Thomas Kinkade Estate, Girlfriend Probate Hearing Rescheduled for Dec. 24

A Dec. 3 Probate Court hearing between attorneys for the Thomas Kinkade estate and the late painter's girlfriend has been continued until Dec. 24.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cain, who in September ordered Amy-Pinto Walsh to pay a monthly rent of $11,000 to continue living in Kinkade's Monte Sereno mansion on Ridgecrest Drive, set the new status conference for 9 a.m. in Department 3, 191 No. First St. in San Jose.

Pinto-Walsh and the artist's estate, Windermere Holdings, LLC. and Nanette Kinkade as co-trustee of the Kinkade Family Trust, have been embroiled in legal proceedings since the Kinkade died the morning of April 6 at age 54 of an apparent lethal combination of Valium and alcohol.

The hearing will try to sort out who gets to keep personal property contained in the home, to which the Kinkade estate currently doesn't have access to. Judge Cain has asked both parties to submit a list of those items for possible removal.

Also unresolved still, and pending in Probate Court as well, is the validity of the painter's so-called holographic handwritten wills Pinto-Walsh alleges were written by Kinkade before he died and which give her the mansion, a studio next door, $10 million to run a museum that would showcase all his original artwork for the public, and all his artwork estimated at $60 million.

Judge Cain is also being asked to rule on Kinkade's wills or codicils, which the estate says he prepared over the course of several years, between 2000 and 2007, according to Daniel Casas, an attorney for the estate.

Please click here to read Los Gatos Patch's comprehensive coverage of the Thomas Kinkade case.