Elon Musk and Grimes are beginning a bitter custody battle over their three children — fueled by who looks after X, the young son the tycoon calls his “protege.”
The Tesla billionaire and Grimes — real name Claire Boucher — were revealed to have filed dueling lawsuits in Texas and California, setting the scene for a messy legal fight over son X, 3, daughter Exa, and son Techno, both 1.
On Friday it was revealed that in an apparent victory for Grimes, the children will not be allowed to leave California, where she lives.
In recent weeks Musk has paraded X in front of world leaders, telling Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, “We are separated and I take care of him mostly,” when the leader asked where X’s mom was.
Musk, the richest man in the world with an estimated $252.6 billion fortune, has acknowledged fathering 11 children, of 10 are surviving.
It is not known if he has more.
But despite calling his own strict father Errol Musk a “terrible human being,” it would appear that he is, in fact, following in his dad’s footsteps, Errol — who just admitted taking Elon to a sex party when he was 9 — tells Pvnew.
Errol, 77, a former engineering consultant, took custody of his two sons, Elon and Kimble, as well as his daughter Tosca, following his divorce from their mother Maye Musk, and would often take the boys to meetings.
However, Errol, a father of six, insisted: “A woman is a very essential part of a home, a woman is the center of the home. The mother is the sun and the rest of the family are the planets. If a father went away for a few weeks, it would make no difference, but a woman is essential.
“A father and two sons living together is not really a family, it’s just three men; a mother and two sons is a family.”
Grimes gave birth to their 3-year-old son, X – full name X Æ A-12, and pronounced Z-E-X, to rhyme with sex – while their daughter Exa Dark Sideræl and son Tau, both one, were born by surrogate.
The birth of Tau, full name Techno Mechanicus, was only revealed in September.
But as Grimes told Vanity Fair in a cover story in March 2022, it’s X whom Musk sees as his golden heir.
“I think E is really seeing him as a protégé and bringing him to everything and stuff.…” she revealed.
After Musk secretly filed his lawsuit in Texas to demand custody of the three children on September 7, he took X to New York where he met Erdogan at the United Nations on September 18.
Days later, on September 26, he carried the little boy on his shoulders as he gave Hungarian president Katalin Novak a tour of his Austin Tesla factory.
Following the tour, they had a private chat about population decline and Elon took to his platform X – formerly known as Twitter – to note: “Having children is saving the world.”
Grimes filed her custody suit just three days later in California, on September 29, asking a judge to grant her physical custody of their three children and grant her and Musk joint legal custody.
Things have seemingly been tense ever since a since-deleted online post last month when Grimes wrote that he “should let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer.”
The post was reportedly in response to a photo of twins Strider and Azure whom Elon fathered with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, posted by Walter Isaacson, the author of “Elon Musk,” a new biography fn Elon.
The twins were born last November, just weeks before Elon’s son with Grimes, Techno, arrived.
Speaking from his home in South Africa this week, Errol, 77, who has a fractured relationship with his oldest son, admitted he was in the dark about the custody proceedings, but drew parallels to his own experience.
“X is not going to grow up too well without the input from his mother.” He also revealed that Grimes is “well-liked” by his daughters, Elon’s sisters.
“Elon’s trying very hard with all his children,” said Errol: “He may have his reasons, but if he’s keeping X from his mother, that’s not good at all.
“When Elon was small, his mother [Maye Musk] did all the hard work and I should have appreciated it more.”
We have reached out to reps and lawyers for both Elon and Grimes.
Elon has had a colorful romantic life, to say the least.
He and his first wife, Justine Wilson, had twin boys, Griffin and Xavier in 2004.
The boys’ arrival came following the loss of their son Nevada who died in 2002 from sudden infant death syndrome as a baby.
They then had triplets — all boys —called Kai, Saxon, and Damian, in 2006, before divorcing in 2008.
One of their children came out as transgender aged 16 and legally changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson last year, saying: “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”
After his divorce from Justine, Elon married British actress Tallulah Riley in 2010.
They divorced in 2012, only to marry again in 2013, and divorce a second time in 2016.
Grimes and Elon got together in 2018.
Elon actually believed that Grimes was a “simulation” he had created in his mind, according to journalist Devin Gordon.
The writer, who interviewed Grimes for Vanity Fair, told a recent BBC documentary, “The Elon Musk Show” that Elon felt that the musician was his “perfect companion” but not “real.”
“She [Grimes] told me repeatedly that Musk has this theory of her that she’s not real,” Gordon said.
“That she’s a simulation who was created by him and exists in his cerebral cortex as sort of the perfect companion to him. Which sounds a little crazy and maybe even a little creepy, except, she agrees with it.
She said she does feel like this simulation was perfectly created for him.”
He added that “her interests are all the same as his and her music is very technologically oriented,” and they “both made a similar nerdy joke about a scary AI theory of the future.”
In a debate on the sexual revolution with the Free Press last week, Grimes – who last year briefly dated transgender whistle-blower Chelsea Manning – said: “There is no compulsory classes about how to be a good father, mother or partner in any school that I’m aware of.
“No wonder so many people are lost when it comes to forging or maintaining the kinds of relationships required to have a lasting marriage or babies. Similarly, communal tribal style living with like-minded communities totally has totally changed my experience as a mother.”
Musk’s move to seek custody may raise eyebrows, given what he has said before about babies being “pooping machines.”
In 2021, he told The New York Times: Grimes has a much bigger role than me right now.
When the kid gets older, there will be more of a role for me.
“I think just doing what I’ve done with my other kids. If I have a trip for Tesla to China, for example, I’ll bring the kids with me and we’ll go see the Great Wall or we took the bullet train from Beijing to Xian and saw the Terracotta Warriors.”
However, Errol has some firmer views on parenthood. He insisted, “It’s very important to train your children.
“I don’t think the methods used in America for young people are very effective, a lot of young people today who don’t seem to be employable.”
“We were living in a country where you have to be sharp, you have to look after yourself. I taught my boys to look after themselves. They travelled with me all over the world and by their teens they’d seen most of the major cities.”
He boasted that by the ages of 23 and 24, his sons came to America where they founded Zip2, a company that provided online maps and business directories to newspapers setting up websites.
“Elon tries his best, but he has the same problem that I had when he was a little boy. I was forever in all parts of the country and even out of the country some of the time, it’s quite hard to be a good father.”
