A friend of the widow of actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner has started a fundraiser to help financially support Tenisha Warner.
Destiny Rael, who says she has been friends with Tenisha Warner for 19 years, wrote on the webpage, “I am organizing this campaign because I have witnessed, up close, the depth of Tenisha’s grief and the weight she has had to carry, and because I know she would never ask for this kind of support herself, so I am asking on her behalf.”
It was started on Aug. 11, US Weekly reported.
As of Thursday afternoon, Rael was asking for $40,000 in the donation-protected fundraiser, with more than $37,000 raised.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner died on July 20, 2025, when he drowned while on vacation in Costa Rica. “The Cosby Show” actor was 54 and left behind his wife and daughter, People magazine reported.
Tenisha Warner, according to Rael, not only suffered the loss of her husband, but once she returned to their home after his death, found that the house had been damaged by “unexpected flooding.”
Tenisha Warner has filed a lawsuit against her mother-in-law over her husband’s estate.
She said she tried to privately settle her husband’s “complicated estate and honor his last wishes.” Tenisha said he was working on a new estate plan to replace one he had made in 1996 that would have provided for her and their daughter, but it was not completed before his death.
“I have been struggling to care for our daughter as a single mom and now as her sole provider,” she said in a statement to People. “Legally, I had no choice but to take action to protect our rights before any potential statute of limitations expired.”
The lawsuit was filed in Georgia’s DeKalb County Superior Court and cited a premarital agreement signed in 2022 in which he agreed to obtain a $1 million life insurance policy with her as the sole beneficiary, something she said he did not do.
Tenisha Warner filed a second lawsuit in Los Angeles, Entertainment Weekly reported.
Pamela Warner, his mother, is the successor trustee of the Warner Family Trust, which her son started in 1996. Tenisha has asked for the trust to cover the premarital agreement, because she believes her husband’s estate “will be inadequate to satisfy” the costs, People reported. Pamela Warner also previously served as her son’s manager, according to US.
In addition to his role as Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” Malcolm-Jamal Warner also starred in “Malcolm & Eddie,” “The Resident” and “Reed Between the Lines,” Entertainment Weekly reported.
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