What is your take on this? Who should get the money?
'American Sniper': Chris Kyle's Widow at Center of Quiet Furor Over Profits
By Alex Ben Block
When he was alive, Chris Kyle told friends and business associates that he viewed any profits from his memoir American Sniper as “blood money.” The legendary Navy SEAL, whose account of his four tours of duty in Iraq was adapted into the Clint Eastwood movie that is now up for six Oscars including best picture, maintained that he wanted the money to go to support struggling military families. After Kyle and a friend were shot and killed in 2013 by a veteran Kyle was helping, The New York Times retold this widely known point of view: “Though his book became a best-seller, he never collected money from it, friends said, donating the proceeds to the families of two friends and fallen SEAL members, Ryan Job and Marc Lee.”
Yet today, with more than $6 million banked from the American Sniper franchise (boosted by the sale of more than 2 million books) and millions more on the way as the Warner Bros. film nears $400 million worldwide, a quiet dispute festers over who is entitled to that windfall. At the center of the discord is Kyle’s widow, Taya, 40, who is alleged to have ignored her late husband’s wishes and withheld money from the bereaved families he publicly had promised to support.
Neither Lee’s family nor Kelly Job, the widow of Ryan Job, have filed lawsuits, and none is expected. Legal experts say that because Kyle’s promise was verbal and he died without a will, prevailing in a court case would be unlikely. Sources also say Kelly Job, who lives in California with a daughter, and Lee’s mother and two siblings are unwilling to be seen taking legal action against a celebrated widow. (Both families declined comment.)
But the Lees and Jobs are said to be upset that they haven’t received even a small share of the proceeds from Sniper after Kyle died. They maintain, according to sources close to the families, that Kyle’s wishes are not being fulfilled. In fact, just days before he was killed (and less than a week after the official publication of American Sniper), Kyle donated about $56,000 to the Lee and Job families as well as to a charity supporting veterans. At a memorial service for Kyle in Dallas footage of which is shown at the end of Sniper), Lee’s mother, Debbie, president of the nonprofit America’s Mighty Warriors — whom Kyle describes in the book as “almost a surrogate mother to the other members of our platoon”— recalled the moment she learned of Kyle’s largesse. “I was speechless, overwhelmed and in tears,” Lee told the audience of 7,000 mourners. “Chris didn’t publish that book for an income or to be famous. He hated the spotlight. Chris did that for his teammates.”
Taya Kyle hasn’t spoken publicly about proceeds from the book and movie, but she was pressed about her willingness to pay the Jobs and Lees in a separate business dispute. In August, Taya sued Christopher Kirkpatrick, a Dallas lawyer who had represented both her and her husband in connection with several business deals, including a company called Craft International that Chris Kyle had co-founded.
