Gotta be honest, this guy’s pretty funny.
The attorney for Dolly Parton‘s estate is opposing a request from her nephew, Bryan Seaver, to postpone an upcoming hearing so that he can have more time to secure legal counsel. And in what’s become a regular occurrence in this case, the filings are pure gold.
In case you aren’t familiar with the ongoing lawsuit, it all started when Dolly’s longtime manager Danny Nozell, who also runs She’s Alive LLC, the company overseeing Dolly’s estate, terminated Seaver and his company as head of security for the estate.
Seaver, as you may recall, was the family member who announced Dolly’s death in a video posted on her social media back on August 25:
She’s Alive LLC then filed a lawsuit against Dolly’s nephew, requesting a temporary restraining order and accusing him of engaging in a “campaign of threats” and intimidation against the estate:
“Mr. Seaver began his campaign of threats, intimidation, and coercion a few weeks prior to Ms. Parton’s passing…. In writing, he vowed to ‘destroy the entire brand’ and also told her entertainment attorney: ‘I’m not an entertainment person. I’m a killer.’”
In text messages filed with the lawsuit, Seaver threatened to “destroy the entire brand,” while claiming that the “Dollywood brand is dying” and threatening to take his story to Billboard Magazine:
“I’m going to spend the next time I have on earth ratf**king anyone that has ever betrayed my family.”
And he also threatened to go public in another text message:
“I’m going to set up a podcast dedicated to ruining Dolly’s brand partnerships and telling the violations these people have done on us. It’s going to be great. Or f**king pay me.”
He also emphasized his military service and career as a contractor in a September 3, 2026 email to Dolly’s longtime attorney:
“I’m not an entertainment person. I’m a killer. I sold 27 million $ worth of ammunition and arms to the Haitian Police on the day Dolly died. Entertainment is not my game. I have spent my entire career breaking things and spying on African and Arab leaders. And protecting Dolly.”
He ends the email by requesting a conversation with the attorney:
“I would appreciate having a dialogue and communication route with you. I expect you know where all the bodies are buried same as me. Let’s have dinner…”
For his part, Seaver released a statement to TMZ, Seaver standing by most of his comments, claiming that the text messages were taken out of context:
“I am a career soldier and military contractor and do conduct arms deals for foreign governments. I am a security professional and I am a killer. However, nothing in this lawsuit were threats and most of the comments I stand by.
I was talking frankly in a private way with Danny who I thought was my friend and he fancies himself a gangster. A lot of these messages are two guys having rage talk and crying on the phone together while we were grieving.”
And he says that Dolly always jokingly referred to as “her killer.”
“Dolly called me her killer. It was a joke we used around her camp. I was her ‘baby boy ninja’ and Danny Nozell took that text out of context to somehow imagine that I was threatening him. He’s always called me The Killer.”
Davidson County Chancery Court judge I’Ashea Myles granted the estate a temporary restraining order, prohibiting Seaver and his company from interfering with Dolly’s estate, entering estate property, or coming within 1,000 feet of the estate’s employees.
A hearing on the restraining order has been set for October 9 in Nashville. But Seaver filed a motion last week requesting that the hearing be postponed for 10 days to give him more time to secure legal counsel to represent him in the lawsuit.
In the motion, which was filed pro se (which means he’s representing himself), Seaver says that he immediately began searching for an attorney when the lawsuit was filed, but that his preferred counsel isn’t available to meet with him until today, which doesn’t give him enough time to find an attorney and prepare for the hearing on October 9.
The attorneys for the estate, though, aren’t buying it.
In a response filed today, attorneys for She’s Alive LLC claim that it’s Seaver’s own fault that he’s not prepared for the hearing because he refused to accept service of the lawsuit when it was filed – and they say he even put up caution tape and barbed wire on his porch to prevent process servers from serving him with the complaint:
“Mr. Seaver attempted to evade service of process, and this Court should not reward that behavior. She’s Alive tried to serve the summons, Verified Complaint, and injunction papers on Mr. Seaver on three occasions. … On the second attempt, the process server observed four cars in the driveway of Mr. Seaver’s residence, but no one would come to the front door. Eventually, Mr. Seaver’s residence had a no-trespassing sign in the front yard and barbed wire draped across the handrails leading to the front door.”
Not gonna lie, that’s pretty funny. Call me immature, but I love a petty move like that.
(The filing also included photos of the front porch, but I’m not going to include them because I don’t want to share photos of the guy’s house…although it sounds like he’s able to protect himself pretty well anyway).
Of course this also comes on the heels of an email in which Seaver also took issue with what he claimed were security cameras installed by private investigators attempting to serve him:
“Tell your private investigators to come pick up their cameras: My dogs ate them and my kids used them for batting practice. I tied the 3rd one to a coyote and you’re probably getting some good footage from that. Not much left to pick up, but if you want them they can pick up the scraps.”
In a petty move of their own though, attorneys for the estate claim that they’re not buying that Seaver doesn’t already have an attorney willing to represent him based on his own emails to them in the past.
The estate shared an email from August 21, just days before Dolly’s death, in which Seaver took issue with security at her new Songteller Hotel. Seaver offered his own security company to assist, but was rebuffed by the hotel – and wasn’t happy about it:
“If you think my harsh language is too much for you or your failing vendors to digest, just wait until my lawyers start f—ing you up the a–.”
I’m sure Dolly wouldn’t be happy with the legal battle between her estate and her family, but I’m not gonna lie, her nephew is pretty awesome. Easy to see why she kept him around to protect her.
