The country music world suffered several devastating losses in 2020, from Kenny Rogers to Joe Diffie
to Millie Small and many, many more.
And this difficult year was capped off by the heartbreaking death of country legend
Charley Pride in December.
"And some more sad news tonight with the loss of a country music superstar.
Charlie Pride has died of complications from the coronavirus."
But Charley's life's story has continued to unfold in the year following his death, with
a man from Texas filing a lawsuit disputing Pride's will.
The man, 41-year-old Tyler Pride, claims that the singer was his biological father.
His mother, Joyce Ann Tines, allegedly met the country star on an airplane on which she
was working as a flight attendant, and the two carried out an affair that went on for
at least a decade.
Tyler recently said:
"He loved her.
They loved each other.
It was not a casual affair."
He added the claim that the pair planned to have a baby together despite not being married
to each other.
But the fact that Charley Pride was already married to wife Rozene Pride, with the couple
having three children of their own, obviously caused problems in his relationship with his
fourth son.
The singer believed that knowledge of his illegitimate child from an extramarital, interracial
affair would be bad for business.
So he tried to limit their interactions to a few phone calls a year.
Evidently, however, this wasn't good enough for Tyler.
The three children Charley Pride had with his wife Rozene - Carlton, Dion, and Angela
- are listed on the country music star's will.
But Tyler's name is glaringly absent from the document, and the man himself believes
this mistake needs to be rectified.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Rozene Pride, who is serving as the executor of Charley's estate,
doesn't agree.
Speaking about Tyler's revelations, she said:
"It is heartbreaking to see Tyler try to tarnish Charley's reputation and break Charley's estate
plan in the hope of getting more money for himself."
She continued by claiming that, while the singer was still alive, Tyler only viewed
him as his own personal "cash cow," whom he only ever called when he wanted money.
Rozene claims not to wish any ill will on Tyler, and even expressed the hope that he'll
find peace in his life - but that doesn't mean she's been happy with the way he's handled
the situation.
She claims that he used the lawsuit as a leveraging tool, showing her a draft before filing and
even giving her a list of demands.
In a statement, Rozene said:
"That shows how little he knew about his father, because Charley would never be bullied and
neither will I."
For his part, Tyler did admit that he filed the lawsuit only as a means to figure out
what kinds of financial inheritance he may be entitled to.
That said, he may have good reason to make his case, for, as Rozene tacitly admits, Pride
really was Tyler's father.
While it might be easy to assume that Tyler is just some kind of crazed country music
fan who wants to take advantage of the tragic death of Charley Pride, the plaintiff in the
lawsuit actually has court-certified documentation confirming his parentage.
The Dallas Morning News recently found court records from 1992 revealing that DNA evidence
had proven that Charley Pride was indeed Tyler's father.
That ruling, made back when Tyler was just 13, led the court to order that his last name
be changed to Pride.
There were financial obligations levied on the singer, too: He was forced to pay $92,000
in overdue child support, as well as $4,000 monthly payments to Joyce Ann Tines.
So, on the surface, it appears that Tyler Pride does have some legal standing in the
case, and he says he hopes that the lawsuit will settle once and for all the fact that
he was part of Pride's family.
According to him, when the singer died, no one from his "legitimate" family even let
Tyler know what had happened, and the news had to be broken to Tyler by a friend.
As he himself says:
"I loved him.
After all, he was my dad, too."
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