Actor Robert De Niro says the coronavirus pandemic has drained his finances, according to Manhattan court documents in his ongoing divorce case with estranged wife Grace Hightower, reports Page Six.
Hightower asked for an emergency order to raise her monthly American Express card limit from $50,000 to $100,000 a month after De Niro recently cut it to $50,000 due to huge financial hits restaurant chain Nobu and Greenwich Hotel took during the pandemic. De Niro has stakes in both.
“His accounts and business manager … says that the best case for Mr. De Niro, if everything starts to turn around this year… he is going to be lucky if he makes $7.5 million this year,” De Niro’s lawyer Carolina Krauss told the judge assigned to the case.
Kevin McDonough, Hightower’s lawyer, said, “the idea that Mr. De Niro is tightening his belt is nonsense.”
“Mr. De Niro has used the COVID pandemic, my words would be, to stick it to his wife financially,” he added.
“I’m not a believer that a man who has an admitted worth of $500 million and makes $30 million a year, all of a sudden in March he needs to cut down [spousal support] by 50 percent and ban her from the house,” McDonough said.
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper ruled that the credit card limit stay at $50,000, and that De Niro pay Hightower $75,000 so she can find a summer home.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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