Kevin Costner Reportedly Can’t Afford Child Support Demands If He Leaves ‘Yellowstone’
With ‘Yellowstone’ ending, Kevin Costner claims that he can’t pay the $248k his estranged wife, Christine Baumgartner, is asking for in child support.
A month after Kevin Costner‘s wife, Christine Baumgartner, filed for divorce and Paramount confirmed that Yellowstone would end after Season 5 (amid drama over Costner’s filming schedule), the 68-year-old actor reportedly claimed that he can’t agree to Christine’s demands for $248,000 a month in child support. “I will earn substantially less in 2023 than I did in 2022. This is because I am no longer under contract for Yellowstone, the principal source of my income last year,” Costner reportedly said in documents obtained by Page Six.
Costner reportedly called the request “astonishing” and said that his soon-to-be ex-wife’s “assessment of his finances was inaccurate as his earnings are ‘variable and can change quite dramatically’ each year,” per Page Six. He reportedly said that he can’t “afford to pay those amounts and pay my living and business expenses without liquidating assets” and that his wife said she “understood” that the rest of 2023 would be “a difficult year, financially.”
This reported filing is the latest volley in the messy split between Baumgartner, 49, and Costner. A day before Page Six published this new allegation, the outlet reported that Costner’s forensic accountant claimed that Christine is seeking the near-$250k for herself and not their three kids —Cayden, 16, Hayes, 14, and 13-year-old Grace. Costner’s camp claimed that his ex spent over $100,000 on cosmetic surgery procedures and that the $52,000 he pays a month was “reasonable.”
Around that time, Daily Mail ran a report claiming they obtained the court documents that broke down the Costners’ spending habits. ” “As set forth above, the amount needed to maintain the children’s current lifestyle is $332,264 per month, which is 60 percent of what our family spent,” claimed Christine. The reported documents claimed that they spent over $830k on gifts, nearly $22k on spa visits, and $25k on boat expenses during the year 2022. She also claimed that, excluding taxes, Costner earned close to $20 million last year, with the family spending $6.645 million on various expenses.
With the events happening concurrently, Christine reportedly clarified – in the documents obtained by DM – that she wasn’t the reason for Kevin’s departure from Yellowstone (which subsequently led to the end of the series.) “I have avoided being public about the reasons for our divorce,” Christine reportedly said in the filings. “I have done this to protect our family’s privacy. I did not pressure Kevin to leave the Yellowstone show.”
Costner reportedly clashed with the show’s producers over shooting schedules. Kevin supposedly only wanted to shoot for 50 days for the first part of the season and one more week for the rest of Season 5. Kevin’s lawyer dismissed these reports as “an absolute lie.”