that her previous marriage was indeed dissolved. In 2004, the annulment of the marriage between Hynie and Javed Ahmed was granted by Family Court Judge Charlie Segars-Andrews in Charleston, South Carolina, dissolving the marriage on the basis that Hynie did not consummate the marriage with Ahmed and clearing the way for Brown and Hynie to remarry. Judge Segars-Andrews also mentioned in the ruling that Ahmed was already married to at least one other woman in Pakistan and that Ahmed had fraudulently married Hynie to obtain U.S. citizenship. Dallas, Brown's lawyer, also mentioned that, although Hynie's marriage to Javed Ahmed was annulled after she married James Brown, the Brown-Hynie marriage was still not valid under South Carolina law because Brown and Hynie did not remarry after the annulment. Brown was to remarry Hynie once the annulment was granted, but he did not follow through on that action. According to Debra Opri, another of Brown's lawyers based in Los Angeles, Hynie knew that she was only Brown's companion, since Hynie signed a document in 2004 mentioning that she was not Brown's wife and that she would not refer to herself as his wife in the future. On January 27, 2015, Judge Doyet Early III ruled that Tomi Rae Hynie Brown was officially the widow of James Brown and that she was now Brown's widow for purposes of determining the distribution of Brown's estate. The decision was based on the grounds that Hynie's previous marriage was invalid and that James Brown had abandoned his efforts to annul his own marriage to Hynie. On June 17, 2020, a South Carolina Supreme Court judge ruled that Hynie was not legally married to Brown due to her failure to annulled her previous marriage. The court also officially ruled that she has no right to any part of his estate. Paternity of James Brown II In a separate CNN interview, Debra Opri, another Brown family attorney, revealed to Larry King that Brown wanted a DNA test performed after his death to confirm the paternity of James II — not for Brown's sake, but for the sake of the other family members. In April 2007, Hynie selected a guardian ad litem that she wants the court to appoint to represent James Brown II in the proceedings to establish paternity. According to Brown's attorney Buddy Dallas, Brown had a vasectomy in the 1980s while being sued for child support.