What will happen to Halle Berry's kid thanks to this latest mess with her ex and her fiancé? Could Gabriel Aubry lose visitation rights?
—Choice S., via Facebook
You speak of the weekend scrum that left Aubry with a black eye and Berry, perhaps, in a very promising position—that is, if she wants to make a new bid to leave this country and live in France, which she's been trying to do for a while now.
Aubry was injured and arrested after a dust-up with Berry's fiancé, Olivier Martinez, outside the actresses' Los Angeles home on Thanksgiving. Aubry was booked for misdemeanor battery and is out on bail, while Berry is expected to seek out an emergency restraining order against her ex.
Berry already has an emergency protection order that automatically kicks in after incidents like this in California, attorney Steve Mindel of Feinberg Mindel Brandt & Klein tells me. But it lasts for only five court days, per the LAPD. It's understandable that Berry would seek to extend that order if she felt threatened by all the flying fisticuffs. (Aubry, meanwhile, has obtained his own restraining order against Martinez, a directive that requires Berry's fiancé to stay 100 yards away. In a court filing, Aubry alleges that Martinez started the fight and threatened to kill him.)
But whether Aubry gets to see Nahla less often, or whether Berry finally gets her wish to move overseas—whether their custody arrangement changes at all—probably won't be settled until after Aubry is tried for his misdemeanor battery charge. At the heart of the matter: Who started the fight? How did each party behave? What was the reason for the altercation?
"What will happen is, if he is convicted, that could be the tipping point that allows Halle to move to France with the child," Mindel tells me. That decision, in turn, would inform how often Aubry could then see Nahla.
"Before any of these remedies go into place, there's going to be another custody evaluation, hearings...this decision is a couple hundred thousand dollars of legal fees away," Mindel says. "This is clearly not the end of the story."
Ouch. My checkbook just howled in sympathy.