Los Angeles Superior Court judge Michael R. Powell has ordered Dr. Dre to pay his estranged wife, Nicole Young, almost $300,000 in spousal support per month for the foreseeable future, potentially for life. Dre, 56, whose real name is Andre Young, must now pay his wife of 24 years monthly spousal support in the exact amount of $293,306 starting August 1. (Last September, Nicole originally asked the court to order Dre to pay her monthly spousal fees in the amount of $1.9 million.) According to a report of the proceedings issued from the estranged couple’s hearing on July 20, these payments are to “continue in a like manner until the party receiving support remarries or enters into a new domestic partnership, death of either party, or until further order of the court.” Dre was also ordered to continue to pay expenses on their Malibu and Pacific Palisades homes and to pay for Nicole’s health insurance. A source familiar with the situation says “the support order is consistent with what he has already been paying since the initial separation and is a fraction of the $2 million per month Nicole and her lawyers demanded.”
Nicole filed for divorce from Dre last June citing irreconcilable differences; she and Dre were married on May 25, 1996, and share two adult children. According to court papers, she alleged that on April 2, 2020, the couple had a bitter fight and she was forced to leave her family home after “a night of Andre’s alcohol-induced, brutal rage, which included, but was not limited to, his screaming at her to ‘get the fuck out.’” She described their marriage as difficult and “earmarked by all types of abuse” and said finally she had had enough. According to a declaration Nicole submitted to the court in December, she alleged that Dre had held a gun to her head on two occasions and also punched her in the head and face on two occasions. She said his long-term abuse verbally and emotionally “decimated my personhood to the extent that I currently suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome.” Dre has denied these allegations; the divorce is ongoing, with the next hearing set for October 6.
The bitter divorce proceeding isn’t Nicole’s only legal dispute with Dre. She also has a pending civil action against him accusing him of transferring key trademark rights to his stage name, Dr. Dre, and to one of his most successful albums, 1992’s The Chronic, into an entity that he wholly owns. Nicole maintains that because the trademarks were created and registered during their marriage, they are “community property” and that, under California law, she is entitled to half. (Property or money that was acquired during a marriage is treated as community property and is divided equally during a divorce.) She is suing him, alleging a conspiracy to hide community-property assets and information from her, according to her court papers.
“This is a sad and sordid tale, where famous music mogul Andre ‘Dr. Dre’ Young was caught secretly transferring valuable trademarks he owned with his wife, Nicole Young, to a newly created asset holding company that he created and controlled after he expelled his wife from their home, and before he threatened to file divorce,” Nicole’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, wrote in court papers filed on September 17, 2020. “Andre’s transparent and reprehensible scheme to transfer these assets away, without Nicole’s knowledge or consent, so he could retain more for himself in a divorce from his wife of 24 years and the mother of his children‚ is an epic failure and reveals the true nature of his character, or lack thereof.”
Attorneys for Dr. Dre have not responded to a request for comment.
