After accusing Orianne Cevey and “her new husband” of “an armed occupation and takeover” of his approximately $40 million Miami Beach mansion, Phil Collins took his ex-wife to court on Tuesday in the hopes of finally getting her to leave.
During the 90-minute proceedings held over Zoom, Collins’s lawyer accused Cevey of using “gamesmanship” to take the home as well as intentionally slowing down the legal process by repeatedly changing lawyers and allegations, according to the Daily Mail. Judge Stephanie Silver also highlighted the fact that Cevey’s latest lawyer was the third she and her new husband, businessman Thomas Bates, had hired in four days. In addition to her new representation, she also “filed a counterclaim seeking approximately $20 million” from the musician, as her lawyer argued that she has an ownership stake in the home, despite the property being registered under a company owned by Collins.
A large part of the hearing was used to discuss the removal of Collins’s valuables from the home which he claims are in “substantial risk,” including jewelry, memorabilia, unpublished music, and collection of items from the Battle of the Alamo said to be worth $15 million—a portion of which have already been donated to a San Antonio museum. Both parties agreed to have the items removed and put in storage until their case is decided.
Judge Silver said it will take another hearing to address these new claims and, in the meantime, Collins can go live in another one of his homes. But his attorney Jeff Fisher retorted that Cevey also has another home, saying, “Let her go to Las Vegas.” Fisher was referring to his firm’s discovery that Cevey had secretly married Bates in August and purchased a home for roughly $1.7 million in Las Vegas in December 2019, prior to breaking up with Collins for the second time in July of this year. He continued, “This is an absolute fabrication, it’s transparent. Lawyer number three, story number four. And so, the issue really is, do they get to, through gamesmanship, deprive somebody of their home? While she has another home?”
Collins and Cevey first met when she was just 21 years old and working as his translator during his 1994 tour of Switzerland. They married in 1999 and have two teenage sons together, Nicholas and Matthew, and ultimately finalized their divorce in 2008. Collins reportedly paid her a $46.68 million divorce settlement. Following Cevey’s separation from her second husband, investment banker Charles Mejjati, the couple reconciled. When they broke up again this summer, Cevey allegedly took possession of their Miami home at which point she and Bates, according to court documents, allegedly “changed the alarm codes, blocked the surveillance cameras, barred entry by vendors and the real estate agent, and are threatening, implicitly and explicitly, to prolong their unlawful occupation of the property through force.”
In an exclusive statement, Fisher previously told Vanity Fair, “We got a letter from [Cevey]’s attorney dated September 20th that was a blatant effort to shakedown Phil and, as a former federal prosecutor, I have zero tolerance for that. So, now, we’re going to fully enforce the law against her.”
Representatives for both Phil Collins and Orianne Cevey were not immediately available for comment.
— Monica Lewinsky on the Pandemic’s Forgotten F-Word
— Why Harry and Meghan Won’t Spend Christmas With the Queen
— What One Book Critic Learned by Reading 150 Trump Books
— How Ghislaine Maxwell Recruited Young Girls for Jeffrey Epstein
— More Details Emerge on Prince Harry and Prince William’s “Bitter Explosion”
— Tracing Photographer Richard Avedon’s Bohemian Coming of Age
— From the Archive: The Mysteries of Princess Diana’s Fatal Car Crash
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.
