You would think Jeremy Renner would be pretty careful about his public image right now. After all, last year saw the Hawkeye star accused of a frankly terrifying list of domestic violence abuses. These came out during a child custody battle with his ex-wife Sonni Pacheco for sole custody of their young daughter Ava. Allegations included biting his daughter, shoving a gun in his mouth and threatening suicide and apparently making plans to kill himself and his wife as “it was better that Ava had no parents than to have [Pacheco] as a mother.”
Renner’s legal team described this as “character assassination” and the current situation is that he must pay Pacheco $30k every month for the care of Ava. Now, TMZ has gotten hold of documents that show Renner applying to reduce that amount, claiming that Ava’s “reasonable needs” amount to $11k per month. He also says his ex-wife is using his money as a “slush fund” to support her lifestyle.
Let’s face it, these are silly amounts of money for anyone to spend in a month, but Hollywood celebrities and their families effectively live in a parallel reality to us most of the time. Also, it’s worth pointing out that Renner’s justification for reducing the payments is that the Coronavirus pandemic has affected his financial earnings, with the actor saying:
“It is likely that most productions will not resume again prior to the end of the year. As such, the projects that I had previously lined up to film this year are likely canceled or postponed.”
It should be pointed out at this juncture that the MCU star is worth an estimated $50 million. So, even if he never made another cent and had to pay the current rate of child support up until Ava turns 18, he’d only be paying roughly $4 million, or about 8% of his fabulous riches over 12 years (not including interest).
Whatever your opinion of Jeremy Renner, you can’t deny that using the Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to cut child support payments to your daughter is, at the very least, not a good look.