Kate Gosselin, 40, has been dating a millionaire entrepreneur named Jeff Prescott, 51. Prescott runs a microstock photo agency called Dreamstime and is divorced with three young adult children. The timeline seems to be that Kate has been with Jeff for about seven months, as per US Magazine, which has been running exclusive stories on the budding relationship. (You can see a photo of Jeff on US’s site.) I guess that’s enough time to decide to make it official, because Kate was spotted at a “TLC Block Party” in Philadelphia wearing what looks like a big ‘ol engagement ring on her left hand. (Photo above.)
Let’s digress for a moment and wonder why TLC is still holding promotional engagements while they’re in the midst of one of the biggest, most despicable scandals their network has ever faced. This is the same network that aired a marathon of 19 Kids and Counting right after the news broke that Josh Duggar molested his sisters. The show must go on and since we haven’t heard whether they’re canceling 19 Kids or not (they have stopped airing it at least) you can bet that they still have feelers out. Will TLC have a big void in programming and will they call on Kate and her eight kids to fill it? I wouldn’t be surprised if we get more Gosselin specials.
So Kate is probably engaged to this guy given how much she’s flashing that ring around. Radar dug up the court documents on Jeff’s divorce, and it was contentious to say the least. His ex applied for a restraining order (which was not granted) and accused him of trying to alienate their children against her. Jeff’s ex wife also said that he would regularly stalk her.
The Dreamstime co-founder’s ex-wife Michelle Jones accused the 51-year-old of neglecting their three children during the couple’s nasty 2006 divorce, RadarOnline.com can exclusively reveal.
In Massachusetts court documents obtained by Radar, the homemaker claimed her husband of nearly 20 years has had “infrequent” visits with Ashley, Brooke, and Connor, who were then 19, 14 and 10 respectively.
Since their separation five months prior, “he has had Connor two times overnight,” she stated in the affidavit. “He has not taken the girls at all overnight.”
She also alleged the CEO would frequently skip town “on business and pleasure,” without giving his estranged wife or their children, one of whom is disabled, any notice.
“There have been times when he has not answered his cell phone for days,” Jones claimed.
When Prescott was in contact with the children, Jones said, he manipulated them into taking his side in the bitter split.
In a February 15, 2006 email presented to the court, Prescott told young daughters Ashley and Brooke “I…want to make it very clear that I have given your Mom every chance to try and settle things in a way that would not require all that is about to transpire. Again, she has chosen this battle for reasons I cannot understand.”
“We will spend a ton of money on lawyers. Money that I would have rather seen go to you guys or your Mother but she sees things differently,” he continued.
Later that week, after Jones sought a restraining order against Prescott for “jealous” behavior, she claimed the father of three left his teen daughter Ashley upset.
“He told her that all sorts of terrible thing were going to happen if I obtained a restraining order such as ‘loss of our home,’” she alleged. “He told her that she may ‘not be able to go to college.’ He told her we may go ‘bankrupt.’”
Nine years after the messy divorce, Prescott exclusively tells Radar that he and his ex now “get along great.”
“As for the divorce issues, most of them do not carry any merit,” he explains. “We went through some tough times that were short lived. Michelle and I get along great and have for a long time. Our children are great kids with awesome values as a result of having a good mother and a caring, loving father.”
At least the guy and his ex are on good terms now, but he sounds like an a-hole. Still, we don’t know if he did all the things his ex wife accused him of, etc. Given what we know about Kate Gosselin, they sound pretty well suited to each other.
Meanwhile Kate’s ex, Jon Gosselin, is fighting for custody of one of their 11 year-old sextuplets, Hannah, who is not getting along with her mom. Jon struggles with finding consistent employment so it’s unclear how he’ll care for Hannah. In Touch reports that Kate left the children with a nanny for four days while she was off with Jeff last month and didn’t even leave the children a number to contact her during that time. Hannah is said to be fighting to stay off camera and Jon will reportedly try to get TLC to stop filming. He has been trying to do that for years, I doubt he’ll be successful now.
Update: Gosselin has denied being engaged and tweets that she wore the ring to celebrate her 40th birthday. In other words, she’s trolling us.
Fyi: I’m not engaged-not even dating any1.Loved the ring so I put it on myself 4 my bday-Had 2have something abt that # to make me smile #40
— Kate Gosselin (@Kateplusmy8) June 1, 2015
photo credit: FameFlynet
Kate Gosselin sounds like a peach of a mom (no contact info!). That being said, if someone tried to take my kid away every time we didn’t “get along,” I’d never see him. Jon Gosselin is a douche. The end.
+1! My first thought was ‘only one?’.
I feel awful for these kids. Both their parents are a*holes. Kate’s a a fame whore, selfish parent and Jon is an unemployed slob. I cannot wait to read the tell all the kids are going to spill in a few years.
I’m not sure we’re at liberty to comment whether she’s a fame whore or not…she was left with 8 kids to feed and take care of…what would anyone do in that situation?
How about live off of the incredible amount of money she made off of the show, appearances, and cook books? Not continue to try to push yourself into another reality show? Get a real job, like normal people with multiple children do? Kate Gosselin LOVES the spotlight. To the detriment of those 8 children that made her famous.
Anyone else would go get a real job instead of using their children for fame and money. She used to be a nurse and could easily go back to that anytime she wants. I’m in Alabama and know nurses who work weekends and bring home 90k a year, so I bet it’s even more in other states, she could sell her million dollar home, take her kids out of private school, and give up the lifestyle she can no longer afford, but she won’t!
I’m not a fan of Jon anymore either, but in this case I really think we saw how much she drove him to the point he’s at now. He needs to suck it up and get it together as well though.
I’m with you on this one. I’m no Kate fan, but the “incredible amount of money she made off of the TV show, appearances, cookbooks, etc.” ain’t so incredible. Almost no one makes any real money off of book publishing, and her TV salary doesn’t stretch indefinitely when you’re supporting 8 kids, a large house (see EIGHT kids), etc. Plus,, she has to educate these kids as well as provide for her own retirement someday.
She’s going for the maximum amount of income she can, and I don’t blame her one but. She was a nurse before the kids, so her career options –with enough income attached to them– are very limited. With the reality show she could actually raise her kids…..can. You imagine what childcare for 8 would cost?
hannah
From as soon as there was a spotlight Kate was noted as taking advantage of her fame and being entitled. Even her shopping discounts and special parking spot that was given to her just as she become a national thing.
And post divorce while Kate hustled for money to care for her family it was found she was hiding a lot to be seen as poorer. Then there’s the interview where she spoke more about wanting jewelry she couldn’t yet afford over her children and their care.
What she does is exploit any avenue to make herself richer. Her kids have been coming in as secondary to that promary goal. Another example was her Today show interview and the fallout where Kate’s 2 eldest daughters with her appeared unhappy. 1 appeared to want no part of the cameras anymore and repeatedly expressed this as time went on.
That Kate hustles for her kids or doesn’t see them as part offspring, part meal ticket, part burden is unlikely given all we know as they years go on.
@Tracy: Kate made a lot of money on reality TV. Over 100 episodes of the TLC show (at around $20K an episode, which adds up) as well as the money for the episodes and specials after Jon left, Dancing With The Stars, and The Apprentice, all should have left her financially set. Instead, she spent and spent.
What is wrong with this man that he would propose to marry Kate Gosselin?
Sometimes garbage manages to find other garbage. Kind of romantic I suppose.
That is what I wondered when I heard she had a boyfriend. She just seems like such an unpleasant person. I guess there really is someone for everyone (except me apparently)
Meatball, there’s apparently no one out there for me, either. *Sigh*. Don’t feel alone.
Kim
Another BS story from Kate’s PR. Anything to keep her name in the tabs. Why is it that not a single article about this supposed “romance” has picked up on the fact that this guy is actually 7+ years older than his oft-stated age of 51 (he’s got a BusinessWeek profile and SEC filings that confirm this)? Guess it wouldn’t look good for Kate to be “dating” someone just about old enough to be her daddy. Sugar daddy, more like.
“Well, any port in a storm…” ~ the Dowager Countess
This is a problem my husband had with his ex. She was dating a man who lived in another state (about 2500 miles away), who she eventually married. If she was flying out to see him and it was her weekend with the kids, she would farm the kids out to other people instead of letting us have the kids for the weekend, which she knew we were more than happy to have them and they WANTED to be with us. She did it out of spite toward my husband. If she was going out of town for 4 days, why leave the kids with nannies? Why not leave them with their father?
Kate has done that repeatedly over the years- not only leaving the kids with babysitters for long periods when their dad was quite willing to take them instead, but even leaving orders that the kids weren’t allowed to even speak with their dad on the phone. Plus she would schedule show trips during his custody time. He has tried to get the judge to do something about this with no success. I hope he does manage to get Hannah – she’s old enough now to talk with the judge and have her wishes about residence taken into serious consideration. Who knows what that woman is doing to the kids now. She has a history of targeting certain kids especially.
That’s easy enough to fix. You go to court for modification of the custody terms. That clause is usually in there anyway. Right of first refusal. If you are gong to be gone more than 24 hours, the ex has the right to have the child before anyone else. That’s standard in most child custody agreements. I don’t understand how a judge would shoot that down allowing a nanny to take care of the kids for days instead of the other parent. Maybe you need a better attorney representing your husband’s interests.
Jon has tried before. There is something very odd about the judge in this case. The decisions have never made sense to me. Jon has always been going to court with very reasonable requests, including about simply getting the current custody arrangements honored (such as when Kate would schedule TLC trips during his time). It’s as though he doesn’t exist. Initially, Kate had the full weight of TLC and its lawyers behind her, which explained it in an unjust world. Is that possibly still true, if the little girl is fighting being on TV?
My husband had right of first refusal written into his initial custody order but it was a very ridiculous 4 hours. Basically we couldn’t on a short date without having to ask his ex to watch the kid. It ended up amounting to a lot of custody interference, which is very, very common. The most recent Parenting Coordinator agreed with that assessment and it was renegotiated to 12 hours. He actually recommended completely dropping it and said that a lot of judges now won’t put a right to first refusal in the custody terms anymore because of how it has been abused.
I hope Jon is able to get Hannah off the show, I know he’s a complete douche but I do remember him saying before they split that he wanted to stop filming for the sake of the kids but Kate refused and said they couldnt go back, then sh*t hit the fan and that got buried in all the scandals. He used to be a decent father.
i dont understand why the kids are not considered old enough now to make their own decisions about filming. if she’s being forced to be on the show and doesn’t want to be, what’s the diff between that and slave labor?
I bet she manipulates them into filming, I’ve thought the same thing about them being old enough to refuse being on camera. The tidy show episode with the twins was very telling in my opinion, they aren’t comfortable with it and Kate is still very controlling.
I think he still is a decent father. But Kate has been trying her best to keep the kids away from him. She won’t let them take anything with them when they stay with him. One little boy seemed too afraid to leave the family pets in her uncertain care, so hadn’t seen his dad in a long time (Kate has a history of abusing and neglecting the animals, so his fears were justified). She bribed the older girls with clothing (that they couldn’t use on visits with dad) and tickets to events etc. and tried to turn them against him. That’s why they seemed so conflicted on tv during those interviews a while back.
She’s really awful. Jon is just a normal guy who loves his kids but doesn’t have any special abilities to deal successfully with his ex. He was abused by her for years also and that took its toll on him. He tries, though. He put money he got from some tv show into a house just ten minutes away from her mansion, to make visits easier – hope that worked. He’s in a very difficult situation. I do think that if the genders were reversed, he would get sympathy from people here who just dismiss him as an “unemployed slob” but are full of praise for Kate, who insisted on maintaining an expensive lifestyle for herself while her kids would have been happier in a smaller house in a real neighborhood with friends easily available. They’ve been kept so isolated. I also doubt there will be any of the show money left in their accounts when they are full grown – she finds ways to spend it. She also got most of Jon’s show money in child support, which was set at a ridiculously high amount that he never could have paid with earnings. If Kate hadn’t insisted on living the high life, there would have been plenty of money left over from the show, so all this “what else could the poor woman do?” talk is blinders-on.
I also don’t believe Jon “cheated” – she cut off sex with him pretty early, he was living above their garage in the new house for quite a while, they just pretended to be together for the show. It makes sense what the kids’ aunt and uncle said, that Kate told Jon he could go out with whomever he wanted as long as he was discreet so the show would go on. That explains why when he was asked later if he cheated, he was adamant (with no telltale signs of deception) that he had not. Kate filed for divorce only after a pap got pictures. She wasn’t angry about what he was doing but about him getting caught by the paps.
Jwool, I completely agree with everything you said. I think Kate might actually be the devil, and Jon just got caught up in it all and lost himself over the years. I watched that show religiously and was so upset when they split, I can’t believe how it all turned out now.
Wait–she’s only 40?
TLC has been profiting off of pond scum parents and exploiting innocent children for years.
Yup!
They are shameless and should be shut raked over the coals.
Extremely annoying woman. Can’t stand her, and I feel bad for her kids.
This cryptkeeper is still goin’.
I feel for their kids and Jon is just as full of it as she is. If he was able to profit from the show he would have no issue with those kids filming. He would be pushing for them to film more!
Jon pointed out the clear truth back at the time of the divorce that the kids were getting old enough that their privacy was important, it was time to shut the cameras down. TLC went at him full force. I don’t think he was angling for more TV money. He just knew his kids and what they needed.
I mean, it’s not like with 8 kids she couldn’t use the money…
Any man with her I question.
Has anyone seen Kendra Wilkinson lately? Cause I think Kate stole her face. Also, good luck Mr. Prescott. This one is a rokshasa.
Someone else sees it! I was thinking this exact same thing. It’s kind of scary actually, is it by accident or design?
And the wonky evil eye is evident.
She tweeted that she bought that ring for herself for her birthday just last month. She’s not engaged.
Those NAILS. That’s all I got.
I would take the story of his divorce with a grain of salt. People say anything and everything when they are divorcing and many times little of it is true. The ex wife complained that he spent little time with his kids but in the small amount of time that he did spend with them, he was able to turn them against her? I don’t believe it. Sounds like a woman scorned.