What was expected to be one of the hardest and longest divorces this year in Hollywood has been settled sooner than many expected after months of intersecting accusations from its protagonists. Kevin Costner and Christine Costner (née Baumgartner) have reached a divorce agreement that puts an end to four months of a tough legal battle that has made headlines around the world due to her financial requests and the actor’s outright rejection. to his ex-wife’s demands.
As TMZ reported exclusively this Tuesday, September 19, the performer, 68, and the designer, 49, have signed a divorce agreement that definitively ends their 18 years of marriage. What has not been revealed for now are the details of the letter that was signed by both last weekend. But according to the American media, this is an agreement that would most benefit Kevin Costner, who has already won legal battles in the Los Angeles courts in recent weeks. It was precisely those legal victories, in which the judge rejected the amount that Christine requested for the support of their three common children, which would have pushed the designer to accept this agreement. She requested 248,000 dollars a month (more than 232.00 euros, at the current exchange rate) for the care of her three children, which his legal team, led by the all-powerful Hollywood lawyer Laura Wasser, reduced to $63,000. And the judge in Santa Barbara (California), after two days of hearings in which he listened to both of them, agreed with Costner.
In those hearings, Judge Thomas Anderle also made clear that he was going to apply the prenuptial agreement they signed before their wedding, a four-day wedding in September 2004. If Christine had continued with the intention of challenging that agreement, she would have She had to return more than a million dollars to her ex-husband, in addition to having to pay her attorneys’ fees to manage that battle. That would have been one of the reasons why she finally agreed to sign the divorce agreement. In any case, TMZ sources assure, without specifying figures, that she will finally get more money than what was established in the prenuptial contract. They also say that she has been left out of the agreement that the actor paid her $850,000 to cover her attorney’s fees during the divorce process.
It was Christine Baumgartner who filed for divorce on May 1 alleging the classic “irreconcilable differences.” Something that, as was known at that time, caught the actor from films like Dancing with Wolves and The bodyguard Or the successful series Yellowstone. Things quickly became complicated between the two, scuffles aired by media outlets around the world. Last July, a judge had to force Christine to leave her family home in California, since it is actually a Costner property.
They both share three children: Cayden, 16, Hayes, 14, and Grace, 13. And it was precisely the sight of his maintenance in which the two totally opposite positions of their parents could be heard. After Christine’s attorney, John Rydell, said the luxury seaside lifestyle her three children have enjoyed in their four-acre mansion in Carpinteria, next to Santa Barbara and facing the Pacific, It was “in his DNA at this time”, Kevin Costner took the stand and said, “My biggest concern is that the court will order me to pay child support that is above the needs of my children and beyond the needs of Christine.” He always denied that the boys needed so much money, and accused his ex-wife of “inflating the support bills” with her own expenses on personal trainers and even on cosmetic surgery, a chapter in which he assured the judge that he invested $190,000 ( 174,000 euros) in one year. Ultimately, the judge ruled that he had to pay a quarter of what Christine demanded.
Before the announcement of this agreement, it was planned that Christine, who has already received a payment established in the prenuptial contract of 1.5 million dollars (1.4 million euros), and the Oscar-winning actor, whose assets are estimated at around 230 million euros, They will meet again in court next December to elucidate the validity of their prenuptial agreement. Now that, in principle, is no longer going to happen.
