To save clogging up the forum with news, most news artcles can go in here ^_^

 

Of course not all news articles, if it's confirmation of a new Michael album, then that should be in a thread of its own for obvious reasons, but this is for the regular day-to-day news :)

 

feel free to post some if you have :cheer:

Jacksons Secret Payments To Ex

 

Jacko's Secret Payments to Ex

 

The divorce war between Michael Jackson and his wife Debbie Rowe has already cost him a lot of money — and not just the $60,000 which he was ordered to pay her this week.

 

Sources close to the case who have seen previously unavailable court documents reveal that Jackson already forked over a secret payment of $100,000 to Rowe in July of this year.

 

This may have been an attempt by Jackson to stave off a psychological evaluation in their ongoing custody case. It was Rowe’s second payment in seven months from Jackson, who also secretly ponied up $265,000 in late 2005 to his ex-wife and the mother of his two eldest children.

 

Around the same time that payment was made to Rowe, Jackson’s lawyers also agreed to pay Rowe’s attorney, Eric George, $225,000 after a secret arbitration between the two sides.

 

 

Other documents show that when Rowe received her late 2005 payout, it was part of a larger agreement that gave Jackson’s own attorney, Michael Abrams, $125,000. Rowe’s former lawyer, Iris Finsilver, received $150,000.

 

All of this money came out of an escrow account into which Jackson’s accountants have been depositing money that would have gone to Rowe since he ceased payments to her in their divorce in October 2003.

 

Jackson and Rowe are headed into a settlement agreement next week, which could — in a perfect world — resolve all their financial and custodial issues over Prince Michael, 8, and Paris, 7.

 

Rowe, as I have written before in this space, is the children’s only biological parent. She last saw them during a meeting in August 2005.

 

The former couple is involved in two separate disputes. One involves the children’s custody and visitation. But the other stems from Jackson’s assertion that Rowe violated their confidentiality agreement when she gave “Entertainment Tonight†an interview about her horses and ranch in October 2003.

 

Ironically, several months earlier, in February 2003, Rowe — at Jackson’s request — participated in a video interview in which she extolled his virtues as a parent. This was a rebuttal to Martin Bashir’s "Living with Michael Jackson" documentary that showed him holding hands with a 12-year-old boy.

 

That boy ultimately claimed to have been molested by Jackson, which resulted in the pop star’s 2005 trial. He was acquitted.

 

But court papers also reveal that Jackson thought Rowe was somehow helping the police in their investigation of him, and that he stopped his alimony payments to her because of that.

 

Court papers also show that on several occasions, the private judge whom Jackson and Rowe had hired to adjudicate all of this, Stephen Lachs, urged them to settle their issues. Jackson, the judge noted, never even bothered to make an appearance in the case.

 

For Rowe, the developments of the last few months can be seen as a victory of sorts. But even if the court awards her visitation or joint custody of Prince and Paris, it’s unclear how she’ll be able to act on it.

 

Jackson claims now to be a resident of Bahrain, a country that doesn’t have to cooperate with U.S. law. Rowe’s only chance for success would be serving him with papers in the United Kingdom — i.e. England or Ireland, two places where the pop singer likes to escape when things get too hot for him in the desert.

 

And here’s a Jacko flashback: just in case you didn’t read it, this column first reported on Aug. 19 that Jordan Chandler, the young man to whom Jackson paid a $20 million settlement in 1994, recently got a restraining order against his own father.

 

This week, the story got recycled by other outlets without our credit. Rest assured, it started here …

 

Debbie Row is a joke. She gave her kids away for money and now wants them back -_-

she was his second wife right? My perception of her has totally changed since the trial. When the itv doc was shown, she went public and said that michael was no harm to children and she still loved him, yet in the trial she stood against him, wants to take his children and now wants money off him :rolleyes:

That must be the hardest part of Michael's life.......always wondering if people like you or your money

and the fact that you're famous. :(

I really do feel sorry for him :(