All's well that ends well...we guess.
Attorneys representing Michael Jackson and ex-wife Debbie Rowe announced Friday that the pair have settled "all the issues" in their ongoing custody battle, preventing the need for further squabbling.
"We're still dealing with the details but it addresses all of the disputes between the parties," Rowe's lawyer, Marta Almli, told the Associated Press. "I can't say anything about the terms of the settlement but I don't think it would have happened if both parties didn't agree it was appealing to both of them."
Neither Almli nor Jackson's attorney, Michael L. Abrams, elaborated on what their clients' agreement entailed or whether it included a resolution to both physical custody and monetary issues.
Since Jackson was rung up on child-molestation charges in 2003, Rowe has been seeking to reinstate her rights to visit their two children, nine-year-old Prince Michael Jackson Jr. and eight-year-old Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, after giving up custody in 2001. She filed a petition seeking $195,000 for legal fees and $50,000 for living expenses in July. Jackson, who was ultimately acquitted of the molestation charges, was ordered to shell out $60,000 earlier this month.
"I think both parties are satisfied," Abrams said Friday. "[Jackson] seems to be satisfied with the result."
Rowe and Jackson tied the knot in 1996 and were officially divorced by 2000. When she relinquished her parental rights the following year, the former nurse said she wanted to "forever give up any and all rights pertaining to the children because I believe that by doing so, it is in the children's best interest." But...
"Everything changed," Rowe said in a declaration after requesting temporary custody in 2003. In addition to the charges filed against her ex, she cited Jackson's association with members of the Nation of Islam, a group whose leader she feared was anti-Semitic.
"I am Jewish, as are--by definition--my children," Rowe said. "I worried about how my children would be treated by these new advisers to Michael."
And that was before Neverland was boarded up and the kids were shipped off to Bahrain. Michael, Prince and Paris, along with a third child, whom Jackson calls Blanket and whose mother is not known, are currently living in England.