R. Kelly’s ex-wife wants another $32,000; look at R&B star’s bank accounts

R. Kelly’s ex-wife says the singer still owes her more for $32,000 in interest on unpaid child support and college tuition for their daughter, and if the singer won’t pay up, she wants to have a look at his financial records.

Lawyers for Andrea Kelly last week filed a motion asking a judge to set a deadline for the R&B singer to pay the remaining portion of nearly $200,000 he owed after falling months behind on child support payments for the couple’s three children, court records show.

Divorce lawyer Alison Motta said at a hearing in May that Kelly’s daughter had been forced to drop out of college after the singer stopped making tuition payments last year. In court Thursday, Motta tried to serve Kelly’s divorce lawyer with paperwork demanding he bring bank statements, tax returns, pay stubs and property records to court if he hasn’t paid up. Kelly’s lawyer, Lisa Damico, refused the paperwork, meaning Motta will have to try to serve Kelly, who had refused to open the door of his Trump Tower apartment the last time she sent a process server after him.

Judge Lori Rosen in March sent Kelly to jail after he failed to come up with a portion of what he owed — about $160,000 — and the singer spent three nights locked up before he was able to gather the money.

Kelly’s criminal defense attorney, Steve Greenberg, said Friday that Kelly would pay whatever he’s required to pay, and noted that the singer in May made payments covering the $20,000 per month in child support for both June and July as well.

“The money that’s left (to pay) is not child support. It’s interest,” Greenberg said. “What he paid was the child support, which is supposed to go to his children, not the windfall of interest that would go to his wife,” Greenberg said. “He had a finite amount of money... he has never shirked his responsibility to his children or his ex-wife.”

Motta said Friday that only about $12,000 was interest, and the rest was for tuition and college expenses that Kelly is obliged to pay in the divorce settlement.

Greenberg has said Kelly’s finances are “a mess” in the wake of public outcry over longstanding allegations that the singer has had sex with underage girls and has been involved in cult-like relationships with other women. In March, Kelly gave a lengthy interview to CBS correspondent Gayle King, in which he said his wealth had been mishandled by friends and advisors, and that he’d never been inside a bank until he visited a Bank of America branch after his arrest.

Kelly in February was charged with criminal sexual abuse of four women, three of them teenagers, in incidents dating from 1998 to 2010. Thursday, prosecutors formally indicted him on more serious charges in one of those cases, upgrading to felony counts that carry a maximum sentence of 30 years.

He and Andrea Kelly, a dancer, divorced in 2006, and all court records in their case were sealed in 2013.

Rosen last month ruled that records in the case would be open to the public, after media organizations, including the Chicago Sun-Times, petitioned the court to unseal the files. Rosen and lawyers for the Kellys will review filings in the case and are set to release at least some of the records in July.