Sidebar

• A Los Angeles judge has cleared Halle Berry and Olivier Martinez’s 13-year-old son, Maceo, to testify concerning Martinez’s request for a restraining order, despite Berry’s contention that the boy has been coached or manipulated by his father.
• Although Martinez says Maceo also wants the court to hear where he prefers to live, the newly reported order limits his testimony to the restraining-order proceeding. California law nevertheless allows a judge to consider the custody wishes of a child under 14 when appropriate.
• A permanent shift toward Martinez having substantially more parenting time could trigger another financial battle. Berry already pays Martinez $8,000 monthly plus 4.3% of her annual income above $2 million, and California’s guideline formula expressly considers parental income and parenting time.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

A Los Angeles judge has made a major decision in the increasingly bitter dispute between Halle Berry and her former husband, Olivier Martinez: their 13-year-old son, Maceo, will be permitted to testify.

But there is an important distinction getting lost in some of the coverage.

The reported order does not give Maceo an unrestricted opportunity to decide which parent he wants to live with. Judge Shelley Kaufman has limited his testimony to Martinez’s request for a restraining order arising from allegations that Berry physically assaulted their son during a September 26 incident. Berry emphatically denies abusing Maceo.

Martinez has separately represented in court papers that Maceo wants to tell the judge both what happened and his preferences concerning custody.

That distinction could become extremely important.

California Family Code §3042 requires courts to give due weight to the wishes of a child who has sufficient age and capacity to form an intelligent preference concerning custody or visitation. Children 14 and older generally must be permitted to address the court if they wish, absent a best-interest finding to the contrary.

Maceo is 13.

That does not silence him. Section 3042 expressly permits a younger child to address the court when the judge determines doing so is appropriate and in the child's best interest.

It also doesn't mean Maceo gets to choose his parent.

His preference would be evidence for Kaufman to consider—not a veto over the court's ultimate best-interest determination.

The more immediate evidentiary battle may concern something more difficult to measure, and that is whether Maceo's testimony is genuinely his own.

Berry has accused Martinez of coaching and manipulating their son and pointed to a 2024 order prohibiting the parents from involving Maceo in their litigation. Martinez disputes Berry's characterization and maintains that their son deserves to be heard.

A judge evaluating that issue can look well beyond whether a child simply says, "Dad told me to say this."

Coaching can potentially reveal itself through unusually adult terminology, descriptions that appear memorized rather than independently recalled, repeated phrases closely tracking a parent's court filings, inconsistencies between earlier statements and later testimony, or evidence that one parent repeatedly discussed litigation and desired outcomes with the child.

None of those things, standing alone, necessarily proves coaching. A 13-year-old can also be articulate, informed and entirely truthful.

That is precisely why the circumstances surrounding the child's statements matter. The court can compare Maceo's account with contemporaneous evidence, prior statements, witness testimony and the photograph Martinez says Maceo took following the alleged incident.

Berry, meanwhile, argues that adult witnesses undermine the abuse allegations. Her daughter, Nahla Aubry, has submitted a declaration supporting her mother, and Berry has pointed to fiancé Van Hunt's observations. Martinez maintains that Maceo is the person at the center of the alleged incident and therefore should be heard.

If the court ultimately concludes Maceo genuinely wants to reside primarily with his father, however, the case could move into territory that has received considerably less attention: money!

Berry and Martinez's 2023 divorce settlement already required Berry to pay Martinez $8,000 per month in child support despite the parents then sharing joint physical custody. Berry additionally agreed to pay 4.3% of income she receives above $2 million and cover expenses including Maceo's private-school tuition, health insurance and extracurricular activities.

A substantial permanent increase in Martinez's custodial time could provide grounds to revisit support.

California's statewide child-support guideline is mathematical. Under Family Code §4055, the calculation incorporates the parents' net disposable incomes and the percentage of time the higher-earning parent has primary physical responsibility for the child.

In simplified terms, when a substantially higher-earning parent spends less custodial time with a child, the guideline calculation can produce a larger payment to the parent providing more of the child's day-to-day care.

That makes parenting time financially significant here.

Public celebrity-wealth estimates currently put Berry's fortune at approximately $100 million and Martinez's around $10 million, although those numbers reviewed by USA Herald are private third-party estimates and should not be confused with financial evidence established in court.

More importantly, net worth is not the number California plugs into its child-support formula.

California Family Code § 4057(b)(3) provides an important exception for an “extraordinarily high-income” parent. In Berry’s case, since she is the parent ordered to pay support, the court could depart from the presumptively correct guideline amount generated under California’s child-support formula if it determines that her income is extraordinarily high and that the guideline amount would exceed the child’s reasonable needs.

Family Code §4058 likewise broadly examines income from sources including salaries, commissions, royalties, bonuses, rents, dividends and interest. The calculation then moves toward each parent's net disposable income and incorporates parenting time.

That distinction matters enormously for entertainers whose wealth may include real estate, investments, residuals, royalties and income that fluctuates substantially from year to year.

The existing order itself offers a clue to the disparity the parties previously recognized: Berry pays $96,000 annually before the additional percentage payment is even considered.

If, hypothetically, Berry earned $5 million in income subject to the parties' existing percentage provision, the 4.3% component on the $3 million exceeding the $2 million threshold would equal another $129,000. Added to the base support, that would produce $225,000 before considering the additional expenses Berry separately agreed to cover.

That is an illustration of the existing agreement—not a prediction of what a judge would order following a custody modification.

California law also contains an important principle particularly relevant to wealthy parents. Family Code §4053 says children should share in both parents' standards of living and specifically recognizes that child support may improve the standard of living of the custodial household because doing so improves the child's life.

Berry's wealth, standing alone, therefore would not determine support. Nor would Martinez automatically receive some percentage of her fortune simply by obtaining primary custody.

But if Martinez ultimately becomes Maceo's primary custodial parent while Berry remains by far the higher-income parent, California's guideline system creates a very real possibility that Berry's support obligation could be recalculated upward, depending on the parties' actual current income, deductions, parenting-time percentages and the effect of their existing judgment.

Every additional percentage point of parenting time can matter in a California guideline calculation.

That means the testimony of a 13-year-old may eventually affect considerably more than whether a restraining order remains in place.

If Maceo's account is credited, if the court eventually considers his custody preference, and if Martinez converts his present custodial advantage into a permanent primary-custody arrangement, the next courtroom battle may not simply be over where Maceo sleeps.

It could be over how much Halle Berry must pay to support him there.