“Halle Berry faces ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry in secret trial over child support” is a potentially interesting family law case. The Toronto Sun notes:
In the filing, her lawyer stated, “There is no case, no law, no logic that says a healthy, active man gets to simply live off child support that the wealthier mother earns.”
The child currently yields $192,000 per year in tax-free profits for the father (nearly all of the child’s actual expenses are paid for directly by the mother), which would be $3.46 million over 18 years.
There are a few questions raised by this event:
- When this much cash is at stake, why is the trial secret? Shouldn’t young people have an opportunity to learn about this part of the law and how it works? (“When young people ask me about the law as a career,” said one litigator, “I tell them that in this country whom they choose to have sex with and where they have sex will have a bigger effect on their income than whether they attend college and what they choose as a career.” — Introduction chapter)
- Is being a man a bar to working as a child support profiteer? Lawyers we interviewed for the California chapter didn’t think that a woman would have any trouble collecting $192,000 per year after a one-night encounter with a high-income man. It was easy to find courthouse records in Massachusetts for similar outcomes where a “healthy, active woman” was collecting roughly the same amount (an Ivy League grad got about $144,000/year plus free housing and all child-related expenses paid)
- If the judge rules that the male child support profiteer can’t collect $3+ million tax-free, and it holds up through the inevitable appeal, will female child support profiteers in California be at risk?
I suspect Berry’s attorneys will petition to keep the case results unpublished so they cannot be used in other jurisdictions as cited precedent.