The estranged wife of country star Zac Brown responded to a civil claim he filed that seeks the removal of her Instagram post that he says violates a confidentiality agreement she signed.
Kelly Yazdi, 33, called Brown’s suit “meritless” on social media and vowed to respond “swiftly and robustly.”
The two are divorcing after a four-month marriage last year. Brown’s suit, filed Friday in Georgia, doesn’t indicate which post inspired it, but it urges the court to order it removed on an emergency basis.
The claim alleges that Yazdi signed a confidentiality agreement but violated it with the post, tarnishing Brown’s image, and says she should be ordered to refrain from “making any defamatory, false, untrue, or otherwise damaging statements” about him.
In her reaction, posted on her Instagram account Sunday afternoon, Yazdi said the suit focuses on her publication of two poems on a “personal social media account” and asserts the texts did not breach confidentiality.
Yazdi said Brown is making a spectacle of their privacy through an “unnecessary” divorce filing, by mocking their nuptials in a music video’s “defamatory caricature” of her, and through an “unnecessary and legally meritless public lawsuit and press release” Friday.
“It is clearly Zac, not me, who has strategically chosen to drag our difficult divorce negotiations into the public eye,” she said on Instagram. “It will not work, and I will not be silenced by him no matter how ridiculous his tactics.”
On Saturday, Brown said in a statement that the suit seeks to “enforce an agreement between us to maintain personal and business affairs in confidence and to protect my family from online harassment and speculation.”
He said his “only hope is for us to keep private matters private and to move forward with the mutual respect we had agreed to show one another when we parted ways.”
Brown’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Yazdi’s statement.
Brown, who is based in Georgia, fronts the two-time Grammy Award-winning Zac Brown Band. Yazdi’s website describes her as “a SAG-AFTRA actress & stuntwoman, professional model, huntress and brand ambassador” who has appeared on “Hawaii Five-0” and is a motorcycle and spearfishing enthusiast. She lives in Los Angeles.