As fodder for a James Brown song, it would be hard to beat the unfolding legal battle over the singer’s estate.

Sex and greed are players, as are missed opportunities and longing. At a recent court hearing, a judge asked to see the lead counsel in his chambers and 21 lawyers stood up. There are six children named in his will, and five are now challenging it. There’s also a disputed fourth wife—a onetime Janis Joplin impersonator—with another child she claims is Brown’s. Meanwhile, the three men Brown chose to oversee his trust are being sued for allegedly siphoning off nearly $14 million. And the lawyer he hired to put the will together is serving 30 years in a South Carolina prison for murdering a strip-club manager.

The only thing missing right now: something concrete to fight over.

Though Brown earned as much as $80 million a year during his heyday, he left behind few assets—the most valuable of which is potentially his reputation. But instead of marketing the singer’s name, Brown’s many would-be beneficiaries have spent the year and a half since his death locked in a drag-out fight. While Elvis Presley’s estate took in about $49 million last year and John Lennon’s about $44 million, the biggest deal going for Brown’s family is a Christie’s sale set for July 17—and the estimated proceeds from that, about $2 million, will go mostly to pay legal bills. There had been a contract with a toymaker to manufacture James Brown dolls, but the deal expired after a year. There was once talk of turning Brown’s former home, in Beech Island, South Carolina, into a Graceland-like attraction. But when the auction strips the house of Brown’s effects—the domed dryer in the hair salon, the 1974 Mercedes coupe in the garage, and the 42 jumpsuits in his closet—the place will be a shell that’s two and a half hours from the nearest major airport, in Atlanta.

How did the hardest-working man in show business leave behind so little to so many? Mostly because of a ridiculously complicated estate. In August 2000, Brown signed a will that left “personal and household effects” to his six children. He also created the I Feel Good trust to educate poor kids in South Carolina and Georgia. Around the same time, Brown married his fourth wife—in a union that was later contested—and his will was never altered to include her or the son she says she had with Brown. What’s more, he left behind multiple personal complications, from mistresses to a mounting number of grandchildren, each of whom could stake a claim on Brown’s potential fortune.