A source close to Hunter Biden says he settled his Arkansas child support dispute in a surprise Tuesday agreement that will reduce his payments by thousands of dollars a month, according to the New York Post.
The alleged deal with his four-year-old daughter’s mother, Lunden Alexis Roberts, would slash Biden’s child support from $20,000 per month to just $5,000 and allow Biden to avoid a drawn-out court dispute that could have required him and his business partners to reveal information about his finances.
Roberts’s lawyer Clint Lancaster told the Post, which temporarily took down its report before adding comment from the attorney, that the terms of the agreement are still being worked out. "The case is sealed, and these are financial terms that should never be disclosed," he told the Post.
Lancaster added that he was concerned Hunter Biden might use the settlement terms to "promote some agenda" and Roberts’s team was disappointed there was "not more contact" between the child and the Biden family. President Joe Biden has declined to acknowledge the four-year-old as his grandchild, even after a court-ordered paternity test found Hunter Biden was the father.
The settlement would be the third legal issue to reach its conclusion for Hunter Biden on Tuesday, who also reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors on tax and gun charges.
Biden and Roberts negotiated the settlement late last week, according to the Post, which cited a "source close to the first son." As part of the deal, Roberts also reportedly dropped a request to change their daughter’s last name to Biden.
The reported settlement agreement had not been publicly filed in the case as of Tuesday evening, a clerk for the Arkansas court confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon. Lawyers for Roberts and Biden did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Biden was in Arkansas last week for a closed-door deposition in the case. He was also scheduled to appear in court on July 10 for a hearing on contempt charges, after Roberts’s lawyer accused the first son of withholding financial records.
Biden made his first and only appearance in the case in May, when his lawyers revealed that he had agreed to pay Roberts $20,000 in monthly child support in 2020. Biden reopened the case last year and claimed he could no longer afford those payments. He also filed a motion to block Roberts from changing their daughter’s last name to Biden.
Lancaster, Roberts’s lawyer, had argued that Biden’s high-priced legal team—which included prominent Washington, D.C., fixer Abbe Lowell—was evidence that Biden had the funds to pay child support.
The Free Beacon reported last week that Biden repeatedly ignored Roberts’s attempts to reach him during the final months of her pregnancy and cut her off from his company’s health insurance a few months after she gave birth.