custody battle (45 posts)

It's not quite the ultimate battle of good versus evil, but it'll do: America's Sweetheart is taking on a freshly jail-broken porn star in what's shaping up to be quite the headline-grabbing custody dispute.

The child in question is 5-year-old Sunny James, the daughter of Monster Garage host Jesse James and his trouble-plagued, sobriety-challenged, adult-film-star ex, Janine Lindemulder.

For the better part of the last year, James (with a massive maternal assist from wife Sandra Bullock) has had sole custody of the child, due primarily to the fact that Lindemulder has spent the past six months behind bars for tax evasion.

But now she's out and looking for a return stake in parental duties. And what better place to find that than Good Morning America?

"What would give her the right to take away my daughter?" Lindemulder said of Bullock, toward whom the majority of her ire seems directed. "This is my daughter. I'm the best mother I can be."

And while she admitted on the morning show that she's "absolutely made horrific choices in the past," she stresses that her life is currently back on track.

Though Bullock and James beg to differ.

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This round goes to Christie Brinkley.

The model's lawyer today said she was "completely vindicated" after a judge reached a settlement in the latest of her court action-required battles with ex-hubby Peter Cook.

Just when you thought no argument was too petty to enlist the aid of our legal system, the latest fight was sparked a couple weeks ago after Brinkley failed to turn over her 14-year-old son's passport in time for him to make a school trip to Egypt—on which, it just so happens, Cook was supposed to chaperone.

As a result, father-son time turned into ex-spousal court time, with both sides accusing the other of violating the terms of their divorce: Brinkley said Cook engaged in a smear campaign against her, while Cook filed a motion requesting the erstwhile cover girl undergo anger management, that a parenting coordinator be appointed and that the children's passports be held by a third party.

One, presumably, who has a slightly better grasp of time pressures.

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Kelly Rutherford has accused her ex of disrupting the natural order of things.

The Gossip Girl mom has been granted a temporary restraining order against the father of her two children, Daniel Giersch, after, among other things, accusing him of intimidating and threatening her nanny, being inflexible with his scheduled custody visits and stressing her out so much she's having a hard time breast-feeding.

In a lengthy declaration filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court, Rutherford states that Giersch doesn't comply when she wants to take their 3-month-old daughter, Helena, to work with her in the morning so that she can nurse.

"From time to time I have some extra milk, but I never know when...I believe that the stress Daniel has created for me is also negatively impacting my ability to produce milk."

For his part, Giersch said in his own court filing Thursday that Rutherford is the one who's switching up the visits on him. Therefore, he has "immediate concerns that Kelly, her caretakers, and Kelly's mother are causing immediate harm to [their] children."

But he's the one who's got to lie low for a while.

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Well, if this isn't a red-letter day for well-brokered negotiations, nothing is.

Gossip Girl mama Kelly Rutherford has finally settled her contentious custody battle with ex hubby Daniel Giersch, with the duo agreeing to share joint legal and physical custody of their two children.

Per the terms of their hard-fought settlement, both parents will be required to reside in New York from July 30 to April 5, when Gossip Girl shoots, and relocate back to Los Angeles at the end of the season.

But the Big Apple's apparently not quite big enough for the both of them: While Rutherford will retain her residence in Manhattan, Giersch will reside in the Hamptons for the duration of the show's production year.

Geographical separation aside, the duo, who were married for two years, will have to spend some time together. They've been ordered to attend coparenting counseling sessions.

All without the help of a former president.

—Additional reporting by Ashley Fultz

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Can you believe this story failed to mention Megan Fox? And on National Megan Fox Awareness Day, no less! Rectify your momentary lack of Foxiness with a look through our Many Moods of Megan Fox gallery.

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She's done it before. By most accounts, she's eager to do it again. But she hasn't done it yet.

Sell out her kids, that is.

Debbie Rowe's attorney Eric George has denied to E! News a report that the baby mama to two of Michael Jackson's three children is seeking a final mother-loaded payday of $4 million in exchange for dropping her potential bid for custody.

George called the allegation, given the front-page treatment by today's New York Post, "completely false."

The report, which claimed that Rowe's would-be payoff would not only buy her silence in the current custody battle but in all future guardian proceedings should Katherine Jackson no longer be able to care for the children, comes as both sides are working to broker an out-of-court—and more to the point, an out-of-the-spotlight—settlement.

'Cause if there's one thing the Jacksons know how to do, it's keep their dirty laundry out of public view.

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The lingering questions of just who's the daddy of Michael Jackson's three children didn't exactly get answered today when Dr. Arnold Klein, one of the buzzed-about potential papas, appeared on Good Morning America and Larry King Live.

"I can't say anything about it, but to the best of my knowledge, I am not the father of these children," he told Diane Sawyer. "I can't answer it in any other way. I don't want to feed any of this insanity that is going around."

He took a similar route with Larry King, telling the CNN host, "I still can't absolutely answer that one way or another...The best, to my knowledge, I'm not the father."

Klein did admit to King that he donated sperm at one point—to a sperm bank, and not to Jackson, he said adamantly. And as far as he knows, Jackson and ex-wife Debbie Rowe (Klein's former assistant) consummated their marriage.

What he would say about the three children, two of whom are Rowe's, simply reiterated a message that was driven home yesterday during daughter Paris' impromptu speech.

"I will tell you one thing: These are brilliant children and I want them in no way to be harmed," he told Sawyer. "These are great, wonderful, fabulous children who he loved deeply."

Now, as for the King of Pop's drug use...

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Dr. Arnold Klein is officially mum. But Debbie Rowe says she is officially mom.

In response to increasingly persistent rumors and theories regarding both the paternity and maternity of Michael Jackson's kids, Rowe has reiterated what people have been more or less accepting as fact for years.

"We refuse to be drawn into addressing the various rumors and speculation swirling in the media," Rowe's attorney, Marta Almli, tells E! News. "The vast majority of what is out there is untrue. Particularly hurtful and insidious is the most recent rumor—which is entirely false—concerning the maternity of the children. Ms. Rowe is the biological mother of the two oldest children."

View the children's birth certificates

Yesterday, Jackson matriach Katherine received temporary custody over her son's children with Rowe, Prince Michael and Paris, and his youngest son, Prince Michael II (aka Blanket), whose mother is unknown, and grandma is looking to make the arrangement permanent.

"Debbie remains grief stricken. Her thoughts are with the children and all of the Jackson family," Rowe's team of lawyers from Browne Woods George LLP previously told E! News. "To the extent she must respond to court proceedings that were started by others, she will of course do so at the appropriate time."

By saying Rowe will respond to "proceedings that were started by others," the lawyers may be suggesting that she herself will not be filing a custodial motion.

Klein, the King of Pop's longtime dermatologist, also has remained reclusive since Us Weekly reported he may be the true father of the Jackson children.

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Tameka Raymond very well may have been a loyal wife. Just not since last summer.

According to divorce documents filed by Usher on Friday and obtained today by E! News, the couple has been separated since July 2008—meaning that while he is seeking a divorce nearly two years after getting married, he and his estranged missus logged a mere 11 months together as husband and wife (loyal or otherwise) before going their separate ways.

"The marriage between the parties is irretrievably broken," read the documents, filed in Georgia's Fulton County Superior Court.

"There is no reasonable hope of reconciliation."

That's one opinion. Wonder what the detectives apparently hired to trail the singer think…

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According to Kelly Rutherford, she didn't take her ex to court again as part of any big plot against him.

On her way into a Santa Monica court this morning for a follow-up hearing to address custody issues, the very pregnant Gossip Girl actress told E! News that she asked a judge to intervene because her estranged husband hadn't complied when she asked him to secure his swimming pool when their toddler son was around.

"I went over there and the pool was uncovered, and I asked him to cover it 'cause it was a concern, and he just ignored it," Rutherford said. "So I just wanted to make sure my son was OK, to be honest...I can't sleep at night if I'm up thinking about that."

She only kept 2-year-old Hermes away from his dad Daniel Giersch's house "for a few days," she added.

Meanwhile, the German-born Giersch told E! that finding out his wife had arranged for surveillance video to be shot of his pool area was a bit of a culture shock.

"How would you feel if there were a remote camera on your property, people were watching whatever you do, going to the restroom or anything else. It's a new feeling," he said. "I've never experienced anything like this before."

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Despite Britney Spears' blog proclaiming earlier this week that Sean Preston and Jayden James will be joining her for the duration of her Circus tour, Kevin Federline's camp insists no deal is done.

"We are working toward that," K-Fed attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan exclusively tells E! News.

"There can be an agreement reached in probably the next day, but there is not an agreement that is signed yet."

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Kelly Rutherford believes her son is ready to take a bigger bite out of the Big Apple.

The visibly pregnant Gossip Girl star testified at a custody hearing Thursday that Hermes, the first of her soon-to-be two children with estranged hubby Daniel Giersch, has been going back and forth from New York to Los Angeles all his life and would have no problem living with her in NYC until her show finishes shooting at the end of March.

Giersch, meanwhile, has opposed the move, saying that he is Hermes' primary caregiver at home and has been since the child was born.

He reiterated his position today on the stand, saying that Rutherford sometimes works for as much as 12 hours a day and, when she isn't working, tends to fill her time doing things "of interest" to her.

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The custody battle between Kelly Rutherford and estranged hubby Daniel Giersch appears to have reached its boiling point.

The Gossip Girl star and Giersch will take their mudslinging into the courtroom, with both parties ordered to take the stand in Santa Monica court tomorrow.

Rutherford and Giersch, both of whom appeared in court for a brief hearing this afternoon, are fighting for primary custody of 2-year-old Hermes.

Over Giersch's objections, the actress is seeking court permission to relocate her son to the East Coast for the next few months while she reports to work on the New York set of the CW hit.

And just in case the drama wasn't amplified enough, the clock is already ticking on the proceedings: Rutherford is expected to report for Gossip Girl duty this weekend.

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