ATLANTA - For years, they were the picture of solidarity: the four children of Martin Luther King Jr. carrying on the legacy of the civil rights icon.

But a lawsuit over how their father's estate is being run has left a rift in the famous family. And it may now be up to a judge to get the King children in the same room.

"Strong parents have strong children, and strong children have strong opinions, and that usually leads to conflicts that they have difficulty reconciling," said Andrew Young, the former congressman and Atlanta mayor who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement.

The lawsuit filed July 10 claims that Dexter King, administrator of his father's estate, has failed to provide his surviving siblings with essential documents, including financial records and contracts.

It claims that he and the estate "converted substantial funds from the estate's financial account ... for their own use" on June 20 without notifying his sister and brother. It is not about money, but instead is a last-resort effort to talk to Dexter King about the family's affairs, even if it's through a judge, Young said.

Bernice and Martin Luther King III both declined to be interviewed for this story but issued a statement Saturday through attorney Jock Smith.

"We love our brother, yet we cannot ignore our responsibility to ensure that the corporation we are all shareholders and directors of is properly managed," the statement said.

"Our right to obtain corporate documents that we have personally requested in the past few years, and more recently in the lawsuit that we have filed, have been continuously ignored," it added. "Duty obligates us to preserve and protect the corporation and the legacy from arbitrary, singular, and seemingly self-serving decision-making."

Dexter King did not respond to an interview request.

The split is difficult for all three siblings, said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, another King lieutenant and family friend.

In the year after the death of their mother, Coretta Scott King, in 2006, the eldest sibling, Yolanda, held the family together. Then she died in May 2007.

"They talk; they just don't communicate," Lowery said. Yolanda King often served as a bridge between the other three, he said. "That bridge is no longer there."