Celebrities Like Darius McCrary and Halle Berry Are Sounding Off Against Child Support Payments

Child support battles are amongst some of the most common and ugly ones in the lives of our favorite celebrities. When relationships end, the lawyers rush in, and typically whatever man is tied up in the equation loses big time. According to actor Darius McCrary, this is by design. The Family Matter alumni believes that the child support system was created specifically to tear fathers away from homes and feels like a real child support reform needs to happen sooner than later.

Darius McCrary is a father of three. While his co-parenting relationship for his daughter Zoe has been fruitful, he says his first split following his son Zack showed him the dark side of child support. McCrary calls it a “difficult road” and an “ugly experience.” He’s created an organization called Fathers Care to work with fathers who want to be in their kids’ lives because he’s seen how harmful the courts can be when working a child support case.

Darius McCrary was arrested a few years back due to unpaid child support. At the time, he owed about $5,500 in Oakland County that he paid and was released shortly after. He released a statement following this ordeal, reminding people that child support should be for the child and should not be used to punish men for broken relationships or support the adult mothers. He even offered his number publicly to other father’s going through the same thing and swore to use his platform to help create change for those being separated from their kids due to the unfair laws in the child support system.

For Darius McCrary, this support goes beyond creating reform and helping other dads find good lawyers. He feels that people underplay fathers’ mental strain when separated from their kids. He tells Vlad during their interview, “dads have feelings too,” and says that men are told to just man up when their children are being taken away from them.

He is not the only man to go through this trauma. NBA vet Matt Barnes told a similar story to Vlad about how the court systems favored his baby mother over him in custody battles. Matt had to pay over a million dollars to gain full custody of his kids after their mother, Gloria Govan, started a fight in the children’s school parking lot. Matt claims she put the car in reverse and tried to run him over. Despite this, she was able to serve jail time and get her joint custody reinstated afterward. Matt argues that this would never happen to a man and that he would have never seen his kids again if it was him that started the incident.

Darius McCrary agrees and knows firsthand how the court systems favor mothers. Kanye West has been talking about this a lot recently, telling his fans that there is no such thing as joint custody in America and that his rights as a father have been getting stripped and diminished as he continues to try and co-parent with Kim Kardashian following their split.

Matt Barnes’s former brother-in-law Gilbert Arenas was almost victim to some insane child support payments and agrees the system is flawed. According to him, Lauren Govan requested nearly $244,000 a month in child support at the time of their split. However, he was able to knock this down to almost 10k a month which is a huge difference.

Michael Strahan pays his second wife, Jean Muggli, $18k a month. While he eventually knocked this down to $13k once his finances changed, this was still nothing compared to the almost $12 million he paid in their divorce settlement to cover Muggli’s lawyer fees. Alex Rodriguez has been paying Cynthia Scurtis $115k in both child support and spousal support since 2008. After retiring from the MLB, he took her to court to get the amount lowered and has been fighting since 2018 to get this figure reduced.

While Darius’s fight is for the fathers, Oscar winner Halle Berry has spoken out for women forced to fork up thousands in the child support machine. During a 2021 interview with Vanity Fair, she opened up about the $12k she pays ex Gabriel Aubry a month to help raise their daughter Nahla. Berry calls it extortion and wrong. “I feel if a woman or a man is having to pay support that is way more than the reasonable needs to help SUPPORT the child, I think that is wrong!” she said in a since-deleted IG post.

Other women who have succumb to child support include Kelly Clarkson and Britney Spears. Last week it was announced that Kelly Clarkson’s divorce was finalized leaving the singer and TV host to pay her ex-husband $115,000 a month in spousal support and $45,000 monthly for child support, according to FOX news. It was reported back in 2018, Britney Spears was ordered to pay Kevin Federline $20,000 a month in child support and cover other expenses of their children increasing the payment to $35,000 a month, but that wasn’t enough for Britney’s ex-husband who reportedly demanded $60,000 a month from Spears.