THE BATTLE HAS ALREADY STARTED OVER JAMES BROWN'S ESTATE

THE first blow in what promises to be a long and protracted fight over James Brown's estate was struck yesterday when his widow was locked out of the home she and the soul legend had shared for the past ten years amid claims the pair had never been legally married. Just hours after the singer's death, Tomi Rae Hynie returned to the house in Beech Island, South Carolina, to find that its wrought-iron gates had been padlocked shut. "They've been robbing from him all of his life and they'll do it in death," she said. Although she admitted she did not own the deeds to the home, she insisted she and the couple's five-year-old son, James Jr, had a legal right to continue living there. "This is my home," Ms Hynie said outside the gates of the house. "I don't have any money. I don't have anywhere to go." Brown and Ms Hynie were married in 2001. But the singer's lawyer, Buddy Dallas, said Ms Hynie was already married to another man, thereby making her marriage to Brown null and void. Mr Dallas said Ms Hynie later annulled the previous marriage, but never remarried Brown, as she was required to do to make their union legal. "It's not intended, and I hope not interpreted, to be an act of unkindness or an act of a lack of sympathy," Mr Dallas said. "Ms Hynie has a home a few blocks away from Mr Brown's home where she resides periodically when she is not with Mr Brown. She is not without housing or home." Brown died on Christmas Day of heart failure after being admitted to hospital with pneumonia. He was 73.

Widow Tomi Rae Hynie