Andrea Kelly, R. Kelly‘s ex-wife, just received two separate court victories against the singer.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that a judge will allow the court records of the former couple’s 2006 divorce to be unsealed. The singer’s lawyer also gave Andrea Kelly a cashier’s check for $62,499.70 to bring him up to date on the back child support that put him in jail back in March.
In the divorce battle, the disgraced R&B crooner was ordered to pay his ex-wife $20,000 each month in child support. Andrea Kelly’s attorney Alison Motta said his failure to pay caused his 22-year-old eldest child to drop out of college, because the tuition couldn’t be satisfied. According to TMZ, Their daughter Buku Abi, who was born Joann Kelly was attending art school in California, but couldn’t sign up for classes the following semester due to an unpaid bill. She also had to move out of her apartment. Kelly’s attorney suggested she might have dropped out of school to sign on with a reality TV show, a line of argument the judge would not allow the lawyer to pursue.
By Illinois law, child support college tuition payments for a noncustodial parent are not to exceed the cost of in-state tuition and fees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the same academic year, which could be capped at approximately $35,000 a year.
The 45-year-old mother, who has three children with the singer, made a request to the judge to have her divorce records unsealed in hopes that it would put pressure on her former spouse to keep up with his child support payments.
“Ms. Kelly appreciates the fact that Mr. Kelly is not going to have any special protection above and beyond what anyone else has,” said Motta to the press. “[If] he doesn’t take his responsibilities seriously, doesn’t comply with his obligations to his children, it’s gonna get filed and people will know.”
But while one judge decided to unseal the singer’s 2006 divorce records, another reversed the default judgement in his civil suit brought by one of the four women he’s being charged with sexually abusing.
Last month Judge Moira Johnson ruled in the plaintiff’s favor, because R. Kelly never responded to the suit. But his new lawyers argued he didn’t respond due to being illiterate, so now a new trial has been set for June 19.
In his child support case, R. Kelly still owes $32,000, which comes from accumulated interest and other costs. The $62,499.70 covered his missed payments for March, April and May of this year.
In February, the 52-year-old was hit with 10 counts of criminal sexual abuse that involve four different women, three of them who said they had sex with him when they were underage.
