Stephen Belafonte and Mel B reached a divorce settlement on Tuesday, and Belafonte left no doubt that he was pleased with the arrangement.
Belafonte posted a video on Instagram where he explained the situation to his front-facing camera, looking elated and even a little surprised at how things worked out for him. The allegations of domestic abuse against him were dropped, and he is not losing any parental rights going forward, according to a report by TMZ.
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Under the settlement, Belafonte will get $5,000 per month in child support from Mel B. He will continue to get the $15,000 per month she has been paying him in spousal support as well, and the judge reportedly ordered Mel to pay for Belafonte’s lawyers, which came to a whopping $350,000.
“Just getting out of court,” Belafonte said on camera. “That’s right, guys. Getting out of my horrific, disastrous divorce court right now. Once again, all allegations dismissed… I went through a long year and a half, two years of almost being asked to give up the rights to my daughter, [and] financial things, but you know what, I stuck with it.”
It seemed that Belafonte might have been even more excited to see the abuse charges dropped than the financial settlement, as he sounded vindicated by the judge’s decision.
“There was nothing but lies told about me, and those lies came to a halt the second time, for the second settelment,” he declared. “That means that — guess what? — it’s settled. It’s done.”
Belafonte is an actor with a few film credits, mostly from 2009 and earlier, but he is likely best known for his marriage to Mel B. The couple got together in 2007 after working on the film Talk together. They married after just a few months, and Mel filed for divorce in 2017. The singer had been seen with cuts and bruises, leading to allegations of assault.
“Just keep persevering,” Belafonte went on in his video. “People will lie on you, people will leave you, things will crash down in your life, but you know what? At the end of the day you’ve just got to believe in the truth, and then when that all happens, boom! Just like today, baby.”
The couple now has joint custody of their daughter, Madison. While Mel has dropped her restraining order against Belafonte, the two have agreed to stay at least 600 feet apart from each other in the future.
