Cher’s Conservatorship Bid Hits Jurisdictional Doubt as Son Appears from New Hampshire Hospital

A Los Angeles courtroom became the latest front in Cher’s long-running effort to impose financial guardrails on her son Thursday, as a judge openly questioned whether she even has jurisdiction over the case. Elijah Blue Allman, the 47-year-old son of Cher and the late Allman Brothers guitarist Gregg Allman, appeared via video from a locked psychiatric facility in New Hampshire—without an attorney and with no stated intention of returning to California.

The singer has pursued a conservatorship for years, arguing that her son’s “severe mental health and substance abuse issues” leave him unable to manage the roughly $10,000 a month he receives from his father’s estate. But Judge Jessica A. Uzcategui denied an emergency petition in April, and on Thursday she voiced jurisdictional doubts: Allman told a court investigator he won’t return to California once released, and he could remain in New Hampshire facilities for a year and a half or more. “It doesn’t appear to me that Mr. Allman will be back in California for quite some time, if ever,” she said.

Cher’s attorney pushed back, calling the stated preference a tactic by someone currently incarcerated in a mental institution who “does not have capacity.” The judge ordered a legal brief on the venue question by mid-July and postponed the substantive hearing to September 1, warning Allman he must have a lawyer then.

Allman’s presence in New Hampshire stems from a series of arrests earlier this year, including a February incident at a prep school where he allegedly trespassed, threatened staff, and poked a student with a cane. The tangled criminal and civil proceedings leave Cher’s bid for control of her son’s finances in a procedural limbo, contingent on a court first deciding whether Los Angeles can hear it at all.