Buzz Aldrin Fights Family For Control of His Space Legacy

June 24, 2018 4:36 p.m. ET

Col. Aldrin is grounded in a legal fight with two of his adult children and a former business manager, who he says are trying to grab his legacy and money.

At issue are the operations of his private company, Buzz Aldrin Enterprises, and his nonprofit ShareSpace Foundation, overseen by his son and daughter, Andrew and Janice Aldrin.

Col. Aldrin said in an interview he was shocked last month when his two children asked a Florida state court to appoint them his co-guardians because he is “in cognitive decline” and experiencing paranoia and confusion. That would give them power to make decisions on his behalf, and give them control of his finances and business dealings.

They also requested that their father undergo a competency examination by three mental health specialists appointed by the court because, they say, he is associating with new people who appear to be manipulating him, according to documents they filed with the court. Col. Aldrin denies that.

He is scheduled to undergo the examination this Tuesday and Wednesday, he and his lawyers say.

In an interview last week, Col. Aldrin said: “Nobody is going to come close to thinking I should be under a guardianship.”

Col. Aldrin responded this month with a lawsuit, accusing Andrew Aldrin and his business manager of recent years, Christina Korp, of elder exploitation, unjust enrichment and of converting his property for themselves. The suit also accused his daughter Janice of conspiracy and breach of fiduciary duty.

In a statement through lawyers, Andrew Aldrin, 60 years old, and Janice Aldrin, 51, said they are “deeply disappointed and saddened by the unjustified lawsuit that has been brought against us individually and against the Foundation that we have built together as a family to carry on Dad’s legacy for generations to come. We love and respect our father very much and remain hopeful that we can rise above this situation and recover the strong relationship that built this foundation in the first place.”

Ms. Korp, 45, did not respond to an email seeking comment and could not be reached by telephone. In the Aldrin children’s request for a mental examination of their father, they mention Ms. Korp as a person with knowledge of his “cognitive decline.”

It isn’t uncommon for family members to disagree over how aging parents spend their money or handle their affairs, or for some spats to escalate to all-out legal combat. Rarely do such disputes involve a moonwalking American icon.

Col. Aldrin, in his lawsuit, accuses Andrew and Ms. Korp of improperly using his credit cards and bank accounts, and of transferring nearly a half million dollars in the past two years from his savings account to his private company andhis foundation for their own purposes.

They have also assumed control of Col. Aldrin’s “space memorabilia, space artifacts, social media accounts and all elements of the Buzz Aldrin brand,” according to the suit, filed in a Florida state court. It also alleges that Andrew Aldrin and Ms. Korp slandered Col. Aldrin by saying he has dementia.

Robert Bauer, a lawyer in Gainesville, FL who represents Col. Aldrin there and has talked with Andrew Aldrin, says “What Andy is doing is saying to Buzz, ‘you’re old, you’re not in your right mind anymore because you don’t agree with me’.”

In April, Col. Aldrin voluntarily submitted to a mental evaluation by Dr. James Spar, a professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral sciences at UCLA Medical School. Dr. Spar concluded that Col. Aldrin is “cognitively intact and retains all forms of decisional capacity,” according to the report, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Col. Aldrin, who grew up in Montclair, N.J., graduated third in his class at West Point and earned a PhD in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But he has never paid much attention to money matters, said his longtime lawyer and friend Robert Tourtelot.

“Buzz is a genius, he’s the smartest guy I ever met,” Mr. Tourtelot said. “But Buzz has never been street smart.”

His relationship with his kids has been a rocky ride, according to Mr. Tourtelot. There have been periodic estrangements, Mr. Tourtelot said. Col. Aldrin was rarely home when they were young. His eldest son, James Michael, is not involved in the legal dispute between his father and siblings.

Col. Aldrin said he has tried unsuccessfully to bring all the children together in recent years. “I intend to disengage as a repairman of family ruptures,” he said.

He divorced his children’s mother, Joan, in 1974, remarried and divorced two more times after that. Mr. Aldrin has spoken publicly about his bouts with depression and alcoholism after he returned from the moon. He said he’s been sober for nearly 40 years.

It was after his last divorce in 2013 that Ms. Korp gradually took over the business, according to Col. Aldrin and Mr Tourtelot. Hired as an executive secretary at the Aldrin operation around 2007, she is a director of the ShareSpace Foundation with Janice Aldrin. Andrew Aldrin is president.

An aspiring singer and songwriter, Ms. Korp had worked for radio personality John Tesh more than a decade ago, her LinkedIn profile says. In 2005, court records show, she filed for bankruptcy owing $22,500.

After working for Buzz Aldrin Enterprises, she set up Christina Korp Management in 2016 “to manage media and entertainment projects and interesting world changing personalities,” according to her LinkedIn page. “My motto is: I bring astronauts back down to Earth.”

In 2015, the Aldrin operation was newly incorporated with a board consisting of Col. Aldrin, Andrew Aldrin and Janice Aldrin. After a share transaction, Col. Aldrin lost control of the company, and had just one vote out of three, according to Mr. Tourtelot who has examined the transaction.

That year, the Florida Institute of Technology launched the Buzz Aldrin Space Institute. Col. Aldrin joined the university faculty as research professor of aeronautics and served as the institute’s senior faculty adviser.

Andrew wasn’t working at the time, Col. Aldrin said, and he asked him to assume the position of a graduate assistant the university had offered him.

In the interview, Col. Aldrin said his son “began to broadly interpret that and soon he became the director of the Institute.”

The Florida Institute did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

Meanwhile, Ms. Korp continued to oversee Buzz Aldrin Enterprises, planning annual fundraising galas for ShareSpace and managing the former astronaut’s

Twitter

and other social-media accounts, according to Col. Aldrin and Mr. Tourtelot.

She fired the agency sometime after 2013 that had been booking Mr. Aldrin’s speaking engagements and began making those arrangements herself, Mr. Tourtelot said. She received a 5% commission on any deals, he said, a set-up Col. Aldrin didn’t know about or authorize.

By 2016, Col. Aldrin said he increasingly grew frustrated that his foundation wasn’t moving in the direction he wanted. While it focused on educating elementary-school children about Mars through maps, he wanted to work more urgently on getting a permanent human settlement on the planet.

He said he also was booked for events he didn’t want to attend and encouraged to pursue endorsement deals he didn’t favor.

For instance, he “never quite saw why I should get involved with Faberge eggs and French perfume,” Col. Aldrin said. He rejected the suggestions, he said.

Annual reports indicate that his foundation hasn’t granted scholarships. Revenues are generated by annual galas and the sale of Mars maps and t-shirts, the reports shows; some, designed by Ms. Korp say “Get Your Ass to Mars”. In 2016, the most recent figures available, those sales generated $59,101.

Last year, Mr. Tourtelot said, Col. Aldrin expressed concerns that he didn’t know how much money he had.

In September, on his client’s behalf, Mr. Tourtelot demanded seven years of financial records of Buzz Aldrin Enterprises and the ShareSpace Foundation. After months of back and forth, he said he recently received documents from 2017.

They show Buzz Aldrin Enterprises paid the former astronaut a salary of $36,000 in 2017 and reimbursed him for expenses, according to Mr. Tourtelot and documents reviewed by the Journal. Andrew Aldrin and Ms. Korp, meanwhile, each received salaries of $153,000 from the company as well as reimbursements for expenses such as first-class air travel, according to Mr. Tourtelot and documents reviewed by the Journal.

Over the years, Mr. Tourtelot said, Ms. Korp has exerted control over Col. Aldrin.

At a birthday party for him at a Los Angeles restaurant a few years ago, Mr. Aldrin was speaking to the roughly 200 guests about his childhood, telling stories many had never heard. Mr. Tourtelot, who was there, said Ms. Korp strode to Mr. Aldrin and took the microphone away from him. “That’s enough, Buzz,” she said, according to Mr. Tourtelot.

In Oct. 2016, Col. Aldrin set up a new revocable trust with Andrew as trustee. In it, Andrew and Janice Aldrin are set to receive more than James Michael, their sibling. The trust, which was reviewed by the Journal, stipulates that no changes can be made to its terms without Andrew’s written permission.

The rift in the Aldrin family deepened later that year, after a trip to the South Pole with Col. Aldrin to generate revenues for the foundation. Several people paid to join him on the trip, which he said he was reluctant to take.

It required a long walk at over 9,000 feet above sea level from where the airplane landed near the Pole. Col. Aldrin tired and collapsed; medics said he appeared to have high-altitude pulmonary edema and had to be evacuated. He was flown to a New Zealand hospital to recover.

After that,

Col Aldrin

said, Andrew and Janice started limiting his activities. They have also told him he can no longer scuba dive, his favorite hobby, and have taken away his passport.

Recently, when Col. Aldrin fired Ms. Korp from his company, he said Andrew told him he did not have the authority to do so because the board set up had given Janice and Andrew control. Ms. Korp remains at the foundation.

—Jim Oberman contributed to this article.