Ondo Finance founder Nathan Allman died suddenly in May at age 32 without a will, opening a legal fight over an estate that includes controlling shares in Ondo Finance and a large amount of ONDO tokens. What began as a dispute over company control in Delaware has now expanded into a family battle in Hawaii.
Control dispute moved from the company to the family
Under the information described in the court filings, Nathan Allman’s legal heirs are his parents, Kathleen Allman and Lawrence Allman. After his death, Ian De Bode took over operations. Kathleen Allman then placed herself and another child, Tahnee Towill, on the board, named herself chair and interim CEO, and tried to remove De Bode from all positions.
A court ruling on Sept. 3 left De Bode in place as acting CEO and as a director.
According to court documents obtained by CoinDesk, Kathleen Allman later sued De Bode, accusing him of an open power grab and alleging that he began designing a compensation package worth about $11 million within a week of her son’s death.
$11 million compensation package at the center of the Delaware case
In Kathleen Allman’s complaint, the proposed package for De Bode included:
- $900,000 in annual salary and bonus
- A $1 million signing bonus
- 26 million restricted token units valued at more than $9 million
- 846,000 new shares
If approved, De Bode’s ownership stake would rise from 0.33% to 8%, a roughly 24-fold increase. The vesting start date was set at May 25, the day after Nathan Allman died.
The estate’s filing included a line that said: 「Even the writers of Game of Thrones could not have written Ian’s power-grab script.」
The Delaware court is now focused on whether De Bode’s compensation package is valid and whether his board seat stands. Kathleen Allman is asking the court to void the compensation arrangements, invalidate the board appointments of De Bode and early investor David Chen, and award damages for alleged breaches of fiduciary duty.
Hawaii petition seeks limited conservatorship
A separate case is underway in Hawaii. Nathan Allman’s half-sister, Duke University medical professor Dr. Lani Clinton, and Ondo investor David Chen jointly petitioned for a limited conservatorship aimed at protecting Kathleen Allman’s share of the estate.
In court filings, Dr. Clinton alleged that her mother had a long history of alcohol abuse and that her executive function, judgment, insight, and social cognition had continued to decline, leaving her unable to manage property and business matters of this scale.
Clinton also asked the court to obtain Kathleen Allman’s medical records and assess whether she has dementia. She said a series of behaviors in recent years was consistent with the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia.
Kathleen Allman’s lawyer denied all of the allegations in a statement, calling them baseless. The lawyer said: 「The Hawaii petition is a desperate follow-up by associates of De Bode after his power-grab and unjust-enrichment efforts were rejected in Delaware Chancery Court. We believe this effort will fail as well. Kathleen has prioritized sound corporate governance from the start and will continue to support Ondo’s long-term success while defending her son Nate Allman’s vision and values.」
Filings describe family rupture and spending disputes
The court documents also described deeper family conflict. Dr. Clinton said she had been estranged from her mother since 2022 after a family trip. According to the filing, Kathleen Allman told Clinton’s three children, then ages 10, 6, and 2: 「You have no value. I should have aborted all of you. If you drown at the beach this time, that would be your good luck.」
The filings also said Kathleen Allman’s lifestyle had outgrown what she could support financially. In June 2025, Nathan Allman bought his parents an oceanfront home in Honolulu for $18.5 million.
Lawyers for Clinton and Chen wrote that, despite Kathleen Allman’s substantial income, she had a history of financial distress, including an instance in which she could not make even one month’s mortgage payment and had to borrow money from her own mother.
Before Nathan Allman died, Kathleen Allman allegedly bought or tried to buy a Zeelander yacht in Florida priced at about $4 million, traveled by private jet, asked Ondo Finance to cover six-figure airfare from Hawaii to California, and stayed in accommodations costing about $4,000 a night.
On the ninth day after Nathan Allman’s death, Kathleen Allman texted David Chen: 「Hi, I’m very confident everything will slowly get sorted out. But my first priority is cash flow, liquidity! As fast as possible. I have a $200,000 invoice from the Newport pool construction team to pay. I really want that boat, and so on.」
Governance questions now sit at the center of the dispute
Ondo Finance is one of the better-known players in the real-world asset, or RWA, sector, focused on bringing traditional financial assets such as U.S. Treasuries and tokenized stocks on-chain. The founder’s death, the inheritance fight, the boardroom dispute, and the conservatorship petition have put the company’s governance structure under close scrutiny.
Based on the filings now in view, the main issues before the courts are De Bode’s proposed $11 million compensation package, the validity of board appointments, and whether Kathleen Allman is capable of managing her share of the estate.