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For nearly two decades, Britney Spears paid her ex-husband Kevin Federline a staggering $40,000 a month, but he claims in his upcoming memoir that he was barely able to scrape by.
“When Britney and I divorced, the court awarded me $20,000 a month in child support. At the same time, I was receiving alimony, another $20,000 a month, for half the duration of our marriage. A marriage that lasted two years and change,” Federline, 47, writes in You Thought You Knew. “People hear figures like that and think you’re financially set. But the reality is far from that.”
Federline, a father of six, explains that raising his and Spears’ two sons, Sean Preston, 20, and Jayden James, 19, in an expensive city like Los Angeles, where they “needed” security, “came with a price tag that would make anyone’s head spin.” (He has since moved his family to Hawaii.)
“The money didn’t stretch as far as you’d think,” Federline insists, adding that he also tried to provide the boys with the “lifestyle” that they were “used to” when they lived with their multimillionaire mother, which he alleges “easily ran well over $40,000 a month.”
“It added up fast,” he writes. “That money was gone almost as soon as it came in.”
Federline also claps back at people who “assume” he was “coasting off” his ex-wife’s fortune, claiming that “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“I wasn’t some bum just sitting around waiting for a check,” the former backup dancer and rapper argues. “I was out there hustling, grinding, investing — working to build a solid foundation for myself and my kids.”
Ahead of the release of Federline’s tell-all, Spears, 43, took to social media to accuse her ex of trying to make a fast buck using her name.
“Trust me, those white lies in that book, they are going straight to the bank and I am the only one who genuinely gets hurt here,” she wrote via X on Wednesday, October 15.
Spears’ rep shared a similar sentiment in a statement to Us Weekly on Tuesday, October 14, saying in part, “With news from Kevin’s book breaking, once again he and others are profiting off her, and sadly it comes after child support has ended with Kevin.”
Federline denied that narrative during an exclusive interview with Us on Wednesday, asserting that “money’s not the root” of his memoir.
“If she has the right to tell her story, why don’t I?” he added, referencing Spears’ 2023 bestseller, The Woman in Me.
Spears and Federline married in 2004. They welcomed Preston in 2005 and Jayden in 2006, only to separate less than two months after the latter’s arrival.
Federline writes in You Thought You Knew that he found out about Spears’ divorce filing from a TV producer “right before” a live interview. Immediately after, he called his lawyer, who confirmed the news.
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“It all happened so fast, I couldn’t even catch my breath,” he remembers. “At first, I wasn’t even angry. I didn’t get the chance. I was too busy being blindsided, too busy trying to figure out what this meant for me and the boys. This was much more than a breakup. It was a public unraveling of my life.”
The former couple finalized their divorce in 2007.
You Thought You Knew is available on Tuesday, October 21, via Listenin, an audio-first platform.
English (US) ·