Everyone’s (former) favorite biracial bae Jesse Williams and his ex-wife Aryn Drake-Lee were ordered to attend post-divorce “high-conflict” parenting courses due to contentious custody issues, TMZ reported.
Jesse Williams, a long-time actor on “Grey’s Anatomy,” elocuted his way into our hearts in 2016 at the BET awards with his acceptance speech after winning the Humanitarian Award. At the time, he took care to mention the sacrifices of Black women and promised that the community would do better by us.
A year later, Williams fell out of our good graces when his relationship with Minka Kelly was exposed about three months after he filed for divorce from Aryn.
Things have been topsy-turvy since then, with the estranged spouses duking it out over everything from Jesse’s dating life to child support and custody of their two children, Maceo and Sadie. Back in 2017, Drake-Lee claimed that Williams’ dating life caused their children to be emotionally compromised and asked the court to order that he not bring new girlfriends around the children until six months into the relationship. She also claimed that his violent temper led to a road rage incident in which the children were in the car at the time. She sought sole custody.
In 2018, his ex asked the court to order Williams to pay more than the $50,000 monthly child support because it didn’t cut the mustard. She also requested $200,000 in fees for her divorce lawyer. Wiliams had previously agreed to give her $60,000 for legal fees.
Their divorce was finalized in Oct. 2020 with Williams being ordered to pay Drake-Lee $40,000 per month in child support, half of his earnings during the marriage minus over $936,000 earned after the 2017 separation, and joint physical and legal custody of their children.
Although Drake-Lee described the divorce as a “blessing in disguise” back in 2019, it now seems like co-parenting with Williams has not been a similar experience. The program, called Between Two Parents, is a six-session online course that teaches divorced parents conflict resolution skills and how to ease the stress on separation on their children, according to WFAA.
The ruling came after a March filing by Williams that requested to modify the custody and visitation agreement that was settled during the divorce. The judge denied the request and instead ordered Jesse and Aryn to enroll in the online course. Divorce is messy. Co-parenting should not be. Hopefully, the two will get things straightened out for the sake of their children.
