ROBYN BECK
- Grimes alleged Elon Musk spent less than half his time in 2023 in Texas, in recent legal filings.
- The former couple is fighting over whether Texas or California should have jurisdiction in their custody dispute.
- Musk still spends two to three days a week in California, Grimes alleged.
Elon Musk — who moved Tesla's headquarters from California to Texas in 2021— has been spending less than half his time in the Lone Star State, Grimes alleged in recent legal documents.
The tech billionaire's movements are more relevant than ever as he and former flame Grimes duke it out in Texas and California courts over which state should have jurisdiction over their custody battle.
Grimes, whose legal name is Claire Boucher, is suing Musk in California for physical custody of their three shared children, 3-year-old Æ A-12 — also known as baby X — and one-year-olds Exa (or Y) and Tau.
Musk quietly sued Grimes in Texas court in September to establish a "parent-child" relationship with the kids. He has accused Grimes of moving to California earlier this year in an attempt to "circumvent the jurisdiction" of Texas courts, which cap monthly child-support payments at just $2,760 per month for three children.
But in a November filing recently obtained by Business Insider, Grimes rejected Musk's assertions that Texas should have jurisdiction over the case, arguing that she and two of their children had been living in California when Musk filed his petition.
California has no limit on child support payments, meaning a person such as Musk — the richest man in the world — could easily be on the hook for hefty monthly payments.
Attorneys for Musk and Grimes did not respond to BI's request for comment.
Residence dispute
In residential custody disputes, courts typically grant jurisdiction to the state in which the children have been living for the previous six months in an effort to disrupt the kids' lives as little as possible, family law attorneys previously told BI.
In his September suit, Musk said the kids' primary residence was in Austin, Texas, where they had lived "for at least six consecutive months," including in a shared home with both him and Grimes from May to July of 2023.
Grimes, however, alleged in her November response that she and the two youngest children have been living in California since approximately December 31, 2022. Attorneys for the musician noted that while X was not present with his mother in California, the child remained with Musk in Texas only over Grimes' "objections."
Judges primarily focus on where the children — not the parents — have been living when making jurisdiction decisions, Christopher Melcher, a California family law attorney and partner at Walzer Melcher, told BI.
But that didn't stop Grimes from making claims about Musk's residential habits in her recent response. At the time of filing, she alleged Musk spent only 126 of the previous 274 days in Austin, or approximately 45% of his time, citing his travel schedule.
The billionaire frequently travels between his companies in Texas and California. Musk's private jets often fly between the two states multiple times per week. Over the past seven days alone, Musk's jets have flown six times between airports in Hawthorne, California and Brownsville, Texas, according to a log of his planes on the jet-tracking site JetSpy.
The Tesla CEO confirmed in December 2020 that he had moved from California to Texas after local COVID restrictions forced the company to temporarily close its only US car factory in the Bay Area.
Texas' lack of state income tax, however, may have been the ultimate motivating factor in Musk's move, saving him estimated billions of dollars come tax season.
In the years since his move, Musk has styled himself a bonafide Texas resident, launching initiatives to build more homes in the Lone Star State and building up his network of companies in Texas. In 2021, Musk said he was creating a town called Starbase near SpaceX's launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk was constructing a company town called Snailbrook near Boring Company's facilities in Bastrop, Texas. Plans for Snailbrook include a Montessori school and a private compound for Musk, according to the report.
Musk, who slammed California for its divorce laws in a 2010 op-ed for BI, has also ramped up his criticism of the state of California since the move, calling it "the land of taxes, overregulation and litigation" in 2022.
But Grimes alleges Musk hasn't fully given up the Golden State lifestyle, alleging in her filing that he typically spends two-to-three days a week in the state.
When Musk first bought Twitter (now called X) late last year, he was known to sleep at the company's headquarters in San Francisco. Despite calls for him to move the social media company's headquarters elsewhere, Musk has said he does not plan to move X from California. Musk's other companies also have strong footholds in the state. SpaceX is headquartered in Hawthorne, California, and Musk announced in February that Tesla was expanding its engineering headquarters in Palo Alto.
Musk's travel details alone are unlikely to convince a judge to grant California jurisdiction in the custody case, two family law attorneys told BI.
However, if Grimes' claims that the two youngest kids have been with her in California since December are proven true, that would be a "slam dunk" in arguing that the case for those kids should be in California, according to Peter Walzer, a family law expert and partner at Walzer Melcher.
Jurisdiction when it comes to 3-year-old X, who is often photographed at global events with his famous father, may be more complicated, the lawyers said. While Grimes has said the child was with Musk in Texas over her objection, the details around the arrangement, and how she responded, are unclear.