Hunter Biden Settles Dispute Over Daughter, 4, by Giving Her Some of His Paintings

Details of first son Hunter Biden’s child support settlement with his former paramour, Lunden Roberts, have been released by an Arkansas county court, including that he must pay monthly installments until his daughter’s high school graduation as well as give the child some of his paintings that she can choose to sell or keep.“The parties having reached an agreement as to all pending matters before the Court, intend that this Agreed Order shall resolve all claims and counterclaims,” an Arkansas county circuit court judge, Holly Meyer, wrote in the order that ends Mr. Biden’s years-long paternity dispute. Mr. Biden and Ms. Roberts, through their legal representatives, came to this agreement in the “best interest of the child,” Judge Meyer wrote. Beginning on July 1, Mr. Biden will be required to pay Ms. Roberts a monthly child support payment until their daughter, Navy Roberts, graduates from high school. During legal proceedings earlier this year, it was disclosed that Mr. Biden had been paying Ms. Roberts $20,000 per month over the course of several years, totaling $750,000 since their daughter’s paternity was confirmed in 2020. Mr. Biden had recently sought to reduce the payments, saying he’d fallen on hard times. His request led to the embarrassing spectacle of an Arkansas judge ordering the first son to appear in an Arkansas courtroom and release to the court his financial records or be locked up in the Cleburne County Jail.The New York Post first reported last week that Mr. Biden had resolved the child support payment dispute, lowering his monthly commitment to $5,000. Thursday’s filing was heavily redacted and did not disclose the dollar amounts. It did, however, include a number of additional conditions that may explain the reported sharp drop in payment size.Judge Meyer wrote in her ruling that legal representatives had come to the agreement that Mr. Biden would regularly bequeath to Navy a certain number of his paintings “with a minimum size of 24×24. The child shall select the painting which shall either be sent to the child or sent to a gallery designated by Lunden Roberts. The net proceeds of any sales of paintings shall be wired to an account designated by Lunden Robetts.” The intervals at which the paintings are to be bequeathed and the number of paintings were redacted. Hunter Biden is in recovery from years of alcohol and crack cocaine addiction, and as part of his newfound sobriety, he has begun a career as an artist. He told the New York Times in February of 2020 that painting “is literally keeping me sane. … For years I wouldn’t call myself an artist. Now I feel comfortable saying it.”Mr. Biden presently sells his paintings through a gallery as his primary form of income. How much money he receives for the artwork, which has been listed at high prices, has been a closely held secret, something not uncommon in the art world.The child support agreement also stipulates that “within the next five years … the parties shall discuss providing a college education fund for the child.” Mr. Biden must also continue to subsidize the cost of his daughter’s health insurance.Mr. Biden is believed to have met Ms. Roberts when she worked as a stripper at one of the Washington gentlemen’s clubs he used to frequent, shortly after he was divorced from his first wife, Kathleen, in 2017. Navy was born in August 2018. Mr. Biden has said that at the time of the affair, he was so in the thrall of addiction that he does not remember the encounters. Around this time, he was also in a relationship with Hallie Biden, the widow of his older brother Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015. Mr. Biden has since gotten sober and married South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen after a whirlwind courtship lasting just a few days. The couple have a 3-year-old son, Beau Jr., who is Mr. Biden’s fifth child.Mr. Biden will also pay Ms. Roberts’s attorney fees incurred during legal proceedings. And, in one notable part of the agreement, Ms. Roberts will end her legal efforts to change Navy’s last name to Biden.Mr. Biden settled the child support dispute around the same time he agreed with the United States Attorney for Delaware’s office to plead guilty to two counts of “willful” income tax evasion and enter a diversion program for illegally purchasing a firearm by lying about his drug use. He is expected to avoid prison time in the plea agreement, which Republicans in Congress have denounced as a “sweetheart deal.”Throughout the proceedings with Ms. Roberts, Mr. Biden was threatened multiple times with imprisonment. Ms. Roberts’s attorneys asked on three separate occasions that he be jailed for failing to disclose his income. At one point, Judge Meyer demanded that he turn over “relevant financial information” so that parties could determine adequate monthly child support payments. Mr. Biden settled the child support dispute with Ms. Roberts before he had to publicly disclose that financial information. It is unclear if Ms. Roberts or her attorneys gained access to those records before they settled the lawsuit. Mr. Biden’s efforts to settle all his legal problems may be in vain, as congressional Republicans from multiple committees are aggressively pursuing investigations of his prior financial dealings with foreign entities, which are dogged by accusations of influence peddling. They are also investigating how his tax evasion plea agreement came about and whether the Delaware prosecutor with whom he reached it was stymied by his justice department elders from widening the inquiry, something that two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers are now alleging, and that Attorney General Garland vociferously denies.

Hunter Biden Settles Dispute Over Daughter, 4, by Giving Her Some of His Paintings

Hunter Biden Settles Dispute Over Daughter, 4, by Giving Her Some of His Paintings

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