Mel B stops husband getting hands on her millions by filing for divorce in the nick of time
ForMEr Spice Girl Mel B filed for divorce just weeks before a crucial 10th anniversary deadline to shield millions from her estranged husband under Californian law.
Melanie Brown, 41, worth around £40million, filed for divorce from Stephen Belafonte at a Los Angeles court on March 20 – just 11 weeks short of the couple’s 10th anniversary.
Under California law, a court can award indefinite support to the spouse earning less if a couple have been wed for more than ten years.
As part of this so-called ‘ten-year rule’, the spouse earning less income retains the right to be paid alimony for as long as he or she needs, and as long as the paying spouse can afford to pay.
But if a couple are married for less than a decade a court is likely to set the duration of support at half the length of the mar- riage. For Miss Brown, who married Belafonte, 41, in Las Vegas on June 6, 2007, it means she should only have to support Belafonte for five years.
on Monday, the star took out a restraining order against Belafonte, accusing him of beating her, forcing her to have threesomes and getting the nanny Lorraine Gilles pregnant.
Miss Brown said Belafonte set Miss Gilles up ‘as my rival’ and would ‘degrade’ her in front of the nanny, who was 20 when she was hired, by saying she was ‘much younger and better looking’.
She also claims her estranged husband paid Miss Gilles, now 26, more than £240,000 of her money for ‘alleged nanny services’ and took ‘millions of dollars’ from her over the course of their marriage through ‘one joint account in which all my income was deposited’.
The singer said he assaulted her numerous times, including during filming for the X Factor in 2014 when she appeared with what looked like cuts and bruises, and forced her into threesomes which he secretly filmed and threatened to make public.
Since marrying in 2007, their relationship has been overshadowed by Belafonte’s chequered past and claims he had assaulted his wife. In divorce papers filed in LA, Miss Brown asked to terminate the court’s ability to award spousal support.
She is not the first high-profile star to use the ten-year rule.
In 2001, Tom Cruise used the clause in his divorce from Nicole Kidman, stating clearly on his divorce papers: ‘Period between marriage and separation – Years: 9, Months: 11.’
Yesterday, Miss Brown’s sister Danielle broke her silence over the claims, branding Belafonte ‘a sorry excuse of a man’.
Danielle, who wrote ‘#gotmysisterback’ in the post, also hit out at her sister’s former nanny and her husband, adding: ‘I hope you Lorraine Giles (sic) and Michael Bleu go to jail and rot in hell!!’
The 36-year-old actress and her mother Andrea, 61, have been estranged from Miss Brown since falling out with Belafonte at the start of his relationship with the singer. Posting a picture of herself on Instagram wearing a bikini and holding an inflatable champagne bottle, she wrote: ‘8 years of abusive calls me and my mum have had, stating we would never see Melanie again. I am laughing and celebrating as you were wrong. You are a sorry excuse of a man!!’
Earlier this year, Danielle revealed her family had not seen Miss Brown for eight years following a fall-out over Belafonte.
In 2008, her mother claimed the family had been cut off from Miss Brown and her two children by Belafonte after she questioned whether the film producer would get on with her daughter’s eldest child Phoenix, 18.
At the time, Mrs Brown said: ‘Half of my family is missing to me. Every day I pine for Mel, Phoenix and Angel [Miss Brown’s second daughter].’
Belafonte denies all allegations made against him and says he has been left ‘distraught’.
In a statement, Belafonte’s lawyers accused Miss Brown of a ‘smear campaign’ to ‘cover up [her] own conduct in the marriage’. Miss Brown, a judge on America’s Got Talent, has a fiveyear-old daughter, Madison, with Belafonte.
She also has two other daughters – nine-year-old Angel, from a relationship with actor Eddie Murphy, and eldest daughter Phoenix, from her first marriage to dancer Jimmy Gulzar.
Belafonte’s questionable past includes prosecutions for handling stolen goods, vandalism, beating a mallard to death and an assault conviction for hitting his thengirlfriend in 2003. Described as a film producer, Belafonte has a small handful of production credits for independent and lowbudget Hollywood movies over the last decade.
But he seems to have had little work during his relationship with Miss Brown.
According to Miss Brown, Belafonte, whose real name is Stephan Stansbury, ‘held himself out to be the son of singer Harry Belafonte, when in reality he is not related’. The singer, who has worked as a TV presenter on numerous shows around the world, claims she was the ‘primary income earner’ throughout the marriage, while Belafonte ‘held neither steady nor gainful employment’.
Jan Moir – Pages 34-35
‘You are a sorry excuse of a man’