According to court documents obtained by Business Insider, Elon Musk has dragged Grimes’ social media posts into his ongoing custody battle with the singer.
In his latest filing this week, Musk cited a series of Grimes’ posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, as the former couple battles in Texas and California courts over which state should have jurisdiction in their custody dispute.
Musk and Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, filed child custody lawsuits against each other in Texas and California, respectively, in September. They share three children: X, Exa, and Tau.
The billionaire is bringing receipts to support his claim that Texas should have jurisdiction over the case.
The X owner stated in an amended petition filed Monday that Grimes stated on multiple occasions on the site that she lives in Texas. In the court document, Musk cites seven social media posts written by Grimes between February 2021 and October 2023.
Also read: X/Twitter Link System Suffers Brief Outage
The “tweets reflected her continued residence,” according to Musk’s filing. He claims Grimes and the children shared a Texas home with him as recently as July 2023.
Grimes, on the other hand, claimed in her California suit that she moved to California with the children on December 31, 2022.
Musk, on the other hand, claims that her X posts show otherwise.
Musk and Grimes’ attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
Grimes’ tweets, “Austin, I’m moving houses,” could come back to haunt her.
Grimes’ tweets may come back to bite her.
“Austin, I’m moving houses and purging clothes,” Grimes announced on X on April 26, 2023. Grimes asked Texas residents for advice on the best way to donate her clothes before moving. (According to Musk’s complaint, Grimes was moving in with him at the time.)
Austin I’m purging clothes as I move houses. I have a lot of gifts from designers that didn’t fit or old show costumes, etc. that I can donate to Goodwill, but is there somewhere I can drop this for people who might want it? Either to resell or because there’s some sick stuff that doesn’t fit me.
Grimes posted about Texas housing the following month, encouraging her followers to contact state lawmakers about prioritizing affordable housing in the state.
“Those tweets are extremely damaging to Grimes and her credibility,” Christopher Melcher, a Walzer Melcher partner and California family law attorney, told Business Insider.
When determining which state should have jurisdiction in the case, judges tend to favor the state where the children had been living for the previous six months to minimize disruption to the children’s lives, according to family law attorneys.
Although Grimes claimed she has lived in California with her two youngest children since December 31, 2022, Melcher believes her Texas-centric tweets from April and May 2023 suggest otherwise.
“It’s going to be very difficult for her to reconcile why she’s making public statements that she lives in Austin when she, later, under oath in the California action, stated that she’s been living in California,” Melcher said in a statement.
Musk has previously accused Grimes of relocating to California to avoid Texas courts. The Tesla CEO has good reason to want the case to be heard in Texas, where monthly child-support payments are capped at $2,760 for three children. In California, where there is no cap on child support payments, he would almost certainly face much higher payments.
Musk is attempting to establish that the children reside in Texas.
Musk appears to admit in his complaint that Grimes was living in San Francisco at least part-time and that the children were traveling back and forth between the two states. He also pointed out that the children “have been temporarily absent from Texas for stays in California when their mother was working, visiting there, or when she left them in the care of nannies while she traveled.”
Also read: Canadian brands, including Bell Media, suspend advertising on X over ‘extremism concerns’
If the children have had no obvious home state for the past six months, judges will look to which state they have stronger ties to, focusing on their schooling and medical history, according to Peter Walzer, a family law expert and partner at Walzer Melcher.
Musk stated in his amended complaint this week that the children had been attending school in Texas until August 2023 and had a regular pediatrician in the state — evidence that, according to Melcher, likely strengthens his case.
According to the filing, Musk stated that his relationship with Grimes began to deteriorate shortly after the two visited Tokyo together in August. Grimes flew back to California on a commercial flight on August 23, according to the billionaire, and their two youngest children “have not been back in Texas” since.
In his amended complaint, Musk stated that he took legal action after realizing Grimes “was not returning to Texas with the younger children.”
Meanwhile, the couple’s oldest son, X, has stayed with him in Texas, according to previous court documents.
The court documents are the latest developments in the former couple’s custody battle. Grimes previously stated in a legal filing that Musk spent less than half of his time in Texas over the previous year, arguing that California should have jurisdiction over the case.
The singer has also accused Musk of illegally keeping their 3-year-old son, X, in Texas despite her objections in previous filings.
Musk and Grimes began dating in 2018 and had been in an on-again, off-again relationship until recently.
