental. Those facts belong to the death case. They also explain why estate property is in evidence rooms instead of in a child’s account.

A Judge Will Hear the Petition on Dec. 7

The process of naming a lasting guardian of Kaya’s estate, the papers say, will take several weeks. That is why the temporary order is written as an emergency. Dec. 7 is the date on the calendar. Until a judge signs, the estate still has no one who can demand the return of seized items or put a name on a storage unit.

To our daughter Kaya, I will always speak of her mother with respect and make sure she remembers the person she was.

Wladimir Klitschko, statement posted Aug. 18, 2026

He wrote that two days after she died, calling her an important part of his life and the mother of their daughter. The Sept. 24 petition is the legal sequel to that promise: a request that California give him the narrow title required to keep her things from drifting while an 11-year-old waits in Ukraine.