Hunter Biden settles child support case
Hunter Biden on Thursday settled a child support dispute with Lunden Roberts, the mother of his fourth child, ending a year-long saga that had become laced with partisan politics.
According to court documents, Mr Biden, 53, agreed to pay an undisclosed monthly fee to Ms Roberts, as well as to transfer several of his paintings, with the net proceeds going to his daughter . Mr Biden, who is recovering from a crack cocaine addiction, embarked on a second career as a painter whose works have been listed for $500,000 each.
He also promised to discuss plans for a university education fund with his child’s mother. Ms Roberts, 32, who had requested that the girl’s surname be changed to Biden, dropped the request as part of the agreement.
The agreement ends a case that highlighted Mr Biden’s personal conduct and finances and was used by critics to attack his father, President Biden.
Hunter Biden had been paying $20,000 a month in child support for several years, for a total of $750,000, according to his lawyers. He had argued that he was financially unable to pay the original child support. The new amount is lower than originally ordered, said a person familiar with the matter.
But Ms Roberts and her lawyers argued that the girl, 4, was entitled to the same benefits her four half-siblings receive.
Ms. Roberts and Mr. Biden met in Washington. In mid-2018, Ms. Roberts was working as his personal assistant, according to a person familiar with the matter. Their daughter was born later that year, but by then Mr Biden had stopped responding to Ms Roberts’ messages, including one notifying him of the child’s date of birth, according to a person involved in the case and who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Ms Roberts filed a lawsuit in May 2019 and DNA testing that year showed that Mr Biden was the father of the child. In a file a request for custody in December 2019, Ms Roberts said he had never met their child and “couldn’t identify the child from a series of photos”.
A trial was scheduled for mid-July in a court in Arkansas, where Ms. Roberts lives, and her lawyers had brought in Garrett Ziegler, a conservative activist who had collected the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in an online database, as an expert. witness with knowledge of Mr Biden’s finances.
Two weeks ago, when Mr. Biden arrived in Little Rock to make a statement, Ms. Roberts was present. According to a person familiar with the proceedings, Mr. Biden’s lawyers argued that Ms. Roberts saved only a small amount of the $750,000 Mr. Biden paid her for their child.
They also wondered why, given the conservative figures involved in the case — including Mr. Lancaster, who had been a lawyer for the Trump campaign during a post-2020 post-election recount in Wisconsin — the Biden last name would like.
Ms Roberts did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Mr Lancaster said in a text that the claims made by Mr Biden’s lawyers were “not true”.
“The case has been settled because, an hour after Hunter’s statement, he asked to speak privately with Lunden,” Mr. Lancaster continued. “They talked for about 45 minutes to an hour. They came out with a settlement.”
He added that Mr. Biden’s child would select art from her father in the future, and that family was “very important” to his client.