WASHINGTON — Kelly Yazdi, the estranged wife of singer Zac Brown, is firing back after the country star filed a lawsuit to force her to remove an Instagram post that he claims violates a confidentiality agreement she signed.
In a statement posted on Instagram, Yazdi called Brown's complaint "meritless."
While it's unclear which Instagram post Brown specifically wants removed, Yazdi's statement said the matter involves two poems posted on her personal social media account. She disputed that the poems "divulged any 'confidential information' about" Brown's business.
"No one — not even Zac Brown with all of his money, power, celebrity, and lawyers – may silence my right to freely express myself through art or, although I have to date declined to do so publicly, to speak about the circumstances of our pending divorce," Yazdi said.
The couple were married in late August 2023 and divorced four months later, multiple outlets reported at the time.
According to court documents, Yazdi and the Grammy-winning frontman for the Zac Brown Band started dating in December 2021 and Yazdi began working for Brown's company a few months later. The lawsuit said that's when Yazdi signed the confidentiality agreement.
Brown's request for a temporary restraining order also seeks to stop Yazdi from "making any defamatory, false, untrue, or otherwise damaging statements" about Brown, his family, his company and the band.
"But it is clearly Zac, not me, who has strategically chosen to drag our difficult divorce negotiations into the public eye with these tactics in an effort to portray himself as a victim and to use his vast resources to silence me from telling the truth about our marriage. It will not work, and I will not be silenced by him no matter how ridiculous his tactics," Yazdi's statement said.
In a statement to NBC News, Brown said the lawsuit is meant 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 told the outlet 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.”
