Wynonna Judd attends ACM Honors amid controversy over Naomi’s will

Wynonna Judd joined a star-studded lineup onstage at the ACM Honors at Nashville’s iconic Ryman Auditorium on Wednesday. She was also seen posing with pal Shania Twain. A fleet of celebs ranging from Kelsea Ballerini and Morgan Wallen to Avril Lavine performed at the event, which will be broadcast September 13 on FOX. This comes four months after her mother Naomi’s tragic suicide in April at the age of 76.

Dierks Bentley, Mickey Guyton, Dan + Shay, Little Big Town and Lainey Wilson were among the top-flight lineup of performers at the glittering awards show. The honorees included luminaries of the country music scene such as Miranda Lambert, Chris Stapleton, Shania Twain and Morgan Wallen. Wednesday’s show was hosted by Carly Pearce, who sang The Judds’ song Why Not Me with Wynonna this June at CMA Fest just over a month after Naomi’s death.

While mingling at the awards show at the Ryman Auditorium this Wednesday, Wynonna could be seen posing up with her fellow country icon Shania. 

Wynonna, who is reportedly contesting her mother’s will that left her nothing, is now preparing to continue with The Judds: The Final Tour without Naomi. In a new interview published earlier this month, Wynonna, said the shows will be ‘weird,’ but made no mention of the claims surrounding her mother’s will. 

The family duo were supposed to begin performing on the road together in September, but after her mother Naomi’s tragic death Wynonna decided to play the 11 shows alone. 

‘Life and death happen all at the same time for some of us,’ Wynonna said in a People preview of the miniseries Neon Songbook Radio With Hunter Kelly. ‘And I just think it’s important for me to use my gift for as long as I have left.’ 

This month it emerged that Wynonna plans to contest her mother’s will, which made no provision for her or her half-sister Ashley, 54. DailyMail.com learned at the time that Wynonna’s financial situation is what prompted her to soldier on with the tour. 

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 She reflected: ‘I think it’s so important to do it and yet I don’t even know if I can say I’m looking forward to it because it’s so devastating. The first time that I see a video screen of her on it. And I’m going to be so freaking mad at her for not sticking around to do it. And I’m going to be just so frustrated.’ Wynonna added: ‘So, it’s going to be an interesting: “Oh, I know, let’s do all five stages of grief in a two-hour segment.” It’s going to be so weird.’ At another moment, she shared: ‘I’m going to literally have Kleenex in my bra. Because my mother always kept the Kleenex in her bra. And I now carry Chapstick in mine. I’m going to have Kleenex and Chapstick.’

Instead of leaving any money to her daughters, Naomi appointed their stepfather, her husband of 33 years, Larry Strickland, as executor of her $25million fortune. Strickland has no children, but Naomi doubled down on her decision to exclude her own, instructing that, if he were unable, the executorship should pass to his brother, Reginald.DailyMail.com can reveal that Wynonna’s decision to push back at her mother’s wishes is driven by a deep-seated sense of injustice and simmering discord that has plagued the family for decades.

According to one well-placed source, ‘With Wynonna, her mother leaving all of her wealth to Larry sticks in her craw. To Wy, her feeling is Naomi built her fortune at least partially on the back of Wynonna’s own hard work.’ The source explained: ‘She was the one who was the lead singer of The Judds dating back to the 1980s and took Naomi from working as a nurse to being a star. Naomi sang harmonies and kind of acted like the ringleader on stage, but it was Wynonna’s amazing voice that pushed them over the top.’ 

The Judds were the most successful country singers of the 80s, winning five Grammys, nine CMAs and selling 20million records. Two weeks before her shock death, Naomi stood on stage with Wynonna in a surprise reunion at the Country Music Awards. They sang a powerful song of reconciliation, written by Naomi – ‘Love Can Build A Bridge.’ Wishful thinking perhaps. Because if love can build a bridge, then fame and fortune can burn it down. 

Naomi’s will makes no mention of leaving her share of the duo’s song catalogue to the daughter who sang with her, meaning that whatever portion she owned will go to Strickland – another bitter pill for Wynonna to swallow. She drew up her will in 2017, ‘being of sound mind and disposing memory,’ but, the source confirmed, ‘Wynonna is still considering her options as far as contesting [it].’

DailyMail.com has also learned that Wynonna’s belief that she is due ‘a piece of the pie’ has pitted her against her A-lister sibling, Ashley, casting their differences into stark relief and bringing old grievances to the fore. Speaking to DailyMail.com, the source revealed that Ashley has sided with Strickland over her mother’s decision. ‘Ashley Judd has no problem with her late mother Naomi leaving her entire $25million fortune to her second husband Larry Strickland,’ the insider said. ‘With Ashley it’s never really been about the money. She has a net worth of some $14million but lives a relatively simple life.’ 

In contrast, the source added, the ‘finances are near and dear,’ to Wynonna, who has long had a troubled relationship with money, spending habits, and with her mother whom she called, ‘my beloved enemy.’ It was Wynonna’s fraught relationship with money that, one family source told Radar, lay behind Naomi’s decision to leave her estate in Strickland’s safe hands rather than leave any portion to her older daughter. And, according to the source, Ashley believes that her mother ‘knew what she was doing.’ Another source told DailyMail.com: ‘Wynonna blew through literally tens of millions of dollars she earned with the Judds and as a solo artist.’

That spending was so extreme that in 2000 she was forced to hold a yard sale in her property in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee in a bid to raise funds. Four years later, still teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, she checked herself into a treatment center to address her ‘money disorder.’ Speaking about her issues, Wynonna once admitted that her early days of poverty with Naomi – a single mother to her girls, living ‘one paycheck from the streets,’ for many years following the end of her first marriage – were hard to reconcile with the wealth of her later life. She said: ‘I literally went from the outhouse to the White House. I traveled, I took friends, I rented jets. I loved the great rock-star life.’

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