She's spoiled, and she's sneaky! Got it?

That's the latest salvo in the Rimes vs. Rimes tempest. LeAnn Rimes went on Access Hollywood last week to tell her side of her ongoing legal battle with her father. Today (March 27) Wilbur Rimes had his say in the Nashville daily, The Tennessean. But he's said it through LeAnn's stepmother.

Catherine Dickenson Rimes, who married Wilbur Rimes in 1998 after he divorced LeAnn's mother, Belinda, told Tennessean reporter Brad Schmitt that the young singer had made secret recordings of conversations which showed her to be "a manipulative and a very demanding spoiled person, someone who's very used to getting her way." To illustrate this point, the new Mrs. Rimes released portions of tape recordings that came to light during legal proceedings. In one, LeAnn tells her father that the album I Need You, whose quality she later denounced, is "amazing." In another, she boasts to her former tour manager that she can get a favorable decision from a judge by crying.

The Tennessean posted audio portions of both recordings at its website. According to Mrs. Rimes, LeAnn made these recordings surreptitiously. She said the singer's lawyer gave copies of them to Wilbur Rimes in the course of her lawsuit.

Mrs. Rimes said her husband would not speak to reporters for fear of widening the rift with his daughter. When LeAnn was in court in Nashville recently, unsuccessfully seeking to break her contract with Curb Records, she turned to her father after the decision was announced and mouthed the words "I hate you." Later, she told Access Hollywood that she really didn't hate her father, just the situation they were in.

LeAnn sued her father and her co-manager, Lyle Walker, last May, alleging mismanagement and asking for at least $7 million in actual damages and four times that amount in exemplary damages. LeAnn settled her lawsuit against Walker last week, The Tennessean reports. Wilbur Rimes countersued his daughter in November, alleging among other things that she was denying him both credit and income from albums he had produced for her.