David Allan Coe's estate faces support claims from the singer's family

The estate of David Allan Coe, who died on April 29 at the age of 86, has fallen into legal and family disputes, Saving Country Music reported on August 19. The outlet said Coe's affairs were unsettled before his death: he was fined $1 million by the IRS in 2016 and narrowly avoided jail over back taxes.

Coe's fourth wife, Jody, and her children are pursuing the estate and its executor, Coe's widow and sixth wife Kimberly Coe, for $540,820.72 in unpaid child support and $194,882.10 in unpaid spousal support. On August 13, Kimberly Coe rejected those claims. Saving Country Music reported that Jody can object in probate court or sue the estate, and expects one or the other.

In a public statement posted to Facebook, the family said priority court judgments for the unpaid support had already been filed against the estate, and that their aim was transparency and family honor, adding that anyone Coe owed money to should have the same chance to be made whole.

Coe married six times and had eight children, several of whom have worked in country music. Tyler Mahan Coe played guitar for his father for years and makes the podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones. Shelli Coe is a singer who now considers herself retired. Tanya Montana Coe released albums in 2015 and 2019 and still performs. None of the children were named in the will, and according to the reports and documents the outlet cites, everything was left to Kimberly.

The estrangement between Coe and his older children is traced in the report to a road accident on March 19, 2013 in Ocala, Florida, when his Chevrolet Suburban was struck by a semi-truck at an intersection. He was found at fault for running a red light, suffered cracked ribs and bruised kidneys, and recovered. At Willie Nelson's Fourth of July picnic later that year he told the audience that "everybody quit me, except my wife," and a letter published online through Kimberly said much the same.

His children tell it differently. Tanya Montana Coe and Tyler Mahan Coe have both said publicly that Kimberly used the accident and hospital stay to cut off the children from earlier marriages and to dismiss the band. Tanya Montana Coe said in a recent statement that she was told not to come to the hospital and would be able to help once her father was home, and that she never heard back. Tyler Mahan Coe wrote on his blog in November 2013 that he did not believe the account in his father's letter, and said upfront that he did not like his stepmother. The report carries no response from Kimberly Coe to those accounts beyond her rejection of the support claims.

The second thread is Josh Pruitt, a Georgia man who Saving Country Music reported is a son of Coe's, born out of wedlock and conceived during a period when Coe claimed to be a Mormon and travelled with an extended group. Pruitt said his mother told him who his father was only after he had to end life support for the man he had grown up believing was his father. He said he then looked up photographs, recognised himself in the cover of the album Matter of Life and Death, and later confirmed the connection through Ancestry.com and a genealogist.

Pruitt said he was the event coordinator at the Georgia club where, by his account, Coe played every show he did in the state from 2013 on, and that he met him, shook his hand and photographed him without knowing. He said he tried to reach his father through Kimberly and could not, then found Carla and Tanya Coe, and that the siblings ran wellness checks that led nowhere. He had begun approaching Johnny Knoxville and the director of a documentary about Coe about arranging a meeting when Coe died. "That killed me man, because I had all that hope," he said.

Pruitt also described the funeral, where the children attended but were not given the same visitation as those in Kimberly's circle, and where much of the burial was handled by the motorcycle club Coe belonged to. He said a certified letter about him had been sent to Coe's home and was mentioned at the funeral by Kimberly's mother, but that Kimberly told him she had not known about him.

Saving Country Music expects years of argument over the estate. Coe's catalog keeps surfacing regardless: unreleased John Prine and David Allan Coe songs turned up on new projects recently, and his records remain among the most streamed of any outlaw country writer of his era.