How Linda Evangelista's Child Support Compares with Other Celebs--And the Rest of Us
When super model Linda Evangelista, 46, and billionaire Francois Henri-Pinault, 49, entered the small family courtroom Monday afternoon for the third day of the much-hyped hearings to establish child support payments, they were all smiles. When they walked out just ten minutes later it was more of the same; the pair huddled outside the courtroom talking about their young son Augie, age 5.
The pair's attorneys, David Aronson (Pinault) and William Beslow (Evangelista), announced Monday that they had agreed to reach a settlement agreement for child support for Augie, who was conceived as a result of a brief affair between the couple in 2006. They dated for three or four months in 2006, although she lived in New York and he in Paris. They were together, Pinault said, about seven days in total. "I didn't know her very much," he told the court.
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Pinault is also the father of three other children-two with an ex-wife who reside in Paris and Valentina, also five, his child with his current wife, actress Salma Hayek. Much of the proceedings were spent detailing Pinault's "extravagant" spending on his family including a 12-day stay at the Four Seasons in Bora Bora in 2010 that cost around $60,000, Christmas on a yacht in St. Barths and trips to Miami. As my colleague Clare O'Connor detailed, the French fashion mogul told the court he'd never invited Augie on a trip, nor that he'd ever told Augie of the existence of his two oldest siblings.
The details of the settlement were approved by a judge today but will be kept away from the public. But in court proceedings last year the former L'Oreal spokesmodel and frequent Vogue cover girl said she spends roughly $46,000 a month in child support to pay for Augie's education at the posh Lycee Francais in addition to transportation and security costs. It was also insinuated that Evangelista hoped Pinault would pay for a home for Augie on par with the $12 million California home that has been put into trust for daughter Valentina. In court last week, Evangelista's attorneys dismissed that information as incorrect, and the result of a PR campaign by Pinault to portray her demands as excessive.
"Everybody is very glad that it's over," Pinault's lawyer David Aronson told the Associated Press outside the courthouse yesterday.
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But if $46,000 a month is an excessive amount for a billionaire, it must have seemed preposterous to the judge who presided over the small courtroom. In his position he sees mothers who are forced to petition for an extra $20 to buy groceries for their children. How sympathetic could he have been to two individuals who arrived in private cars and who likely spent thousands on their courtroom attire?
In most New York child support cases, a formula is applied to judge an appropriate amount based on the first $136,000 of a couples' combined income where each parent is assigned a share of the child's living expenses. Using that formula-and the majority of child support cases in New York courts-a single child normally equates to about $23,000 a year, even for high-earning parents.
As a spectator of the proceedings, I'd say a settlement will likely be more generous than any judge would have been. Unfortunately for Evangelista, her $19,000 expenditures on private car services aren't any more important than the much-less-expensive child support needs of other NYC moms. "A mother living in a New York City housing project pays the same for a bottle of milk that Ms. Evangelista pays," said Raul Felder, a divorce attorney who's represented the baby mommas of Mick Jagger and Mike Tyson among others . "And that's really the appropriate test for child support."
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