{"id":8262,"date":"2025-10-22T10:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/david-geffen-estranged-husband-drops-lawsuit-divorce-fight-continues\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T10:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T10:00:15","slug":"david-geffen-estranged-husband-drops-lawsuit-divorce-fight-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/david-geffen-estranged-husband-drops-lawsuit-divorce-fight-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"David Geffen Estranged Husband Drops Lawsuit, Divorce Fight Continues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tDavid Geffen<\/strong>\u2019s estranged husband has dropped a scandalous lawsuit that leveled shocking abuse allegations against the music and film mogul while seeking lifelong financial support.<\/p>\n

\n\tGeffen will continue to fight it out in divorce court over temporary spousal support and potential asset division with Donovan Michaels, a former exotic dancer who married the 82-year-old billionaire without a prenup in 2023. But Michaels\u2019 lawyers filed a court notice on Friday (Oct. 17) dropping a civil lawsuit that had sought far more: \u201cfinancial support commensurate with his lifestyle for the rest of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tMichaels\u2019 civil case, brought in July after Geffen initiated divorce proceedings, aired years of dirty laundry and leveled shocking allegations against the Asylum Records and Geffen Records founder.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 32-year-old (born David Armstrong) claimed that Geffen began paying him for sex after they met through the website SeekingArrangements.com in 2016. Michaels said Geffen treated him as a \u201csexual commodity\u201d and plied him with drugs and alcohol as \u201ctools of coercion\u201d during their relationship and eventual marriage.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the heart of the lawsuit was Michaels\u2019 claim that Geffen promised to provide him with \u201clifetime support.\u201d Michaels said he relied on this assurance when he gave up a modeling career to be a full-time husband to Geffen.<\/p>\n

\n\tGeffen, meanwhile, fervently denied Michaels\u2019 claims as \u201cpetty gossip and salacious lies.\u201d The billionaire said Michaels was merely trying to extort a lucrative settlement out of him, and that he never promised any sort of lifelong financial support.<\/p>\n

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\n\tNow that the civil lawsuit has been dropped, lawyers for the estranged couple will focus their attention on a more traditional marriage dissolution proceeding filed by Geffen in May. Geffen is asking in that case for a judge to declare that his only financial obligation to Michaels is $50,000 per month in spousal support for just one year.<\/p>\n

\n\tGeffen says the judge should note that he\u2019s already given Michaels $5 million worth of art and jewelry, and notes that the couple lived \u201cseparate lives\u201d during the mere 23 months they were married. Geffen claims that because he was retired and making no income during the marriage, there aren\u2019t any marital assets to share with Michaels.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhile respondent will have far less wealth than petitioner due to petitioner\u2019s vast separate property estate when the parties\u2019 married, respondent will certainly walk away from this brief marriage with more wealth than most Americans,\u201d wrote Geffen\u2019s attorney Parima Pandkhou<\/strong> in a Sept. 18 divorce filing.<\/p>\n

\n\tMichaels, however, says it remains an open question whether Geffen made money through investments during their marriage that should be considered joint assets. Michaels has slammed Geffen for trying to \u201cconceal the truth about his enormous wealth\u201d and says the divorce cannot be finalized until he gets a chance to look at Geffen\u2019s books.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cThis is quite literally a case of David and Goliath,\u201d wrote Michael\u2019s lawyer Samantha Spector <\/strong>on Oct. 2. \u201cWhile David has repeatedly yet falsely attempted to portray himself as an aging \u2018retiree,\u2019 the reality is that he remains an enormously important power player in uber wealthy circles who, through a myriad of capitalist ventures, is one of the highest income earners on the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMichaels\u2019 and Geffen\u2019s lawyers are set to appear in Los Angeles family court for a hearing on Nov. 14. Neither side returned a request for comment from Billboard <\/em>on Tuesday (Oct. 21).<\/p>\n

\"Billboard<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Geffen\u2019s estranged husband has dropped a scandalous lawsuit that leveled shocking abuse allegations against the music and film mogul while seeking lifelong financial support. Geffen will continue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[315,577,41,1108,4247,835,6646,470,303],"class_list":["post-8262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-continues","tag-david","tag-divorce","tag-drops","tag-estranged","tag-fight","tag-geffen","tag-husband","tag-lawsuit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}