When stars go to court about child support, it's usually to ask a judge to reduce the amount they pay their ex. But Dennis Quaid has just done the opposite.
TMZ reports that the actor, who split from his third wife, real estate agent Kimberly Buffington, in 2016 after 12 years of marriage, has just asked a judge to take a look at his earnings and adjust his child support payments for their 12-year-old twins, Thomas and Zoe, with the expectation that he'll pay more.
The move comes amid a successful professional run for the actor thanks to recent projects including the Netflix movie "Merry Happy Whatever," the Amazon series "Goliath," his "Dog's Purpose" movies and his Esurance ads.
According to TMZ, court documents reveal that Dennis is currently paying Kimberly $13,750 a month for their twins. Their 2018 child support deal also requires him to pony up more when he makes more than $1.3 million a year — the base support amount plus a percentage of his additional earnings. New court documents confirm that Dennis made $550,000 a month during most of the last year and about $6 million in 2019.
So he's now honoring the deal and asking a judge to figure out how much more he should be paying and then, as TMZ reports, "make a below-guideline child support order based on the reasonable needs of Thomas and Zoe." Or, as TMZ translates it, "I'm more than willing and able to pay more, your honor … but let's make it a reasonable amount more."
Dennis and Kimberly's divorce was finalized in 2018. At the time, TMZ reported the terms of their settlement included shared joint custody of the twins with Kimberly getting physical custody 75 percent of the time. As for spousal support? She got a lump sum of $2 million plus another $1 million in a property settlement agreement. She also gets half of any residuals from movies he made during their marriage.
Dennis is also a dad to 27-year-old actor Jack Quaid with second wife Meg Ryan. In 2019, Dennis announced plans to marry for the fourth time: He proposed to 26-year-old doctoral student Laura Savoie, who's 39 years his junior, in Hawaii in October. He's said they'll wed within the year.