Ondo Finance succession dispute deepens as family members clash in Hawaiian court

The governance crisis at Ondo Finance following the death of founder Nathan Allman has expanded into a multi-front legal conflict, with family members now suing one another as well as acting chief executive Ian De Bode. Allman died intestate at 32 in May, leaving a probate court to name his parents, Kathleen and Lawrence Allman, as his inheritors. The estate includes a controlling equity interest in Ondo Finance and a substantial holding of ONDO tokens, some already unlocked and others vesting over the next three years.

Kathleen Allman responded to Allman’s death by appointing herself chair and interim chief executive of Ondo, placing her daughter Tahnee Towill on the board alongside her, and moving to strip De Bode of all company roles. A September 3 court order kept De Bode in place as acting chief executive and a board member. Kathleen Allman then filed suit in Delaware alleging that De Bode had orchestrated a compensation package worth roughly $11 million, beginning the process within a week of her son’s death. The package, as described in her complaint, comprised a $900,000 annual salary and bonus, a $1 million signing bonus, and 26 million restricted token units valued at more than $9 million, along with share awards that would have expanded De Bode’s equity stake from 0.33% to approximately 8%, with vesting scheduled to begin the day after Allman died.

The dispute has now opened a second legal front in Hawaii. Dr. Lani Clinton, Allman’s half-sister and a professor of medicine at Duke University, together with Ondo investor David Chen, have petitioned a Hawaiian court to impose a limited conservatorship over Kathleen Allman’s share of the estate, citing alleged cognitive impairment and financial mismanagement. Kathleen Allman contests those characterisations and, in a September 16 filing, accused De Bode and Chen of coordinating the Hawaii petition as a flanking manoeuvre after failing to displace her in the Delaware proceedings, pointing to Chen’s funding of the petition, his shared legal counsel with De Bode, and his reliance on sealed Delaware materials. The Delaware court had already declined De Bode’s argument that Kathleen Allman and Tahnee Towill were unfit to serve as directors. When approached for comment, Ondo Finance indicated it would not respond to media enquiries, and De Bode did not return a call seeking his view.

For counterparties, token holders, and anyone with exposure to Ondo’s governance, the operative uncertainty is that effective control of a very large ONDO token position and a controlling equity interest remains genuinely unresolved across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. The courts have so far only maintained an interim status quo rather than settling the underlying question of who governs Ondo Finance, and the addition of competency proceedings in Hawaii introduces a further variable that could affect how and when the estate’s holdings are exercised.