Halle Berry's ex-husband Olivier Martinez is condemning her recent attempt to gain sole custody of their 10-year-old son.
The former couple last year finalized their eight-year divorceand the Oscar winner agreed to pay $8,000 a month in child support in a joint custody agreement. But earlier this month, the “Catwoman” star filed for sole custody of their son, Maceo, citing Martinez’s continued refusal to be a “productive and engaged co-parent” and “participate in joint decision-making regarding our son,” according to court documents reviewed by The Times.
In a pair of filings this week, Martinez accused his ex-wife of constructing a “twisted narrative” to remove him from his co-parenting role. He also asked the court to postpone a custody hearing scheduled for Sept. 10, giving him ample time to refute her “false claims” about him — namely, that he is “unreasonably oppositional” and has neglected to show up for mandatory co-parenting therapy.
Berry responded in a filing Friday that such a delay would cause “detrimental harm” to her son, who she says has fallen far behind in school and is in “critical need of urgent interventions to ensure his success in school and in life.”
The student who is about to start fifth grade has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, mild dyslexia and a specific learning disorder.
While Martinez claimed in his dual filings that his ex-wife was attempting to put their son on psychiatric medication without his permission, Berry called that an “impossibility, as for over a year Olivier has interfered with Halle's ability to obtain Even an evaluation on which any recommendation would be based.”
“Your statement makes clear that you are either unaware of Maceo’s challenges or you are carelessly ignoring them; either way, it continues to illustrate why you should not be allowed to make decisions for this child,” Berry said in her filing.
In her earlier filing on Aug. 16, Berry also accused Martinez of “thwarting clinical decisions” by ignoring requests for approval of interventions and disqualifying professional opinions.
Berry said she and Martinez previously attempted to resolve matters in a series of voluntary settlement conferences (which she funded), but at their final meeting in February, she felt litigation was the only way forward.
“Olivier fails to recognize that he is bound by court orders and continues to interfere with my custody rights, withholding information from me and making unilateral decisions on behalf of Maceo,” she said, adding that stepping up his actions was in the best interest of his son.
Instead, Martinez interprets Berry’s request for sole custody as a concerted effort to “game the system” and “obtain a trial outcome by ambush,” bankrupting him in the process, he said in a Friday filing. (Berry has refused to pay Martinez’s legal fees, despite what he called an “extremely imbalanced financial circumstance between the two parties.”)
“After using her extraordinarily high income for months to try to create a false narrative about Defendant’s cooperation with Plaintiff, to which Defendant has not had the funds to respond to every letter and every email, she is now attempting to use her ability to pay any and all amounts of her own attorneys’ fees to trample on Defendant’s rights and gain the exclusive ability to make decisions about crucial decisions in Maceo’s life,” Martinez’s filing says.
“A defendant cannot be forced to waive his right to discovery or his right to sufficient time to prepare his answer simply because the plaintiff is attempting to coerce and compel him to submit,” the document continues.
In addition to an extension, Martinez has requested that the court set a date for a hearing on the costs he expects to incur — and will not be able to cover — as a result of Berry's new litigation.
