Coleman's ex-wife wants to run the show

SALT LAKE CITY (AP):The ex-wife of Gary Coleman filed a petition on Thursday in a Utah court to be appointed as the special administrator of the former child actor's estate.

The petition filed in 4th District Court in Provo said even though Coleman and Shannon Price were divorced in August 2008, she was still his common-law wife and that she should be the one to make funeral arrangements. It wasn't publicly known that the two were divorced until after his death. The divorce papers were sealed in Utah courts.

Price referred to Coleman as her husband when she called 911 on May 26, saying the actor had fallen and was bleeding severely from the back of his head.

Coleman died on May 28 after suffering a brain haemorrhage and his last-known will names friend and former manager Dion Mial as his estate's executor.

Coleman said in the 1999 will that he wanted to be remembered in a wake conducted by people who had no financial ties to the star of the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. However, documents filed by Price's attorneys say they have an unsigned will drawn up in 2005 that names Price as the conservator of his estate.

Among the exhibits attached to Price's affidavit is a 2007 handwritten note with Coleman's signature that's intended to amend any earlier wills and name Price as the sole heir of his earnings, home, toy trains and other property.

"I made this change of free will and was not coerced in any way," says the note dated September 4, 2007, less than a month after Coleman and Price married. "This I have done because of my personal selfishness and my weakness and I love her with all my heart."

Coleman met Price in 2005 on the set of the movie Church Ball.