Last week, we heard that Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas had agreed to go into mediation to try to work out the terms of their divorce. In September, Joe filed for divorce in Florida, where they lived and had a home up until early this year. Weeks later, Sophie sued Joe in a New York court, saying that he had abducted their children, refused to relinquish their passports and that the girls need to return with her to the UK. It was set to be a catastrophically messy and international custodial battle, but the fact that they agreed to the mediation and agreed to some temporary terms laid out by the New York court seemed like good first steps. As it turns out, their mediation went really well and they’re likely about to sign an agreement. TMZ had details about the immediate custodial framework for the rest of the year:
Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner have struck a deal in their divorce case — and it sounds like they’re both on the same page. As we reported, Joe and Sophie were hashing out the terms of their divorce during 3 days of mediation last week.
There is a prenup, so it looks like assets were not a big issue. The bigger issue, of course, was child custody. Sophie wanted the kids to live with her in the UK, and Joe wanted them to stay with him in the U.S.
According to settlement docs, obtained by TMZ, “an amicable resolution on all issues between them is forthcoming.” Translation — they’re super close to signing a settlement.
In the meantime, they have agreed to a temporary child custody agreement. Under the terms, the 2 kids — ages 1 and 3 — will be with Sophie from October 9 through October 21. During that time, she’s allowed to travel with them to the UK. On October 21, Sophie must return with the kids to the U.S., where Joe will then take them through November 2.
The kids will then go back to Sophie until November 22. Joe gets them on that day and will presumably spend Thanksgiving with them. The kids go back to mom on December 16, where they will stay until January 7. So she gets them for XMAS and New Year’s. Sounds like a final settlement is looming.
This kind of custodial framework will only “work” while their daughters are young. Once they get to school age, it’s highly unlikely that either parent would agree to a two-weeks in the UK, two weeks in the US pattern. So, while I’m glad that mediation worked well for them for the time being, I’m not sure if they’ve actually come up with long-term solutions. It also strikes me that Sophie and Joe are both wondering if the other will relent about their (separate) living situations. Sophie might be going into this thinking that Joe will eventually buy a home in London, and Joe might believe that Sophie will eventually want to move back to the US.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
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- Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner attends the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Celebrating the 95th Annual Academy Awards Hosted By Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 12, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California,Image: 762353006, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 12: (L-R) Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner attend the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 12, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California.,Image: 762896236, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner, Credit line: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon
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- Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner at the 2nd Annual Academy Museum Gala held at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, USA on October 15, 2022. Copyright: xZoonar.com/Lumeimages.comx 19252721,Image: 800185331, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: imago is entitled to issue a simple usage license at the time of provision. Personality and trademark rights as well as copyright laws regarding art-works shown must be observed. Commercial use at your own risk., Model Release: no, Credit line: IMAGO/Zoonar.com/Lumeimages.com / Avalon
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- Paris, FRANCE – Sophie turner, Joe Jonas, Joan Smalls, Bella Hadid, and other celebs attend the launch dinner of Louis Vuitton, Stellar Times, Cosmetic Cloud, Dancing Blossom, Rhapsody and Symphony, at the Louis Vuitton foundation in Paris, France. Pictured: Sophie Turner, Joe Jonas BACKGRID USA 5 JULY 2021 BYLINE MUST READ: Best Image / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- West Hollywood, CA – Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner depart a Hollywood star ceremony afterparty at Craig’s after the Jonas Brothers received a star on the Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. Pictured: Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner BACKGRID USA 30 JANUARY 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: Head To Toe Celebs / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- West Hollywood, CA – Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner depart a Hollywood star ceremony afterparty at Craig’s after the Jonas Brothers received a star on the Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. Pictured: Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner BACKGRID USA 30 JANUARY 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: Head To Toe Celebs / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Paris, FRANCE – Beloved Jonas Brother Joe Jonas Retains Divorce Lawyer After 4 Years of Marriage to Actress Sophie Turner. The two share two children together. Pictured: Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner BACKGRID USA 4 SEPTEMBER 2023 BYLINE MUST READ: Best Image / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- New York, NY – Amid a divorce battle with Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner comes out of Taylor Swift’s apartment and heads to lunch at Bubby’s with a friend. Pictured: Sophie Turner BACKGRID USA 27 SEPTEMBER 2023 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
Well it seems like a good plan for now and I hope it’s good for the children who are very young now. I suspect things will get tougher as the children become school age because will it be England or America? At least they are trying for the sake of the children.
Sophie just needs to wait it out a year – he’ll get another girlfriend, knock her up, and forget all about his first two kids. Tale as old as time.
I came to say the same thing. Joe will find a new woman to love bomb, and Sophie will be painted the villain in his life. “She’s the devil, keeps me from the kids etc etc.” New woman will fall for it until it’s too late. Meanwhile Sophie and the girls can live their best life in the UK while Joe makes a new family.
This. I wish in my twenties someone had taught a masterclass in what to know going into a relationship with an older man who’s going to use his experience, authority, and imbalanced power dynamic to manipulate someone less familiar with the situation. I now just warn people if they listen great- if not well someone better have a TED talk on these matters…
It comes off to me like he just wants to “win” somehow.
Does he always look baked? Is it just his face? Because he looks totally baked in both of those photos.
I believe that you’re right, but I also got the feeling that his mom was somehow involved in the planning of this. He just doesn’t seem like he cut ally cares about them kids.
Wow, guess what? There are some good fathers out there you know? Also, not all mothers are angels.
Yes, there are wonderful fathers out there, but we’re not talking about those fathers. We’re talking about a man who has already demonstrated more concern for getting his way than for doing what’s best for the children. Throw in the weird pap shot with his nanny, the writing would appear to be on the wall. He may surprise us, but thus far he’s being pretty cliche.
I would have given him the benefit of the doubt before the pap walk and withholding their passports.
I guess this buys them 2 or 3 years to think about what long-term plans they want to make. Once those kids start Pre-K it will need to be a very long time in one location.
It’s great that they were able to work out an agreement so quickly. Once they’re school-aged I suspect that they’ll spend that time with Sophie in the UK, and with him for holidays and summers.
Part of me thinks though that being a single parent (and I know, he has LOADS of resources) isn’t going to be all he imagines it to be and longer-term the kids are gonna end up with her even more.
I’m glad for everyone involved that it didn’t end up as a long drawn out battle, but that arrangement, my gawd. My parents had split custody. They only lived 30 minutes apart and it was very disruptive having two different lives. The thought of throwing in frequent international travel (after which I personally always need a few days to recover from jetlag and sinus issues).
Yeah I sympathize. So many parents in my local area are divorced still live in same school district and will say “it’s great, the kids spend every other week with me and they don’t have to disrupt their routine for school” meanwhile sure it’s great for the two parents, but the kids talk about how much they hate having to bounce back and forth from mom’s to dad’s…. One family even the dog has to go back and forth with the kids and then the parents are like “don’t know why our dog is acting up”
I’m a middle school teacher and usually mentor a group of students and I agree that switching every week is really hard on kids. I once had a student with divorced parents where the kids stayed in one house and the parents switched every other week. It seemed like a lot of hassle and very costly, but they both said that as it was only for a couple of years until the youngest was ready to leave home and they were willing to commit for that period of time.
The kids staying put and the parents switching out is a great solution I see work all the time, but ONLY when the parents can behave like mature adults. In some of my clients’ cases. The parents even share the same bedroom (though, obviously not at the same time) though they often have separate rooms. Major holidays are shared at the house, with the non-custodial (at that moment) parent often sleeping over, and of course things like birthdays, celebrations, etc. happen as normally as possible for the kids.
The best part? When this can be pulled off successfully, I find it helps the parents, too. Eventually parents’ birthdays and celebrations are shared again, and new partners are included. I’ve seen two reconciliations (and they’ve stuck!) but that is not common.
I’ve literally never seen it go wrong (though it can be very bumpy at first, while feelings settle) when both parents are putting the kids first.
You guys are blowing my mind. My parents didn’t even acknowledge each other during the Sunday drop off. Didn’t attend the same school functions. When it was over it was o.v.e.r. If we’d been rich, they probably would have lived on different continents.
Sophie and Joe are rich enough that they could do this. Or maybe like that super rich person compromise where they have separate homes right next door to each other. They would have to figure out where though. I always thought he was more LA based so NY seems like the best compromise.
@bettyrose
Yea, my dad didn’t even come to my wedding because my mom would of course be there.
Children (and adults) adjusting to jet lag is no small matter. I go back and forth between the US and EU with my child (about the same age). From my experience, it takes children at least a week or two before they completely adjust, so just going back and forth for two weeks at a time will be grueling for parents and kids alike.
Being in each location at least 1 – 1.5 months at a time would work better — but even then, my child has issues with what is ‘home’ remembering ‘home’, missing his father, remembering which language to speak, etc…
I totally feel for Sophie and her desire to make sure the children get an upbringing not completely in the US, especially as females in the current political climate.
Agreed. I was the kid being shuttled back and forth every week or every other week and it was the worst possible setup. (That’s without adding jet lag to the equation.) Neither place felt like home. I constantly had to explain to teachers and other kids that I had two houses and two phone numbers. I missed out on a lot with my friends. I was basically living a double life before I was 7.
The custody battle wasn’t about what was best for me, no matter what was claimed by both sides, it was about winning and soothing their own hurt. Neither were bad people and either of them having primary custody would have been better than the 50/50 split they tried. Divorce fragments children’s lives.
Having been the nanny-who-flies-with-the-kids, my guess is there’s a nanny who has been with those kids the whole time, and can provide some stability too …
What was that like? Did you sit in the same class tier as the parents? Did you get to travel on their dime?
I worked for a pretty ordinary divorced couple who lived in different states — so I flew alone with the kids, who were 4 & 6 to 6&8 at the time. I worked for the mom, who always hired someone in the winter (it was a ski town) to help out while she worked, and tried to have a social life. All fairly low key. I got room/board, a ski pass and a (too tiny) bit of money every week. Since the dad ran a rafting company back east where I’d also worked, I’d fly back with the kids for spring break, hand out with my friends, do some paddling, then fly back with them.
This was not nanny-to-the-rich-and-famous. Loved those kids! They’re all grown up now.
That custody arrangement sounds brutal for the kids but it also sounds temporary, maybe just enough to get them through the holidays, which makes sense. And they’re young enough that it should work for the time being. Something more permanent will have to be put in place when they start school (I think the older one is starting nursery school but they may put that off for a year?) but for right now it seems like a decent compromise. Too much back and forth to be long term though IMO but who knows.
I still kind of think he had an affair and that’s why he came out swinging so hard with the anti-Sophie campaign (to make himself look better if the affair ever became public), and it explains why this is suddenly being settled so quickly too, if there was some sort of deal reached to try to clean this situation up ASAP.
I think it got settled so quickly because she has money also and because he lied that they lived in the US. They had history that they were going to live in the UK. She kept quiet and worked with her lawyers. I knew she would answer legally with receipts.
Good god. Just travelled to the UK with my 2.5yo son in May and it was so hard, especially the time change. These poor kiddos, it’s going to be so hard on them.
Traveling can be tough, but I think we all imagine it from the perspective of non-rich, non-celebrities. Traveling around the globe for adults/children who already do it often and in luxury isn’t the same as flying economy with no help or resources.
It will be extremely hard on them. The jet lag will be insane, the food, cultural differences, the different accents, the weather. This is going to affect those girls so much. I wonder what kind of accent they will develop splitting their time in the US and UK. Inevitably, they will end up liking one parent more and one country more.
“e, the food, cultural differences, the different accents, the weather. “
Lol, what?
Just an Australian dropping in to laugh about this jet lag complaint… what now? It’s only a 5 hour time difference between NYC and London. That’s pretty good!! I used to get moved from country to country for work and if you manage your sleep well on a flight, even the worst jet lag lasts two days, tops.
different accents..? their own parents have different accents, gish , imagine when the poster ME hears about having parents who speaks different languages, the horror,!
Just coming here to say the same thing – regardless of if they are flying private/first class, the jet lag is really hard on kids – we live in US, my inlaws are in UK and my 5 yo and 2.5 yo take a full week to adjust on either end everytime we go. And that’s if no one catches a bug on the plane!
I’m so happy for Sophie and the kids (Joe can still suck eggs) that an amicable solution has been worked out for now. It bodes well for them long term.
That is a lot of flying for two toddlers. I imagine it will be hard on them. And very disruptive for their young little lives. I guess it’s good that they are flying between New York and London, but still, transatlantic flights and time changes.
Yeah, this plan isn’t going to work when the kids are older. But that’s true of a lot of custody plans. The way you parent a 10-year-old is different than how you parent a 2-year-old in lots of ways.
It’s good they’ve found a solution that works for them now. I suspect their people have yelled at them enough that when it’s time to think about the girls’ schooling, they’ll be able to handle it less contentiously. And some other things probably will have changed by then – they both may have found other partners or had other children by that point, which might influence where they want to live and what custody arrangements they think will work for them.
This sounds like a good temporary/ preliminary solution, and it’s great for the kids that their parents could arrive at a relatively amicable compromise.
However, Sophie had sued Joe saying that England had jurisdiction of their divorce, whereas Joe had filed in Miami. Has that been resolved? It’s not clear to me from the TMZ article. Otherwise, is this custody just until the they figure that out?
Why do we know the DATES these parents will be exchanging custody? Is there no way to keep these settlement documents sealed? That unnerves me a little.
What mostly unnerves is this ridiculous schedule for a 1 and 3 years old! This reminds me of Jesse from Grey’s Anatomy’s custody agreement that had his little children take red-eye flights from LA to NYC. And he would only spend a few hours with them because he worked and they had school. What is the point of seeing your children if that requires you to disrupt their quality of life? Sorry not sorry: one of the consequences of leaving the mother of your young children is that you will spend less time with your young children. A child’s stability should not be scarified because daddy wants to say in a People mag interview he’s an involved dad.
When Joe Jonas went on that lunch to show what a good father he is, he brought along their nanny. He couldn’t even handle being alone with his children to help his PR. These toddlers will be carted in and out of airports during COVID high season only to assuage the ego of their dad.
He’s really got Disney Dad written all over him, doesn’t he?
I wish it were more common to have the guy just openly admit, hey, I actually don’t want custody, I don’t want to do the work of being emotionally available, and I definitely don’t want to do the grind of caring for children. I want to go salsa dancing with the twit of the week and get drunk and live like a young bachelor, and then I’m going to show up once a month (or so) to take the kids to whatever and cosplay a great fun dad, and then I’ll be (mercifully) out of your hair the rest of the time.
You are absolutely right about everything. I also wonder how many nannies they will burn out. I know the parents are fabulously rich, but there isn’t enough money in the world to convince me to take that particular job. Yikes.
I think it’s good Sophie came out swinging when she finally responded legally because the initial filing in Florida and bad mom PR campaign felt like Joe was either trying to get ahead of something, gain the upper hand/bully her into what he wanted or both. Her legal response was a pretty intense filing that signaled a willingness to get messy and fight which I suspect brought him to the table as more of an equal vs her being in a position of weakness. Hopefully they’ve figured out a long term arrangement that will work and while I think it sounds pretty brutal, based on Sophie’s filing those kids are used to a lot of travel.
Totally agree.
By making huge *public* deal of her view of the custody deal, ST blindsided JJ. In the end, the validity or non-validity of her documents does not matter, what matters is how JJ was portrayed.
His side smeared her and did not expect her to respond so publicly and so strongly to his sneaky. His PR startegy backfired and he had to shut the whole thing down.
The amount of people acting like Joe wanting custody of his own kids is some kind of strategic mind game is insane. He’s also their parent. I have yet to see a good reason why Sophie should / will get full custody.
It’s Joe’s smear campaign that was seen as a “mind game.” Rightly so.
Well, what I find interesting is that they these poor kids won’t be in one place in the US. Joe’s (Jonas Brothers) concert schedule is pretty well full between now and 12/9. Then he is on concernt tour from Feb 27 ’24-Mar 9-’24 and then again May 20-June 20.
Talk about these kids not getting any rest in one place for very long when they’re with their Dad between now and Dec 9th. Wow.
The question I have at this point is whether he will continue to tour anytime in the foreseeable future after June 20th, 2024? How is that stable for kids?
How is that stable for any child of touring parents? Joe Jonas won’t be the first music star to have his kids on tour with him.
Those poor kids! They have to endure a transatlantic flight, every two weeks, because their parents can’t get along.
I agree with the people who think this arrangement will only work as long as they’re too small for school and also with those who think he’ll lose interest, once he has a new love. As it is, if Jonas is committed to touring, this sounds more like a custody agreement between his ex-wife and his designated custodian for the children, which sounds as if it is his mom. She might never want to let them go.
Also want to add that this arrangement ensures that the children will have no opportunity to adjust to a time zone. This will be disruptive to their sleep-wake cycles. We have NO idea how this will affect their development, in the long term, because so few children have be exposed to this kind of insane schedule.
Came in late to read this post and I agree that all she needs to do is wait him out. The new girlfriend Will Not want to date or cohabit with a man who expects her to be a mommy to 2 toddlers while he is away being Joe.
Still – fuck Joe Jonas. He tried to tank Sophie. He failed. He temporary yields.