By Kelly Hassett
Lansing State Journal
What's next
A hearing will be Sept. 2 in Ingham County Probate Court.
A hearing next month might determine who will have guardianship over the children of Estelle Richardson, the former Lansing woman beaten to death in a Nashville, Tenn., jail.
Savion Richardson, 6, and Saviyance Beck, 14, are living in Lansing and in the middle of a legal squabble.
Attorneys Bart Durham of Nashville and Geoffrey Fieger of Michigan both want to represent Richardson's estate. Durham's firm has filed a $60 million civil rights lawsuit against the jail's operator.
Durham said he represents the proper guardians: Tyrone Gibson, Savion's uncle; and Jimmy T. Beck, Saviyance's father. Both want the children's aunt in Lansing to have guardianship, Durham said.
Fieger's client - Richardson's grandmother, Estella Buie of Lansing - has guardianship now.
"I want to keep the kids," Buie, 75, said Monday. "I raised their mother, and I wanted to try to go ahead and raise them, too."
The children are staying with the aunt, Nikeya Brown. Buie said Brown took them without permission; Durham's firm said the women worked out the arrangement.
A woman at Brown's home Monday asked not to be called and hung up.
Durham's firm contends Buie has been an unenthusiastic guardian and abused the children. Buie denied that, saying Richardson wanted her to be the children's guardian and that they had stayed with her until recently.
Richardson, 34, was jailed on charges of food stamp fraud and probation violation when she was killed July 5. Four corrections officers were put on leave. The case is still under review.