All Episodes

December 1, 2025 • 18 mins
On the Jim Colbert Show Attorney "Friendly" Ray Traendly of TK Law discusses the dispute between American Idol's Kellie Pickler and her late husband's family over his estate.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The reason money around this time, we have better good
friend to drop by and discuss some legal things with us.
Sometimes we talk about legal stuff, sometimes we just talk
about life. Today we do have a very interesting case.
You guys give it up. Good laugh for mister Ray Trinley. Yeah,
that's a TEENK law one firm for Life dot Com
offices right there in Altamont Springs. Big dog, How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm doing well. How are you doing?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Been a minute man? How things things are good? Uh?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
You know, it's it's hard.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I had a jury trial was scheduled for a week
and it was on a two week trial docket right
before Thanksgiving. And normally I say, don't give me a
trial rate after the holidays. There's nothing worse than like
that first Monday after Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
You're like, I gotta get up and go to the courthouse.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
I think I'd prefer that to a trial rate before
the holiday.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Oh yeah, everything's on your mind going in man. Man,
And it felt bad for you because I knew you
had this coming up, and I had to talk to
you about a couple of days. But there's no way
I was going to text you or in or or
interrupt anything you had and.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
The courts were backed up.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
The judges were trying to get all these trials done
before the holiday season, and so we didn't even have
a judge or a courtroom or anything up until the
Friday at five fifteen pm, and I was like, you're
ready to go Monday, Yeah, okay, we'll see you and
so and then it was I had a friend who

(01:23):
was who was trying the case the week before, and
he's like, man, it took us a whole week just
to pick our jury. And I was like, because nobody
wanted to be there during the holidays. And so I'm
like paniced because I don't have as much free time
as he had. You know, he had three weeks before Thanksgiving,
and so I was like, man, but luckily we were
able to pick our jury quickly and we had our

(01:43):
verdict before the holidays.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I was able to take some time off with the family,
and so it was all good time.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Clients very happy.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Clients were happy when you take your ego out of it,
right because you know I shared with you off air,
I always want more, you know, for me, I want
the absolute best case, home run, knock it out of
the park. Everything that goes my way I want that
every time, and I know that's not realistic, and and

(02:11):
you know what, I think it's kind of given me
some pause on this one. Is I think if the
jury better understood the judge's instructions, I think we've got
an even better results.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
But I can tell in.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
The way the jury rules and their verdict that they
didn't understand something. And it's one of those things where
you wish they would have asked the question because then
they could have got the clarification.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
And nobody wants to extend it anymore, and.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Everybody wanted to get out of there right before the holiday,
and so they they ruled it, and again it was
it was a good outcome, but just it could have
been back.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I know exactly what you're talking about, no problem whatsoever.
I Ray is a personal injury attorney here in Central Florida,
well actually a number of attorneys in Central Florida. He's
a bunch of things, whether it be a state planning,
if you've tripped and fall, car accident, any of those things.
You can certainly help out with divorces, the whole nine yards. Yeah,
family law for sure. So you know, I send you
this case this morning, and I found this fascinating. I mean,

(03:08):
you know, I don't know how many people actually remember
who Kelly Pickler is, but for people who do not,
when American Idol was at its beginning, I think it
was like maybe the third or fourth season or whatever.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
I think she was right after Carry Underwood, wasn't she.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah, something like that, right, Kelly Pickler was this, you know,
kind of a southern blonde, bombshell kind of girl singer
kind of thing, and she really became kind of America
kind of just took her into their bosom, right.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
She didn't strike you as the brightest bulb in the
in the box or anything, but she was very sweet
and very genuine, and she made herself a nice little career.
She kind of moved on. No big obvious, no big
success came her way, but she was able to make
a living. She wound up actually getting married to a guy.
He was a songwriter. Yeah, I got named Kyle Jacobs,
who had actually written a number of really big songs

(03:54):
in the Country Music Association and had done quite well
for himself. For whatever reason, depression obviously, for other things,
he actually wound up taking his own life. And that's
where our issue comes in because I guess his parents
want a bunch of stuff from the estate. As a
matter of fact, in the context of the story I

(04:14):
read here, they actually went into the house and took
things without her permission.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
So there's a couple of things that are going on,
and that makes this interesting from a legal standpoint, but
from a factual standpoint too. So the first is they
had a prenuptial agreement, and the prenuptial agreement separated and
segregated her pre marital assets with his pre marital assets.
So part of what is in dispute is what's actually

(04:42):
a marital asset and what's not a marital asset. Interesting,
and so you know the family, the parents are the
executors of the estate. She declined to act in that role,
and there's a lot of reasons why she may or
may not. Maybe it's because she already has a bad
relationship with the family.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Right, And there's a possibility. Is that relatively common? I mean,
maybe she just didn't want to deal with the idea
of it.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
I mean that's possibly. Yeah, she's still grieving in society.
He just died in twenty twenty three, correct, Yeah, and
so and he commits suicide, and so there's a lot
of tragedy and heartache over that, I'm sure. So there's
a lot of reasons why she made decline that. So
there's an argument over what's marital, what's non marital. So
what the family has done is, you know, these are

(05:24):
the parents. Now, the parents have attempted to collect on
what they believe to be are his his non marital assets,
so part not part of the marital estate, including firearms,
a firearm safe, samurai swords, card collections, some guitars, pianos,
things like that. So they tried to come into the

(05:46):
house and retrieve some of the stuff and it wasn't there.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah, she already sold the home too. The whole home
sold for two point three million in twenty twenty four
of May.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
So they issued a subpoena to her and it required
subpoena required her to show up in court with a
lot of these items. Now, her attorneys did a good
job of quashing that subpoena and getting that thrown out
because that's not really the proper method or tools for
inspection of property. But it leaves open this question for

(06:16):
the estate as to what is the proper action for
these states. So if the estate this is the parents speaking,
if the estate truly believes that Kelly took some assets
that were not part of the probatable state, they could
file a civil action within the probate against Kelly for

(06:39):
those those items. Right that that is the relief that
they would be entitled to. It's not a terribly uncommon
thing for us to do in these types of cases.
But that would be the proper remedy that hasn't been done.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, yeah, and go ahead.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
No, I was gonna say, there's another part of this
is kind of weird here too. It says, for the
for the nearly the entire history of this case, she
has argued that there exists an unidentified agreement between the
parties that are so sensitive and confidential that they should
remain unidentified and their terms concealed from any public filing.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Well, and that's the prenuptial agreement. Yeah, that I was
referring to earlier.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
And so that's the next part of this is there's
been no action to challenge this issue.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
There's been no so what so.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
It would be but real quick though, Yeah, I've always
known as like, so marital assets are like, let's say
I have you know we're gonna get a prenup. I
have a gun, say full of stuff. It's got like
you know, collectible cards, watches, you know, guns and stuff
like that. I had that before we get Memory, we
get Mary. We have a prenup that's obviously included in that.
So marital assets are assets that you accumulate at post marriage.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Normally that's how it's defined. Yes, yeah, yeah, Sometimes it'll
be jointly titled. Sometimes it'll be by gift, but yeah,
usually it's it's post data filing UH or post marital
UH filing would be a marital asset. But so this
prenuptial agreement comes a really interesting issue because nobody has
filed an action for what's called an in camera review,

(08:06):
and camera is judges eyes only. It doesn't get fouled
public record. That's usually the reason why we build these
confidential confidence jelly provisions in these agreements.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
That hasn't been done either by either side. Wow, And
there's not a lot.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Of upside to Kelly Pickler and her legal team for
doing this right. This is going to be a shield
for her to protect herself from the claims of the estate.
But it raises the question from the estate's perspective and
from the parents' perspective, why haven't they.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Moved to have the court review this agreement?

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, I would think that as well.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Because this has been going on for three years.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, and so there's something that is factually that just
doesn't sit well with me on this case, which is,
you know, there's a lot of interesting legal nuances to it,
but there's something that actually seems like it's missing. And
it could be that there's something in this agreement that
neither side wants to get out right, Maybe.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
What could that possibly be?

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Though it could be a lot of things and things
reguarding kids, guarding children. It could be his prior mental
health issues, and maybe the way they've done their estate planning.
It could be a number of things that maybe they
don't want to get out to the public, to the media,
things like that. And so, you know, there's a lot
of really interesting things, but you know, when your gut

(09:27):
kind of tells you there's something missing, it probably is.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
And prenups have all this listed right, like if you.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
If you're if you're gonna hire Layer to do this,
you have everything with.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
If dev and I already get married, I'm gonna talk
to you about it like I would. I would go
through my house. I would be like, you know, it's
a running joke everybody knows, but I would go through
my house and make a list of all the things
that I own, and she would do the same thing,
and then we would have we would sit in front
of a judge or when we got married. It would
happen to be signed beforehand. You guys both agree, yes, yes,

(09:58):
sign this, you agree, blah blah blah, and move forward.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Normally there's no judge, but you described this situation pretty accurately, right,
So we get everything itemized.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
We put it on kind of.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Spreadsheet lawyer's witnesses, lawyer's witness that we have notaries and
witnesses and stuff, but we make sure to identify everything
so that way there's no disagreement in the future.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
I mean does this come do do prenup arguments come
up a lot? Like do people try to bust them
or do people just try to manipulate them? Is it
difficult to do that in Florida? Are they pretty iron
clad in the state?

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Extremely difficult to do it in the state of Florida
requires some type of fraud or misrepresentation or lack of disclosure.
But I'll tell you the cases where I've seen the
biggest arguments over prenuptials.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Isn't a divorce. That's what a lot of people think.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
I had a case that's not that dissimilar. I represented
the children of the deceased person, and it was the
spouse that was suing the estate for basically the same thing.
But I representing the children, and and how nasty it
was that these people were fighting over this prenuptial agreement

(11:05):
when it's really you know, the father's children who I
represented in the ex wife. Just the nastiest cases, and
I've had a couple of those in probate court where
the prenuptial agreements become fodder for a lot of fire.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Said they were going to subpoena the funeral home in
this case for some reason. It's the craziest thing. I guess,
something about him being cremated or not being cremated or so.
It was kind of a while I was reading it,
and it said something about read and Sharon file a
subpoena to the Memorial Gardens funeral Home in Cremation Center
for information about his funeral and cremation. They were also

(11:40):
searching for conversations between the funeral home and Pickler. The
funeral home has allegedly refused to comply with the request,
and it has not filed an objection. Why would they
need to know that? Like, do you think she rushed
his body into cremation or something? I mean, is that
what they're contending.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Or it could be they did do a talk screen right,
and he came up, and he came up clean, nothing
in his system.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
And alcohol and I think it didn't initially have an
alcohol issue like back in the.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Day, or he did he did, And so you know,
I wonder if maybe that's the angle that they're coming
in as saying that maybe it wasn't suicide, maybe it
was foul play. Yeah, but you know, a lot of
times what ends up happening is when you propound a
subpoena or discovery, you ask for more than you think
you're going to get, right, and part of that is

(12:26):
you're pulling on threads and trying to see where they're
going to take you in the case. And so doing
discovery is kind of like doing a puzzle without you know,
the picture next to you just kind of putting pieces
together trying to see where they go.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yeah, and that might've been what happened there.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
It's not uncommon to subpoena the funeral orders or invoices
for payment or anything like that, because that's all something
the state has to handle in the square away. But
it is a little odd about the correspondence communication unless
there was something you know, untoward that they're alleging happened.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
And even if the parents were the executor of the estate,
wouldn't they have to get permission to go into the
home and take things out of the home, or wouldn't
they have to be handled in probate or handled by
a court officer. And that's what she's claiming, Yeah, that
they took phones and all kinds of stuff. I mean,
stuff that could potentially have evidence that would be you know,
very helpful in this case.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, you know, and that's part of what I mean
by that they haven't filed the appropriate emotions in the
court to be able to do these things. Because you're
you're not wrong, right, Yeah, they don't have a right
to occupan see or access to the house just because
their son was a resident there. There's a proper legal
procedure where they file emotion with the court to ask

(13:42):
for the permission to inspect the property, the court grants it,
then they have you know, a time frame, you know, DateTime, location, whatever,
I when to have that inspection that was never done.
And so again there's just something else that just doesn't
seem that it's making sense because I don't know if
this guy was worth.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
But the house was sold for two point three million.
I mean he had to have done okay for himself. Sure,
two and a half million dollars, even in Nashville. That's
a pretty good that's a that's a good SiGe.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
I don't know if that was his asset or if
it was only her. If it was her, yea, you know,
there are residents that they were living in me.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
But he was a songwriter and successful. I mean, she's
a singer and performer, but she never wrote a song
or anything. I can't imagine that she had any I mean,
how do Jack look up a Kelly Pickler's celebrity net worth?

Speaker 3 (14:28):
I felt like she had some fandom and some fame
in the early two thousand, so.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Oh she did, no question, I mean that's twenty years ago.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
I mean, I guess you're not wrong about that. Doesn't
seem like goes that long ago. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
I think his net worth was because I think he
wrote a couple of pretty big tunes. Her net worth
comes up as what do you think, I'm gonna guess
twenty five not even I don't think it's an even
near that. I'm gonna say four and a half million,
four million? Yeah, yeah, wows guess. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
I mean he definitely looked.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
No, I did not look typing away over there.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Kyle Jacobs was also worth four million. So do you
think it's because he was just worth four million, she's
worth four milliar Together combine, they were estimated of four million.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
I mean that's not you know, again, that's not not
a lot of money. But it's not it's not I mean,
it's not a it's not you know.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
It seems more to me that it's less about money
and more about some ulterior motive, like you know, they
think that she had some action or some play in
his series.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Something like that.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
It seems like that that is more the angle than
the money part. Like the money part seems maybe secondary
because a lot of stuff that they were complaining of
in the subpoena baseball card collection.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
I know there's some cards that are are are valuable,
but I think a lot of that's probably more sentimental
type stuff samurai swords. Again, I don't know the value
of any of the stuff, But.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Me, what are the pair's one of four just as
a memorial to him?

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Maybe? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
I mean, that's her husband. I mean, you know how
the law looks at that, right, I mean, I mean
the parents really have no rights outside of being the
executors of the estate. They don't just because there are parents,
they don't really have any rights in anything that kid has.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
I mean conceptually, though, they could in their state plan
and in their prenuptial agreement waive the marital state, that
marital portion. We call that an elective share in the
state of Florida. You could waive that in writing. So
I don't really know, but there's something to me that's
more than just the financial piece.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
I agree, there is something about this story that is
a little unique, and I'm definitely gonna keep on it
so I can kind of find out how this pans out,
because I do find this fascinating.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
I think she wins I mean, at the end of
the day, they're not doing what they need to do,
and so I think at the end of the day,
she's going to be the one that prevails. And we
may not really know what the parents were looking for
because again I don't know.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
The temperature of this basically says if you read it,
it feels like she has the upper hand here. I mean,
when you're the wife, it's a totally a machine alogether
one hundred percent Great Trently one firm Forlife dot com.
That's TK Law Offices right there.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Now.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Tom onth Springs Texta wants to know if they weren't
divorced he killed himself. Does the pre nup come into play.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, So we use the prenuptional agreement a lot of
times to act as that written waiver of the marital estate.
So again we call that the elective share in Florida,
and so that's where it comes into play. It's not
a divorce scenario where that prenup comes in, but it's
that waiver of the elective share, It's the waiver of homestead.
It's those waivers that are an inheritance rights, property rights.

(17:36):
When somebody passes away That's what I'm assuming is in
that prenuption.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
That's very interesting. I never even considered that deb What
do you get for news?

Speaker 4 (17:43):
Oh, Florida's Attorney General target's illegal gambling. NBC's Today's Show
will be in Central Florida this week and Oxford On
veils it's twenty twenty five word of the Year. We'll
talk about that next during You Heard It Here First

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Take at break will come back to a few more
minutes with ray Dad's Newsing the hell out here on
a Monday
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Are You A Charlotte?

Are You A Charlotte?

In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.

Stuff You Should Know

Stuff You Should Know

If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.