In March 2017, Carmela Wallace took a photograph of her son Jarad Anthony Higgins holding a single $100 bill, the first money he had earned from a paid performance.
Wallace later shared the image on Instagram in May 2020, writing, “This was the first money Jarad made for performing. I told him we needed to capture the moment. The pic was taken March 2017 and the rest is history!”
Higgins, who performed as Juice WRLD, died on Dec. 8, 2019, at age 21 from an accidental overdose involving oxycodone and codeine after landing at Chicago’s Midway International Airport. Court documents filed the following year valued his probate estate at $3,278,867.49.
According to legal papers obtained by TMZ, the estate included a Miami condominium appraised at roughly $1.49 million, multiple bank accounts (one containing just over $1 million), and a collection of watches and jewelry valued at $459,318.75. Wallace, the rapper’s mother, petitioned the court to serve as representative of the estate. Higgins was not married and had no children. His father had died several months earlier.
Born Dec. 2, 1998, in the Chicago area, Higgins grew up primarily in the southern suburbs under the care of his mother after his parents divorced when he was young. Wallace raised him and his older brother as a single parent. She has described a close relationship with her son, noting that she left a job in quality management to support his music career once it gained momentum.
The March 2017 photo captures an early milestone. That same year Higgins released material on SoundCloud that would lead to his breakthrough. By 2018, tracks such as “Lucid Dreams” had propelled him into mainstream success under Grade A Productions and Interscope Records. His second studio album, Death Race for Love, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2019.
The $3.28 million probate figure did not account for all potential assets or future earnings. In the year after his death, the estate reportedly generated about $15 million from royalties, merchandise, and other income. Posthumous releases, including the album Legends Never Die, continued to perform strongly on the charts. Later deals involving stakes in his music rights have further shaped the financial picture of the catalog.
Wallace has remained the central figure managing her son’s estate and legacy. She established the Live Free 999 foundation focused on mental health awareness, a cause tied to struggles Higgins discussed in his music and that she has addressed publicly in the years since his death.
The 2017 photograph, once a private family record of a first paycheck, has circulated widely as a marker of how quickly Higgins’s career advanced from local performances to international streaming numbers and a multimillion-dollar estate by the time of his death at 21.
