A lawyer for Tomi Rae Hynie said Thursday night that the debate over whether his client was truly married to James Brown may be over in three weeks, when Brown's will is due to be probated.

W.A. Bridges/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)

"If James Brown left a will and left her what he should have left her, there won't be any litigation," said Robert Rosen, a Charleston, S.C., attorney who helped Hynie procure an annulment from her first marriage to Javed Ahmed. Hynie married Brown in 2001, while she was still married to Ahmed, Brown's lawyers have said.

When Hynie had that marriage annulled in 2004, Brown paid for the legal proceedings, Rosen said. But Brown did not have a second wedding ceremony with Hynie, and that's the heart of the issue.

Rosen believes that because the Hynie-Ahmed marriage was annulled, there was no reason for Hynie and Brown to go through another ceremony.

South Carolina law may disagree, however, and certainly Brown's lawyers do. Albert "Buddy" Dallas claims that Brown was "deeply hurt" by Hynie concealing her marital state from Brown and that Brown did not want to be married to her after that.

"How could he ever trust her?" Dallas said.

But Brown did remain in a relationship with Hynie, and those who were close to the Godfather of Soul claimed he still loved her.

South Carolina family law expert John McDougall of Columbia, S.C., said that even though Hynie's marriage to Ahmed was annulled, she and Brown would have had to have another marriage ceremony to be legally husband and wife.

Hynie could possibly legally claim that she was a common law wife, McDougall said. But if there were a court document or other evidence to show that Brown did not consider Hynie his wife, McDougall said, "she's got a tough row to hoe" to prove it.

"It depends on what evidence is out there," McDougall said.

Those documents could include court records, health insurance records, tax return records, church records and checking account documents, McDougall said. South Carolina is one of a handful of states, including Georgia, that still recognize common law marriages. For a couple to be considered married by common law, they need to hold themselves out as married, McDougall said.

That includes such things as filing an income tax return as a married couple, McDougall said, and listing themselves as married on insurance policies.

Meanwhile, Deanna Brown Thomas, one of Brown's daughters, refused on Larry King Live Thursday night to argue with claims that she and her siblings were unkind to Hynie during memorial services for Brown.

"I don't have any comments to that," said Thomas, a disc jockey at an Augusta radio station. "I'm here to talk about the great man dad was."

Thomas and sister Yamma Lumar were scheduled to have appeared on King's show Wednesday night in what they thought would be a tribute to their father. They changed their minds after learning that Tomi Rae Hynie was to appear live on Larry King Live to tell her story. They also were upset about an interview with Hynie that had appeared in a London tabloid in which Hynie disclosed very intimate details about Brown.

On the show Wednesday night, Hynie produced a copy of her 2001 marriage license to Brown. She did not show King court records that show her marriage to Brown was annulled in 2004.

While Deanna Brown Thomas refused to refute any of the charges, the Rev. Al Sharpton did.

Appearing also on Thursday night's show, Sharpton disputed Hynie's assertion that he had been hired to officiate at the funeral or to exclude Hynie in any way. "No one has to hire me about the man I considered my father," said Sharpton.