ATLANTA — James Brown's lawyer said Tuesday that the late singer and his partner were not legally married and that she was locked out of his South Carolina home for estate legal reasons.
"It's not a reflection on her as an individual," lawyer Buddy Dallas said in an interview. "I have not even been in the house, nor will I until appropriate protocol is followed."
Brown's partner, backup singer Tomi Rae Hynie, was already married to a Texas man in 2001 when she married Brown, thus making her marriage to Brown null, Dallas said. He said Hynie later annulled the previous marriage, but she and Brown never remarried.
On Monday, after the 73-year-old "Godfather of Soul" died at an Atlanta hospital, Hynie, 36, found the gates to Brown's Beech Island, S.C., home padlocked and said she was denied access.
