Readers of this column have known for days that Michael Jackson wrote a will in 2002. Now I can tell you that he assigned guardianship of his three kids to his mother, Katherine Jackson. He gave his 80-year-old mother the responsibility of raising his two sons and daughter but made no mention of his father.

In fact, Jackson’s will does not mention his father, Joseph, at all. It divides his estate among the children and his mother only, sources say. His brothers and sisters are also not included as major beneficiaries.

The will is to be executed by attorney John Branca, as I first reported several days ago.

The news that Mrs. Jackson was named by Michael means that it was entirely unnecessary for her to go to court yesterday to get a judge to make her temporary legal guardian. Doing that, and jumping the gun, may have been a’costly mistake (see below item).

Jackson’did not name Debbie Rowe, his ex-wife and biological mother of his two eldest children. Nevertheless, Rowe can exercise her parental’rights and possibly overturn the will if she makes that’decision.

For Jackson’s brothers and father, their omission from his estate’the will was drawn in 2002’may come as something of a blow. None of the brothers ever attained the success of Michael as an adult. But as one observer pointed out to me, “The brothers have the opportunity to make money now, touring in Michael’s memory.” Good point.

The will’ should be officially available shortly, but if it stands as I’ve been told, many of Jackson’s friends are left out of it. Waiting to see if there are any bequests would be his long time aide Evvy Tavasci, friends like Miko Brando and Mark Lester, Macaulay Culkin, Elizabeth Taylor, the Dominic Cascio Family of New Jersey, ex and current manager Frank DiLeo, and a handful of loyal employees. Jackson’s trio of handlers from the 80s and 90s’Bob Jones, Bill Bray, and Lee Solters’all pre-deceased him.

Michael Jackson was spending $48,000 a month in prescriptions, according to my sources. The print-outs of the bills are said to’come in’eye-opening stacks.

The prescriptions were written mostly by his dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein of Beverly Hills. They were mostly filled at his local drug store, Mickey Fine Pharmacy, also of Beverly Hills.

The list of drugs, which was read to me in part, was staggering. Many of the prescriptions were not made out to Jackson but to aides, nurses, other people who worked for him, and, primarily, to a person called Omar Adams. I’ve learned from another source that “Omar Adams” was a name that Jackson made up for a fictitious alter ego.

None of this should come as a surprise. Back in July 2002, I published a story about Jackson’s monthly spending that rocked his world. Included in legal papers for a lawsuit filed against him by an ex-manager was Jackson’s monthly budget for the fall of 2001. The story can be found here.

At the time, Jackson owed Dr.Klein $25,000 and Mickey Fine Pharmacy $10,000. A few years later, the pharmacy sued Jackson for arrears on his account. They said they’d been making his skin-whitening cream and he wasn’t paying for it.

Sources say that the police have now in their possession many vials of various drugs prescribed by Dr. Klein. That should be good news for Jackson’s recent personal physician,’Dr. Conrad Murray, the doctor who was on the scene when Jackson died.

In a story yesterday I quoted a Jackson insider as saying, by the way, that they thought Dr. Murray was introduced to Jackson by his manager of 2008-2009, Tohme R. Tohme. However, Mr. Tohme’s friends insist that he not only didn’t introduce the two, but that he never even met Dr. Murray or had heard of him. So there.

Other doctors may be involved. Back in 2002, another doctor, a lupus specialist named Dr. Allan Metzger‘was owed $20,000. Jackson suffered from lupus, a chronic inflammatory disease,’although he denied it.

More to come, as they say.

Michael Jackson gave a deposition on July 25, 2007, that fully addressed his drug use. The testimony came about because of a lawsuit with former manager Dieter Wiesner.

This is what it looked like in the actual transcript, obtained exclusively by this reporter and written about in 2007. Here it is again:

Q Were you impaired by the taking of prescription medications or something else at the time you signed these two documents?
A I could have been.
Q Is that best of recollection, that you signed these while impaired, not knowing what they meant?
A I could maybe say so, but I’m not ‘ I don’t remember them.

It’s not like Jackson misunderstood the questioning, either. In the same line of examination, the attorney for Wiesner managed to get this in as well:

Q How long in 2003 were you impaired because of the taking of prescription medication?
A I don’t know.
Q Was it most of 2003?
A I’m not sure.
Q Did Dr. Farshchian prescribe that medication for you?
A No, it wasn’t Farshchian. I think it was a local.

And then there’s also this exchange:

Q As of March 31, 2003, were you still impaired because of the taking of prescription medication?
A I could have been.
Q During the period of time you were impaired by the taking of prescription medication, was this an impairment that lasted like all your waking hours, or did it come and go?
A It comes and goes, not all of the waking hours, of course not. Yes.
Q Now, during the period of time you were taking this medication when you weren’t impaired, did you ever tell one of your advisors that you were [concerned] about your impairment and they better watch what you were signing during this period of time?
A Not that I recall.

Dr. Alimorad Farshchian, of course, was Jackson’s doctor upon whom Jackson relied heavily in 2002-2003.

It was Dr. Farshchian ‘ founder in 2000 of the the Center for Regenerative Medicine ‘ who accompanied Jackson from Florida back to California in February 2003 with the Arvizo family.

The Arvizo’s eventually filed charges against him that consumed Jackson in a trial and took away a couple of years of his life.

Jackson’s vagueness about his business transactions didn’t go over so well, I was told. As usual, he claimed to have no memory of people or events that had already been documented or testified to in other cases.

After losing a multimillion-dollar case to another former partner, Marc Schaffel, Jackson was convinced by his attorneys to settle the Wiesner case instead of letting it go to trial.

For Jackson, the admission in sworn testimony that he was “impaired” thanks to too many prescription drugs was startling. It may play a part in the answer to how Jackson tragically died yesterday at age 50.

Debbie Rowe, mother of Michael Jackson’s two eldest children, is holed up at her ranch a couple of hours away from Los Angeles. She can’t leave because paparazzi have been staking out her house since Thursday. It doesn’t matter. She is, as I told you on Thursday’and then lifted from here by TMZ’”inconsolable.”

She told me during a brief conversation today: “I lost my best friend.”

Rowe was married to Jackson when she had Prince Michael I and Paris Katherine. But it was always understood that they’d part. Now, she is in tears missing her friend.

So far, Rowe has’not addressed the issue of the kids or custody despite frantic reports. She wouldn’t do that, she says. “Michael hasn’t even been buried,” she says.’Rowe has always had an excellent relationship with Michael’s mother, Katherine’Jackson,’and looks forward to talking to her soon, and possibly even seeing the children when the time is right.

For right now, though, she’s turned off her phones and Internet, and is trying to observe a period of mourning. How utterly sensible!

One thing I didn’t bring up with Rowe, but shouldn’t be forgotten: her friendship with Michael was the thing that saved him at his child molestation trial in 2005.’ Rowe testified for him in court, clearing up for the jury all misconceptions about the pop icon. Her testimony is generally thought to have been the deciding factor in the jury’s deliberations, and kept Jackson out of jail.

Michael Jackson’s beloved 80-year-old mother,’Katherine, made what could be a costly legal mistake’yesterday in a Los Angeles court.

Katherine Jackson got temporary custody’of Michael’s three children (you’ll notice she filed alone and not with her husband of 60 years).

She also filed a claim on Michael’s estate, saying he died intestate, or without a will. But anyone who reads this column knew days ago that Michael had executed a will with attorney John Branca, and that it was waiting to be opened on Monday.

While Mrs. Jackson was in court, Branca was indeed studying the will. I am told it will be presented to the court and filed in the next day or so.

But wait: if Mrs. Jackson gets her way, legal eagles assure me, and the court decides Michael had no will, then Mrs. J gets nothing. Michael’s direct heirs’his three kids’would be the sole beneficiaries.

Whoops!

As it turns out, accepting Michael’s will with Branca is better for Mrs. Jackson. Insiders say that Michael took excellent care of her along with the children. Together they are the primary beneficiaries.

There is no information yet whether Michael left anything to anyone else. But the thinking is that Janet Jackson has her own money, LaToya already received money from Michael and that he’s probably left his brothers to fend for themselves. As for Joseph Jackson, who witnesses say used to lock Michael in a closet as a child when his Jackson 5 rehearsals didn’t go well, you can bet there’s no provision for him.

Indeed, even Mrs. Jackson’s inheritance will be parcelled out, they say, so she gets money “as needed.” Her husband’who brought a Michael Jackson imitator to the BET Awards on Sunday night’will not be’ able to share in it particularly.

Meantime, burial arrangements and funeral services remain undecided for Michael, who died four days ago. There are said to be two different factions within the Jackson family, plenty of disagreement, and lots of tension overall. It’s too bad. You’d think the family would come together and resolve this issue quickly with dignity for Michael’s sake. The easiest solution: a mausoleum at Forest Lawn, where other mega-celebrities have found their final rest. Michael would be very much at home with the likes of Lucille Ball, Lou Rawls, and Liberace.

Will Michael Jackson’s last will and testament be honored by his relatives?

That’s the question right now as the Jackson family and Michael’s team try to figure out what exactly is going on and who is in charge.

As it stands now, Jackson has left a signed will with former attorney and partner John Branca. Branca was the lawyer who helped Jackson buy ATV Music Publishing in the 1980s, then merge with Sony Music Publishing in the early 90s. The result was like giving Jackson a billion-dollar bank account, which he leveraged over and over to accomodate his huge financial needs.

But the plot thickens: never one to shy away from trying to get a piece of his son’s action, Joseph Jackson has now gone on People.com complaining that the family is being kept in the dark about Michael’s will. Of course, Jackson knows that anything he says right now will just be picked up by the press, whether it’s accurate or not.

The fact is, the Jackson family, according to my sources, hasn’t even contacted anyone from Michael’s legal team. And Joseph Jackson‘who is said to have instigated a lawsuit against Michael by All Good Productions over the promise of a family concert in New Jersey’can’t be too happy that he’s not the executor of his son’s estate.

As I’ve noted before, Joseph Jackson called this reporter with concert promoter Leonard Rowe shortly after Michael’s AEG Live deal was completed.’ He told me he needed my help because they were going to “fix” what was wrong with the deal and take it over. I told him I didn’t think that was possible, and he hung up after several minutes of bickering.

Indeed, the only known existing will sits in a safe at attorney John Branca’s office in Century City. So far, Branca has been out of town. It may not be until Monday before he returns and offers the will for probate, sources say.

Branca, as I’ve noted before, is’Michael Jackson’s children’s best possible advocate at the moment, and the only assurance they have of not being ripped off in the long run.