It might reasonably be expected that a family law proceeding involving a business tycoon and a woman described by the media as “one of the biggest names in modeling” would be centrally about high-asset divorce matters and property division.
In the case of Francois-Henri Pinault and Linda Evangelista, it concerned, instead, child support for their young son.
Pinault, 49, is the head of a family-run global business conglomerate headquartered in France that includes luxury-goods companies such as Gucci and Yves St. Laurent. His family fortune is estimated at around $13 billion, and he makes an annual salary of several million dollars. Evangelista, 46, has been a fashion icon for more than two decades and is still a central figure in the modeling industry.
The couple was briefly together several years ago and had a son, “Augie,” who is now five. They never married, and Evangelista took care of the boy’s financial needs by herself, until — as she told a New York court last week — the $46,000 a month she needed to spend on bodyguards, a nanny and related matters grew to be an untenable outlay.
A spokesman for Pinault stated prior to the couple’s court date last week that, while Pinault was amenable to paying child support, the amount requested by Evangelista was “ridiculous.”
After two days of testimony, the couple announced that they had reached agreement on all support matters.
The details of their settlement will likely never be known by the public. The magistrate handling their case approved the confidential agreement and sealed it from public view.
Source: CBS News, “Linda Evangelista and Francois-Henri Pinault’s deal gets judge’s OK,” May 9, 2012
