*Some pearl-clothing tea has been spilled from the estate of James Brown…
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Godfather of Soul was married to a woman who was married to another man, who in turn was married to three other women. Now, a federal court has to decide who gets millions in song royalties.
The iconic musician was married at the time of his death to Tomi Rae Hynie and they had a child named James Brown II.Â
Earlier this year, nine children and grandchildren from Brown’s previous marriages filed a new lawsuit alleging dishonesty on the part of Hynie and the administrators running the estate, — valued as high as $100 million, the report states.Â
OTHER NEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: Martellus Bennett to Kanye West: ‘Don’t Drag Kaepernick Into Your Sh*thole’ [WATCH]
via THR:
This new case deals with progeny of a different sort — Brown’s copyrights — and has the potential to shift estate battles involving famous songwriters into a much bigger arena, a federal court, which typically has exclusive jurisdiction over copyright matters. At stake will be the balance of power for heirs of authors (perhaps irrespective of a songwriter’s express wishes) as well as future postmortem dealmaking and administration of the most famous songs in American history.
Hynie, a former Janis Joplin impersonator in Las Vegas, became a backup singer for Brown and eventually, in 2001, his fourth wife.
But she had a secret: At the time of the nuptials with Brown, Hynie was already married to another man, Javed Ahmed, and had been since 1997. Ahmed, in turn, had his own secret: When he married Hynie, he already was married to at least three other women in Pakistan. He told her about these wives after the ceremony and disappeared without consummating the marriage, according to Hynie. He was only interested in U.S. citizenship.
At age Hynie 49, got her marriage to Ahmed annulled in 2004, but by then her relationship with Brown was already on the rocks. That year, she and James got into a physical altercation and the singer was arrested for domestic assault, which led to a separation.
Months later…
Brown and Hynie informed a court of a settlement wherein she would waive any claim of a common law marriage. Hynie says she then reconciled with Brown and they lived together until his death. But Hynie wasn’t in Brown’s will, because he never updated it during their relationship. She petitioned to correct this upon his demise.
But all these marriages made for messy legalities and according to THR…
The issue of bigamy upon bigamy partially explains the longevity of the probate case, which has traveled up the appellate circuit, down again, and up once more as judges in South Carolina wrestled with the implication of marrying someone married to someone else married to yet others. In July, a South Carolina appeals court affirmed a decision that because the state doesn’t recognize bigamous marriage, Hynie and Ahmed were never really married. Therefore, Hynie “had no impediment to her valid marriage to Brown,” the court ruled.
Meanwhile, James II, who also wasn’t included in Brown’s will, had to prove himself legitimate after undergoing a DNA test — twice.
In a court brief on Sept. 11, a lawyer for the administrator of the James Brown Estate noted that several of Brown’s other children “have failed to submit to the probate DNA protocol.”
Nine heirs of James Brown — Deanna Brown-Thomas, Yamma Brown, Kenisha Brown, Michael D. Brown, Nicole C. Brown, Jeanette Bellinger, Sara Fegan, Ciara Pettit, and Cherquarius Williams — filed a complaint in California, that has since been moved to South Carolina federal court — accusing Hynie of having “embarked on a series of duplicitous business machinations calculated to deprive Brown’s children of their rightful interests in Brown’s music under the Copyright Act.”
To understand the basis of the lawsuit… read the full report here.
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
