On behalf of Stange Law Firm, PC posted in Child Support on Saturday, January 6, 2018.
Illinois celebrity watchers might be interested in the latest legal battle for Mel Gibson’s former partner, Oksana Grigorieva. The 47-year-old singer and mother of two is being sued by a forensic accounting firm that alleges that it helped her secure a child support increase from Gibson for their daughter, Lucia.
Grigorieva filed for bankruptcy in 2015, and later hired the firm White, Zuckerman, Warsavsky, Luna and Hunt to investigate Gibson’s finances for her case to get an increase in child support payments from the actor and director. The accounting firm is now suing Grigorieva for $108,000 in unpaid fees.
Gibson himself paid most of the fees to the firm, which claims that it helped Grigorieva in her case, which resulted in an increase in child support payments to $22,500 per month. Grigorieva’s bankruptcy requires that she pay her debts over an 18-month payment plan. But because she hired the forensic accounting firm after the bankruptcy filing, it contends that the money she owed them was not included in her bankruptcy plan and it was entitled to full payment up front.
Back in 2011, Grigorieva was awarded $750,000 after she had rejected a $15 million settlement in a lengthy child custody dispute with Gibson. In 2013 she sued her attorneys, alleging that they had coerced her to sign a ‘bad deal.” She later dropped that lawsuit.
Child custody and child support can be a complex and emotional issue for families no matter their finances. Whenever a child support or custody agreement is signed, it is legally binding but not necessarily permanent. Either parent can request child support modification at any time. One reason that someone might request child support modification is a change in income on the part of either parent.
SOURCE: NY Post, “Mel Gibson agrees to pay baby mama $750K,” Post Wire Report, August 31, 2011
