Grimes has filed a court petition over her three children with ex-boyfriend Elon Musk.
The musician, whose real name is Claire Boucher, filed the petition on Friday “to establish parental relationship,” according to court records. While the details are still unclear due to the filings being private, the petition effectively requests a court order that identifies a child’s legal parents and is usually required when the parents of a child are unmarried.
Such petitions are often filed alongside demands for custody rights or child support, though it does not appear that the “Oblivion” singer has made such requests as of Tuesday.
Grimes and Musk have three children together over the course of their on-and-off relationship, which began in 2018 after they connected on Twitter. Musk acquired the platform last year for $44 billion, renaming it X and coming under heat for loosening regulations and enabling hate speech on the site. Grimes, 35, and Musk, 52, have never been married to each other.
The Tesla CEO is currently a father of 11. Musk had six children with his first wife, Justine Wilson, before welcoming son X Æ A-12 with Grimes in May 2020. The two split up in September 2021, only to briefly reunite and have daughter Exa Dark Sideræel, nicknamed Y, via surrogate.
Weeks before Y’s arrival, former Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis gave birth to Musk’s twins Strider and Azure. The twins’ birth was not made public until the following year. Musk reportedly ended his relationship with Grimes for a second time at the start of 2022.
Grimes and Musk secretly had a third child, according to a biography about the billionaire by journalist Walter Isaacson. The two are parents to a son named Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau. It’s unclear when Tau was born.
In early September, Grimes appeared to share a distressed plea to Musk on social media, begging him to let her see her children. Screenshots showed the singer tweeting at Isaacson after his story about Musk came out in Time magazine and featured photos of the billionaire with Zilis and their twins, as well as a photo of him with Grimes’ first son.
“Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer,” the now-deleted tweet said, according to the screenshot. “I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart.”
Days later, the singer tweeted that she spoke with Zilis to deescalate the situation and that the two women “respect each other a lot and we’re excited to become friends and have the kids grow up together.”
“I truly apologize for responding to Walter like that. As u can imagine, that was a very gut level reaction to a thing that has been very hard for me,” she continued. “Communication about the twins wasn’t handled super well in the past, but I now totally understand what happened and totally forgive the situation.”
The revelation of Grimes’ lawsuit comes on the heels of another legal battle filed Monday against Musk. In a defamation lawsuit, 22-year-old Ben Brody said the billionaire falsely accused him of being a federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi. Brody, a Jewish man from California, said that he and his family were forced to flee their home after receiving harassment and threats as a result of Musk’s accusation.