People Are Concerned About The Ethics Of The James Van Der Beek GoFundMe

After the 48-year-old actor died from colorectal cancer last week, a GoFundMe sprung up as a way to help James Van Der Beek’s wife and 6 children. James had been selling off his Dawson’s Creek memorabilia in the months before his death in order to get by financially. In addition to celebrities like Zoe Saldana, Steven Spielberg, and Derek Hough, regular non-wealthy people donated money to the family, afraid that grieving children would lose the home where they shared their last memories with their father. 

Over $2.5 million dollars has been raised for the family, allowing them to stay in the 5,149-square-foot home they’d been renting since 2020, and purchased just last month, for $4.76 million. The home is situated on 36 acres.

Van Der Beek said he did not receive residuals for Dawson’s Creek, “I was 20. It was a bad contract. I saw almost nothing from that.” Other actors confirm that residuals have shrunk for actors, especially those that don’t become A-listers. When Shannen Doherty died from breast cancer in 2024, she said she did not have insurance in 2015 when she was first diagnosed.

Van Der Beek may have had insurance through his union, Sag-Aftra, as he was able to take one small acting role in 2025, on Overcompensating. He would have had to make $28,090 from the two-episode role in order to qualify. Either way, we know he was paying at least his after insurance medical costs along with (very expensive) experimental treatments and dealing with the loss of income as he was unable to work more.

Of course, it is wonderful that the Van Der Beek family is financially provided for. The problem is that we wish every family in America had this same opportunity. Every year people are bankrupted by getting cancer or other medical conditions in this country and leave their grieving family with debt.

It’s awful that this happens to anyone and it’s awful that we can’t donate to everyone. Now that the GoFundMe’s initial goal of $1.5 million has been reached, perhaps it’s time for James’s widow to turn off the page and redirect the extra money towards cancer research or other struggling families who have been devastated by cancer.

What do you think?