Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore's Divorce: One Spouse Stands to Make Tens of Millions of Dollars

Thanks to the actor's Two and a Half Men earnings, the actress could expect $12 million or more

By Leslie Gornstein Mar 08, 2013 3:33 PMTags
Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

Who has more money in the Demi Moore/Ashton Kutcher divorce? Which one is going to get rich off this breakup, LOL.
—Pride of Nutmegs, via Twitter

Well, thanks to the divorce papers, we know that it's Demi Moore who's looking for spousal support from Ashton Kutcher, not the other way around. So at least one person out there believes that Kutcher is the party with more cash.

But just how many dollars signs are we talking? Put it this way: Typical sitcom income this ain't. We're talking Two and a Half Men cash. And in case you haven't been paying attention, that is an obscene mountain of mad money.

Let's remember that a single season of Two and a Half Men earned Kutcher something like $24 million, which is way more than Moore could even dream about. A typical California divorce would entitle Moore to $12 million of that—and that amount represents only one season of one project for Kutcher.

He's done two so far. And the show is, of course, in syndication.

As for the total net worth of the couple, I've seen the figure of $290 million slung around a lot. And that's despite Kutcher's mixed box-office success over the past couple of years. (Yeah, Valentine's Day made money, but it was an ensemble picture. And Killers, a flick that he produced, cost $75 million to make while earning only $47 million in domestic box office.)

Whatever the final tally in his bank accounts, make no mistake: Kutcher is a millionaire many times over. And unless some draconian prenup emerges, Moore is entitled to quite a chunk of it.

"We all know that during their marriage, he probably made lots more money than her, and if there is no prenup, she is entitled to 50 percent of whatever he accumulated during marriage," Lisa Helfend Meyer, a senior partner at Meyer, Olson, Lowy and Meyers, a boutique family law firm near Los Angeles, told E! News. "Under California law, whatever you acquire together, whether it is a dollar or $100 million dollars, you split it in half."

As for Moore's own money, yeah, she's got three production companies of her own, and I've seen a net worth estimate of $150 million floating around.

But her recent earnings are quite small compared with Kutcher's.

For example: According to estimates from Forbes magazine to E! News, Kutcher made roughly $12-$13 million in 2011, trouncing what the magazine estimates for Moore, with her year figures at less than $5 million.

Now, $5 mil is still more than enough for peons like us. But the rich? They play by their own rules, don't they?

—Additional reporting by Claudia Rosenbaum