Paris (left) and Prince Michael

Brian Oxman, the Jackson family’s longtime lawyer, revealed that Michael’s Jackson’s three children will most likely be placed in the care of his mother Katherine. “Probably Mrs. Jackson will take care of them, she loves them dearly,” Oxman said. Unfortunately the children were at the home when their father was taken away in an ambulance Thursday afternoon and witnessed the events that unfolded though they were not at UCLA Medical Center where Jackson was taken.  They are currently still in LA and with a nanny.

The death of Michael Jackson is likely to spark a massive legal battle over how much of his fortune, what is left of it, goes to his three children after the singer was pronounced dead aged 50 at a hospital in Los Angeles on Thursday. Although Jackson ranked alongside the Beatles and Elvis Presley in terms of his earnings, in recent years he had amassed massive debts of an estimated $60million. He had planned a series of comeback concerts at London’s 02, which would have cleared his debts.

Jackson is survived by Prince Michael, 12, and Paris, 11, and seven-year-old Prince Michael II, known as Blanket. Sources say that Jackson’s ex-wife, Debbie Rowe, is also expected to receive initial custody while long term arrangements are sorted. Prince Michael and Paris were the product of Jackson’s second marriage to Rowe, nurse, in 1996. After the couple divorced in 1999, Jackson took on sole responsibility for their children’s upbringing. His third child, Prince Michael II, was born to a mystery surrogate mother he never even met.

Jackson took an unusual approach to protecting his children from the media glare by covering their faces while in public. In 2002, Jackson caused a public outcry by dangling the baby, referred to as ‘Blanket,’ out of a third-floor hotel balcony in front of the worlds press. He later said he regretted the incident. Earlier this month, Jackson was photographed with his two older children in Los Angeles and the public was given a rare glimpse of their unmasked faces as they walked into a recording studio. Later, when they realized they were being watched, the children donned feathered pink and green masks.

Despite accusations that the fair-skinned boy and girl were not his biological children, Jackson always insisted they are biologically his. During his infamous 2003 interview with Martin Bashir, Jackson said: ‘I used a surrogate mother (for Blanket) and my own sperm cells. I had my own sperm cells in my other two children. They are all my children.’