This news came out yesterday, but I wanted to listen to TMZ’s explanation of this complicated story and it took me a little while. They covered this on TMZ live yesterday (it’s in the first part of this video) and I think they did a great job of explaining it clearly, along with all the legal issues. As you know, Halle Berry has been gunning to move to France, against the wishes of her daughter Nahla’s birth father, Gabriel Aubry. TMZ head Harvey Levin explained why Halle is likely to be allowed to move to France by the judge presiding over her custody case, essentially taking Nahla away from her dad. Levin sounded much more balanced in his viewpoint this time around, and he admitted that it was messed up that Halle will probably get to move to France, under the current custody law. It’s all about which custodial parent Nahla is better off with.

A new custody evaluation report supposedly found Halle to be the superior parent. Under the current law in California, a child can move anywhere the custodial parent wants. Now, given Halle’s income she will most likely have to foot the bill for Gabriel to come to Paris to visit Nahla, but she probably doesn’t care. According to TMZ she’s about to get her way.

I’ve transcribed some of TMZ live below. Most of the quotes are from Harvey Levin:

Halle Berry came out the better parent in the custody evaluation report
The custody evaluation report is in. Halle Berry won, the custody evaluator said Halle is the better parent.

Gabriel has “personal issues”
Gabriel has ‘personal issues that prevent him from being the kind of custodial parent that would be secure, and safe and good for Nahla.’ The custody evaluation said it would ‘affect his ability to be responsible for Nahla’ They don’t think he has any problem with how much he loves his daughter, but there’s a couple of personal issues which affect his ability to take responsibility.

The custody evaluation is based on Halle’s allegations!
[The report] is sealed, but it is a long report. The evaluator is addressing a lot of the allegations Halle made. When they went to Europe, Gabriel allegedly neglected the child and the child ended up being in harm’s ways as a result. Not that he wanted to put the child there. According to Halle… and the evaluator, he’s not a great parent in regards to being responsible and ‘on it.’ He loves his kid for sure, and she loves him, but in regards to being a custodial parent, Halle is the better parent.

Why Halle will probably get to move to Paris
The way the law is worded in California, the judge cannot second guess Halle’s [move to France.] The judge cannot say ‘you’re not going to move to France…’ If any parent goes to a custody judge and says ‘I’m moving to Paris [etc]. Whatever they say, the judge has to take it as a fact that that parent is moving. The judge cannot second guess it and say ‘no you can’t.’ She has a right to move, and the judge has to accept it.

Given that, the judge now has to say. ‘Is it in the best interest of Nahla to be with Halle in Paris or Gabriel in Los Angeles.’

Why it doesn’t matter if Halle is out for revenge
Here’s what’s screwed up about this. If Halle did this even out of revenge, and I’m not saying that she did…. she could do it. She could say ‘I’m moving to France,’ and the judge has to accept it.

On how Halle came out in the report
She came out pretty unscathed. They’re looking at her ability to parent the kid. Right now she parents Nahla. It’s not so much whether Halle has issues with relationships, and many people say she does. This is about how she parents the kid. The report, the way it’s been told to me, she is the far superior custodial parent.

Frankly the law is screwed up. That a parent can say “I’m moving somewhere,” even if it’s out of revenge. The judge can’t second guess it [he] has to accept it. All the judge is left with is ‘who’s the better parent.’

On if her paparazzi freakout sealed the deal
This thing with the photographer happened way after the evaluator made his decision. It’s not like Halle has to justify moving. It turns out she doesn’t.

[Transcribed from video on TMZ Live]

Notice how Levin admits that the custody evaluation is sealed, and hedges his comments with “the way it’s been told to me.” This is all Halle’s side of the story, and even Levin now believes that this is unfair and screwed up. Aubry hasn’t said a thing to Radar, his outlet of choice, and he easily could. I’m just hoping that Halle is delusional about her chances, as usual, and that the judge makes some kind of ruling that Nahla will remain under 50/50 custody. Hopefully that would mean that Halle doesn’t have the right to move to France. A ruling is expected in this case at the end of the month.

Photos are from March, April and May. Credit: WENN.com and FameFlynet

You guys called it – Halle Berry is using her blowup at the paparazzi in a bid in her custody case to argue that she needs to move to France with her daughter, Nahla. We’ve heard about this before, but now there’s more news of how she intends to carry out her master plan. This would be of course against Nahla’s father’s wishes, and Gabriel Aubry has fought hard at every turn to retain custody and visitation right with his four year-old daughter. Never mind that Halle could move a county or two over and achieve the same objective. That’s not her goal here.

So as you may remember, Halle started yelling at the paparazzi outside her daughter Nahla’s school in early May. This is the first time I’ve seen a video of the incident, and Halle is screaming at the guy while he is sitting in his car. It’s unclear what he did to provoke her, although reports at the time claim that Halle was sick of being stalked outside her child’s school every day.

TMZ reports that Halle is going to call that particular pap to the stand in her custody case, in order to establish that he uses aggressive tactics to get photographs of celebrities. They explained on TMZ live that the paparazzo, a guy named Andrew Deetz, is likely to be subpoenaed in order to bring him on, hopefully as a hostile witness. Here’s more:

The aggressive paparazzo who incited Halle Berry at her daughter’s school is going to be called to the witness stand and grilled like a cheeseburger … in Halle’s bid to move her family to Paris.

Halle is getting ready to fight it out with baby daddy Gabriel Aubry in family court. She is asking the judge to allow her to move to Paris, where she claims the paparazzi respect the privacy of celebrities and their families much more than in the U.S.

Sources tell TMZ … her lawyer will call independent photog Andrew Deetz to the stand — he’s the photog who was lurking around Nahla’s school, causing Halle to explode in anger. We’re told Halle’s lawyer, Stephen Kolodny, will use Deetz as a human exhibit — getting him to expose his no-holds-barred tactics of shooting the children of celebs.

[From TMZ]

On TMZ Live, head Harvey Levin argued that this wasn’t a big setup by Halle to have some “evidence” for her custody case. (That segment is at 2:00 into this video and is well worth watching.) His argument was that this same paparazzo, Andrew Deetz, got in a fight with Britney Spears’ bodyguard back in 2007, in which Deetz accused Spears’ security of beating him up. Levin explained that the photographer has “a history, and he’s considered a very aggressive guy.” Another TMZ staffer asked, very convincingly, what would happen if Deetz argued on the stand that Halle is crazy, and that you can see in the video that she’s going off on him. Levin said this wouldn’t hurt Halle’s case because Deetz “has no ability to say she’s crazy, he’s not around her enough, but he’s the one that chose to go to Nahla’s school and that’s a big no-no. We don’t do that.”

The same TMZ staffer pressed the issue, with a point that many of you have made in the past: Gabriel should argue that Halle is crazy based on that video. Levin kept arguing Halle’s side, saying “it’s not an issue of who’s a better parent, the only real issue is, is it safe for Nahla to be in the United States. Is she better off in France?” Then they got into this whole argument, with two different guys saying Gabriel is very cool with the paparazzi and doesn’t have this issue, and Levin saying that Halle will argue that Gabe “parades this kid in front of the press.” We totally know who TMZ’s source is, and that Levin is protecting her. He’s not just playing devil’s advocate.

Halle is apparently going to call other witnesses to the stand who will argue that “The French culture is such that photographers generally respect families more.” Levin then explained that Halle gets stalked and followed more than any other celebrity he knows about. Another TMZ staffer suggested she move to Santa Barbara, which is where Oprah and other celebrities live. Again, problem solved, but that’s not Halle’s objective.

So let me get this right, Halle lost her cool and cursed out a photographer, who appeared to be sitting in his car and not bothering her at the time. We don’t know what preceded it, and it’s wrong and probably illegal for photographers to follow Halle and her daughter to school. It’s likely outrageous what she has to deal with, and I would probably go off on someone too. Still, Halle is going to use the fact that she got mad at someone and flipped out at them in order to argue that she should be able to move to France. This woman will stop at nothing.

Halle is shown on 5-9-12 getting mad at a photographer. Photo credit: Bruja/Juan Sharma, PacificCoastNews.com and FameFlynet. She’s also shown out with Olivier on 5-26-12 and with Nahla on 5-16-12. Credit: WENN.com

Alec Baldwin has had a long and interesting road since the infamous voicemail scandal with his then 11-year-old daughter Ireland. He’s long been a vocal advocate for father’s rights in the divorce system, and it was pretty clear he had reached his breaking point long before that call. Baldwin recently published a book called “A Promise to Ourselves,” talking about his divorce from ex-wife Kim Basinger and the frustrating struggle to maintain a relationship with his daughter Ireland.

Baldwin goes off on the tabloid media, specifically attacking TMZ, who he clearly still holds a significant grudge against. He said he was so depressed after the voicemail scandal that he was deeply suicidal for three weeks.

Baldwin had been trying to reach his daughter, then 11, but “she was off for spring break with her mother and her phone was turned off for 10 consecutive days … This had gone on for years now and … when the beep came, I snapped. [Harvey Levin, TMZ’s editor] seemed to be that breed of tabloid creature that realized an almost sexual level of pleasure from ruining other people’s lives.”

“He has created TMZ as the updated receptacle of … trash,” Baldwin writes. “He leads a cadre of self-satisfied twentysomethings who jump like rats from public relations sinking ship to sinking ship.” The release of the tape caused Baldwin to become suicidal, as he and the agoraphobic actress had been fighting in court over their daughter for six years.

“Driving up the Taconic Parkway, heading to an inn in the Berkshire Mountains, I began to think about what little town I would repair to in order to commit suicide. What semi-remote Massachusetts state park could I hike deep into and overdose there? When I returned to New York, the thought of jumping out the window of my apartment was with me every night for weeks.”

Thinking of Ireland, he resisted, thankfully. “I love my daughter with all my heart,” he writes

[From the Daily News]

I think Alec can often come off as self-indulgent when he talks about personal matters, but it’s hard not to feel empathy for him. If anything it seems like he feels a lot more for his daughter than a lot of dad’s, and has an extra level of sadness and frustration over not getting to be in her life the way he’d like to. He’s said that since his divorce he feels more like an uncle to Ireland than a dad. If you love your kid with all your heart, I can see how that could create a particular deep kind of ache.

I can’t blame him for being upset with TMZ. Baldwin clearly knows he’s responsible for his actions, but it must be frustrating to know that there are so many people following you around, just waiting for you to mess up. However his temper is pretty legendary, and at the end of the day it’d probably do him more good to let go of as many of his old grudges as possible. He’ll be less likely to explode, and it can only help his other relationships.

Here’s Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey (header with Judah Friedlander) at the Peabody Awards in New York City in June. Images thanks to PR Photos.