Sports cars, ‘fraud,’ adultery: Bitter court feud over Rep. Tricia Cotham’s dad
.JPG "Rep. Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County, surrounded by Carolina Hurricanes memorabilia, awaits the arrival of the Stanley Cup in the state House chamber on June 23.")
One of Charlotte’s most well-known political families is engaged in an ongoing legal battle in Gaston County involving millions of dollars in assets.
Hundreds of pages of filings in a civil lawsuit and countersuit detail allegations of fraud and elder abuse, years of adultery, and a battle for property, luxury sports cars and cash.
At the center of the litigation is the Cotham family — N.C. State Rep. Tricia Cotham, who made national headlines when she switched from Democrat to Republican in 2023; her father, prominent businessman and political donor John Cotham; and her mother, Pat Cotham, a former longtime Mecklenburg County commissioner and Democratic National Committee member.
Pat Cotham isn’t a direct party to the lawsuit, but her name is mentioned frequently in case filings dating back to May 2025. She remarried John in 2023 — while he was in an ongoing relationship with another woman, Kaye Yaffe. The Cothams say Yaffe manipulated him into signing over millions of dollars in assets — including a $1 million-dollar Cramerton home, a Ferrari, a Porsche and a Corvette — in a scheme to enrich herself. Tricia Cotham, as her father’s power of attorney, is suing Yaffe to void a cohabitation agreement John signed that promised Yaffe the assets.
“This case involves questions that the Cotham family takes very seriously: how a set of documents transferring significant property came to be signed and whether Mr. Cotham fully understood what he was signing at the time. These questions are now before the court, and we are confident the judicial process will provide the answers our clients are looking for,” the Cothams’ attorney, Josh Durham, said in a statement.
But Kaffe, in legal filings, has said she and John were best friends who had been together for almost a decade and were preparing to marry when Tricia and Pat intervened for their own financial motives.
Yaffe’s attorney, Joe Karam, said the allegations against Yaffe in the suit are “categorically denied” but declined to comment further.
“We will trust the legal process to address the matter fairly and in accordance with North Carolina law,” Karam said in an email.
An ‘illicit relationship’
John Cotham met Yaffe at Gold’s Gym in 2008, according to Yaffe’s counterclaim.
John and Pat divorced the following year, and he later married his second wife, Nancy Ann Delia Cotham.
Now retired at 75, John was a local political figure — once chair of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party — and a successful businessman who spent decades in the forklift sales industry. He co-founded Charlotte-based Carolina Industrial Trucks in 1989, where he’s still CEO emeritus. The business has six locations and its annual revenue is an estimated $22 million, according to ZoomInfo.
John and Nancy divorced in 2013, and Yaffe began working at Carolina Industrial Trucks in 2016. The two also began a romantic relationship at this time, court records say. Yaffe moved into John’s five-bedroom, 5,200-square-foot Cramerton home soon after — following her latest bankruptcy filing and the foreclosure of her house, according to the Cothams.
Yaffe filed for bankruptcy seven times between 2007 and April 2016, court records show. Most of the cases were dismissed for failure to make plan payments.
In an April 2016 bankruptcy hearing in the federal Western District of North Carolina, Yaffe “discussed her new job with Kelley’s Cars,” a “buy here, pay here” car lot John owned.
“The Chapter 13 Trustee said he shared the court’s suspicions about the Debtor’s motives [and] thought the Debtor’s multiple cases were part of a scheme to delay a foreclosure,” an order from the bankruptcy court reads. The case was dismissed in July 2016 for abuse of the bankruptcy system, and Yaffe was barred from refiling for 180 days.
The claims in the bankruptcy cases totaled more than $3.6 million in debts, though it’s not clear if some of those debts were duplicated across filings. Creditors included the IRS, local and state governments, banks and healthcare providers.
A string of foreclosure filings and lawsuits from creditors also followed Yaffe in the 2000s and 2010s. Those lawsuits stopped shortly after she met John, North Carolina court records show.
Despite the financial turmoil in her personal life — or because of it, according to the Cothams’ legal filings — Yaffe said she became a devoted companion to John. Yaffe acted as a “romantic partner, personal chef, chauffeur and caregiver” in the years that followed and was involved in several of his business ventures, including Kelley’s Cars and a Belmont nail salon, court records and business filings show.
In 2023, John remarried Pat, his first wife and Tricia’s mother. The two had remained close throughout the years, with John still promoting her political campaigns.
First elected as a Mecklenburg County commissioner in 2012, Pat Cotham spent more than a decade in public office, serving as board chair and wielding considerable power in local Democratic politics. She lost re-election in 2024, the year after her daughter Tricia switched parties and cast a decisive vote to pass the state’s most restrictive abortion policy in 50 years.
Tricia was first elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives as a Democrat in 2007. She currently represents the 105th district, now based in southeast Mecklenburg County. Months after winning election in 2022, she changed her party affiliation, granting Republicans a supermajority and casting the deciding vote in North Carolina’s abortion policy, which restricts abortion access to the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Despite John and Pat’s remarriage, John continued living in the Cramerton home with Yaffe, according to court records. Online photos suggest Yaffe and John’s life together continued as it had been. Facebook photos show the couple out at car shows and dinners, often spending Thanksgiving and Christmases together.
John has become increasingly frail with age and has limited mobility, spending much of his time in a wheelchair, according to online photos and court records.
Yaffe “controlled all aspects” of John’s life, the Cothams’ court filings allege. Yaffe scheduled his appointments and “exerted considerable control” over his assets; she would often take his phone, censor calls or delete messages from his wife and daughter and listen to private phone calls, they allege.
“Defendant made Plaintiff depend on her and would stick him in his wheelchair all day long instead of encouraging him to use his rollator. She did all this while using him for his money and the lifestyle it afforded her,” a filing by the Cothams reads.
The fallout
In early 2025, John began suspecting Yaffe of manipulating him for personal gain and asked Tricia for help, according to court records. The two asked Yaffe to leave the home and, when she refused, had law enforcement remove her.
But Yaffe remained an employee at John’s businesses and the pair reconciled that spring, according to Yaffe.
On April 8, 2025, John and Yaffe signed a flurry of forms at a local law office in front of two witnesses. Those included a cohabitation agreement that said the couple would live together and soon marry. John would add Yaffe to all of his bank accounts and transfer $500,000 to an account of her own, the agreement said.
As part of the contract, John agreed he would transfer her his 2024 Corvette, 2016 Porsche and 2019 Ferrari within 30 days. The couple granted one another conditional healthcare and financial powers-of-attorney in case of either’s future incapacitation, and John transferred the deed for the Cramerton home over to Yaffe.
But John only signed the paperwork because Yaffe had “misrepresented” the papers as general business documents, and he had come to rely on her as his primary caretaker, the Cothams’ lawsuit says.
When John’s family realized what had happened, they secured his bank accounts and, on April 14, John appointed Tricia as his immediate and sole power of attorney.
Tricia Cotham, on behalf of her father, filed suit in May 2025 to void the contract and regain control of the Cramerton home, which Yaffe had already started renovating, court records allege. Also in dispute are several items in a storage unit that belong to John, including antiques and thousand-dollar glass artwork by artist Chihuly.
The cohabitation agreement isn’t valid because John is already married, the Cothams argue. It’s “the product of fraud, undue influence, coercion, and duress,” their lawsuit claims.
But Yaffe has a much different story.
‘Like I was drugged’
According to Yaffe, she isn’t the one who has been after John’s wealth — Pat and Tricia have.
From 2016 until January 2025, the couple’s relationship “thrived,” Yaffe claims. She was a devoted companion, caretaker and business associate, she said in court filings. In the fall of 2024, John asked Yaffe to marry him and the pair bought engagement rings at Morris Jewelers, according to Yaffe.
She said she didn’t know he’d remarried his first wife the previous year, but Pat was always around, according to Yaffe, often showing up unannounced and spending time on the phone with John each day. Pat also “repeatedly” asked John for money, Yaffe said, including $300,000 he gifted her that summer.
Pat’s ongoing involvement led to an argument on January 29, 2025, after which John left the house, Yaffe says in court filings. Two days later, he returned with his daughter, and Yaffe’s eviction followed.
A few days later, Pat and John closed the bank account Yaffe and he shared, and transferred more than $200,000 to an account in the married couple’s name, according to Yaffe.
But during what Yaffe says was she and John’s March reconciliation, he told her he didn’t remember what happened the night of her eviction and “felt like [he] was drugged,” Yaffe claimed in court records.
He again said he wanted to marry her, but Yaffe was untrusting after the January confrontation.
“The Parties discussed putting the Home and the accompanying lot in Defendant’s name, so as to ensure that she would never be homeless again,” court filings read.
John and Yaffe discussed the details of the paperwork “at least 10 times” before signing at the attorney’s office in front of witnesses, and John doesn’t have any mental disabilities that would have prevented him from understanding what he was signing, Yaffe argues.
The two planned to marry on April 11th, 2025, Yaffe says.
But that day, she was fired from Kelley’s Cars and told by another co-owner that the business would close. John and Yaffe haven’t spoken to each other since. And despite willingly signing the April agreement, according to Yaffe, John has refused to hand over the remaining personal property.
Losing her “partner and best friend of almost a decade” has caused Yaffe severe emotional distress, her attorneys say.
In her view, Tricia and Pat intervened because they wanted to maintain access to John’s money.
“[Tricia] has never been involved in any capacity in [John’s] businesses, nor has she been involved in [his] healthcare until recently when she seemingly felt that her inheritance was threatened,” a legal filing by Yaffe’s attorney reads.
‘Exceptional’ case
Neither party has signaled they expect the lawsuit to end soon.
In an August petition, the Cothams’ attorneys said they expect extensive discovery including “voluminous and complex” financial records requiring expert analysis, expert medical testimony and numerous depositions.
After an August 2025 request from the Cothams’ attorney, Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Paul Newby designated the case “exceptional” and appointed superior court senior resident Judge David A. Phillips, a Democrat, to preside over it.
Cases are typically deemed exceptional when they involve complex legal issues, many parties and filings, or have a high public profile.
A trial date has not been set. Yaffe has until July 21 to produce documents and allow inspection of property to the Cothams’ attorney.
Until the case has been resolved, a temporary restraining order prevents Yaffe from further altering or transferring any of the property in dispute that she has.
This story was originally published July 10, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Sports cars, ‘fraud,’ adultery: Bitter court feud over Rep. Tricia Cotham’s dad."