R. Kelly pays $40,000 in back child support payments while facing sex abuse charges
Embattled R&B singer R. Kelly has paid out $40,000 in child support to cover June and July installments and to avoid contempt of court charges that could have landed him back in jail. Lisa Damico, Kelly’s family att...
Embattled R&B singer R. Kelly has finally paid out $40,000 in child support to avoid contempt of court charges that could have landed him back in jail.
Lisa Damico, Kelly’s family attorney, appeared in Chicago court this week and paid $41,666 to cover Kelly’s June and July child support payments to his ex-wife, Andrea Kelly. TMZ reports that Kelly allegedly still owes interest that accrued from back child support in the amount of $32,000.
But his manager Darrell Johnson was quick to tell TMZ that “at no point in the foreseen future do we see paying interest of child support. As of May 14, 2019 Mr. Kelly is current on support payments.”
After the hearing, Damico told reporters that Kelly is “not a deadbeat dad,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times reported. “All he wants to do is do right by his kids.”
This latest payment comes just a few days after Kelly appeared in a court hearing and forked over $62,000 in back child support and a month after a judge ordered Kelly jailed for contempt of court for failing to pay $161,000 in back child support to Kelly, who shares three children with the singer.
Kelly has maintained in these child support hearings that his finances have suffered as a result of the Surviving R. Kelly television that sparked renewed interest in longstanding sexual abuse allegations. Last month, Kelly was arrested on charges of sexually abusing three girls and a woman over a decade spanning from the late 1990s.
Kelly has pleaded not guilty charges and maintains his innocence.
Prosecutors in Illinois and New York continue to investigate and are believed to be pursuing additional charges.
