A legal battle between Tristan Thompson and Maralee Nichols has ended with Thompson being ordered to pay Nichols nearly $10,000 a month in child support. The child support is for Nichols’ one-year-old son, Theo whose biological father is Thompson.
The decision marked the settlement of Nichols’ paternity lawsuit, which she filed over a year ago. According to the settlement, Thompson will also cover some of Nichols’ legal fees.
Nichols had initially been seeking over $40k a month from Thompson in child support. She claimed her monthly expenses were over $20,000 a month and that Thompson had failed to provide child support during the first few months of Theo’s life.
The settlement reiterated that Nichols would have sole custody of her son, Theo. However, reports suggested that a visitation agreement would be determined at a later date.
It is unclear if Thompson has met Theo yet, but the settlement agreed that he would be listed on Theo’s birth certificate as his father. Thompson had initially denied Nichols’ paternity lawsuit, which alleged he was the father of Theo.
The professional basketball player will now be paying $10k a month to Nichols, in addition to also paying child support to his ex Jordan Craig for their son Prince and his ex Khloé Kardashian for their daughter True and their baby son.
Tristan Thompson’s and Maralee Nichols’ paternity lawsuit explained
Nichols filed her paternity lawsuit in June of 2021, though it wasn’t made public until December 2021, seeking child support and claiming Theo was Thompson’s son. Thompson, who was in a relationship with Kardashian at the time, denied the claims.
However, it was later proven that Theo was Thompson’s son. Thompson then admitted that he had cheated on Kardashian with Nichols when Theo was conceived.
He and Kardashian were going through the process of welcoming their second child through surrogacy when he started a relationship with Nichols. Their son was conceived just a month before Theo was born.
In July 2021, Thompson responded to Nichols’ suit with his own paternity lawsuit in Texas. The suit attempted to have the case handled in Texas instead of California due to the child allegedly being conceived in that state.
As expected, the judge dismissed Thompson’s case in December of 2021, given that Nichols, Thompson, and their son all live in California.
However, the court battle continued as Nichols demanded child support from Thompson. Estimating that Thompson’s monthly income was at least $810,075, Nichols made her request for $47,424 a month in child support.
How much child support does Thompson pay?
Thompson now has a total of four children from three different women. His oldest child is five-year-old Prince, who he shares with his ex Craig.
After breaking up with Craig and beginning a relationship with Kardashian, Thompson was ordered to pay Craig $40,000 a month in child support for Prince.
Meanwhile, Thompson shares four-year-old True and a baby son with Kardashian. It is unknown how much Thompson pays Kardashian, but reports suggest it is a similar amount as he pays Craig.
Now, he will be paying another extra $10k for Theo. If he had been ordered to pay over $40,000 like Nichols requested, his yearly child support payments would’ve been around $1.5 million.
However, even with this lower amount, if he is paying $40k to Craig and Kardashian, his annual child support payments still break $1 million.