Elon Musk To File for Full Custody of Son With Ashley St. Clair

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Grimes Says Ex Elon Musk Blocked Her on X Amid Co-Parenting Woes

Elon Musk is taking a major step in his legal battle against Ashley St. Clair

The Tesla CEO—who shares 16-month-old son Romulus with the influencer—announced his plans to file for full custody of the pair’s child following Ashley’s recent apology for previous transphobic comments. 

“I will be filing for full custody today,” Elon, 54, wrote on X Jan. 12, “given her statements implying she might transition a one-year-old boy.”

His comments also seem to mark his first public acknowledgement of Romulus as his son, which a report from Labcorp previously confirmed 99.9999 percent “Probability of Paternity” during the pair’s past custody dispute, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Following Elon’s post, Ashley noted that she was banned from a version of the platform. As she added in a Jan. 12 upload, “They just banned me from twitter premium entirely.” 

Elon’s comments come one day after Ashley apologized to a social media user, as well as Elon’s estranged transgender daughter Vivian, 21—who he shares with ex-wife Justine Wilson along with Nevada, who died from sudden infant death syndrome in 2002, Vivian’s twin Griffin, 21, and 19-year-old triplets KaiSaxon, and Damian—calling out her past “blatant transphobia.”

“I feel immense guilt for my role,” Ashley wrote on X Jan. 11 of her previous opinions about the transgender community. “And even more guilt that things I have said in the past may have caused my son’s sister more pain. Idrk how to make amends for many of these things but I have been trying incredibly hard privately to learn + advocate for those within the trans community that I’ve hurt.”

As for why the author hasn’t voiced her opinion on the matter sooner? Given her past comments about the community, Ashley wasn’t sure how her change of heart would be perceived. 

Photo by Brian Dowling/Getty Images Instagram/Ashley St. Clair

“I also haven’t said much on this bc I have gone back and forth over whether my voice would be helpful on the issue since it will be framed as disingenuous or just turning bc I’m ‘scorned,’” she added. “Even this reply will become right wing hysteria but yeah I am sorry. Let me know how I can help.”

E! News has reached out to both Ashley and Elon’s reps for comment but hasn’t yet heard back.

But this wouldn’t be the first time that the tech entrepreneur—who is dad to 14 kids in total—has been caught up in a public custody battle with Ashley. 

After all, the X exec—who also shares kids X Æ A-Xii, 5, Exa Dark Sideræl, 4, and Tau Techno Mechanicus, 3, with ex Grimes, as well as 4-year-old twins Strider and Azure, 23-month-old daughter Arcadia, and 11-month-old son Seldon Lycurgus with Shivon Zilis—made headlines in August when the conservative activist, 31, shared that she was “getting evicted” amid the former couple’s ongoing custody woes.

“Well, after a year of unplanned career suicide, many questionable life choices, and a gap in my LinkedIn profile that cannot legally be explained, I’ve decided to start a podcast,” Ashley said during the first-ever episode of her Bad Advice with Ashley St. Clair podcast Aug. 18. “I'm getting evicted and Polymarket offered me $10,000 to do an ad read, so with that, the roof over my head has been brought to you by Polymarket.”

Ashley St. Clair/X; Kevin Lamarque - Pool/Getty Images

Previously, Ashley alleged that Elon had offered her $15 million as well as monthly payments of $100,000, per The Wall Street Journal, in exchange for staying quiet about the birth of their child. 

She ultimately declined the alleged offer—which Elon has not specifically addressed—and told the SpaceX CEO’s wealth manager Jared Birchall, “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret.”

However, one month before the claim, Elon did acknowledge his financial support for his son, even when he was speculative as to whether the child was his.

“I don’t know if the child is mine or not, but am not against finding out,” Elon wrote in a post on X March 31. “No court order is needed.”

He added, “Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year.”

Ashley further addressed her financial status at the time when she was seen handing over the keys to her $100,000 Tesla outside her Manhattan apartment.

“I need to make up for the 60 percent cut that Elon made to our son’s child support,” she told reporters at the time before sharing her opinion on whether she thought Elon was being vindictive. “Well, that’s his modus operandi, when women speak out.”

“You can check the stocks,” she added. “I’m not the only one who is cleaning up after his messes.”

For a closer look at Elon’s complicated family tree, read on…

Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Maye Musk (Mom)

Maye was born in Saskatchewan, Canada and emigrated with her parents to Pretoria, South Africa in 1950, when she was 7. She and Elon's father, Errol Musk, split in 1979.

After Elon moved to Canada at age 17, Maye obtained Canadian citizenship by birthright. There, she established a dietician practice and became President of the Consulting Dieticians of Canada. She also worked as a model.

In 2019, after Elon sold his company Zip2 for more than $300 million, he bought his mom an apartment in New York City, where she lived for 13 years and continued her modeling career after being signed to the IMG Models agency.

"I brought my children up like my parents brought us up when we were young: to be independent, kind, honest, considerate and polite," Maye wrote in an essay for CNBC. "I taught them the importance of working hard and doing good things."

Denver Post Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon/Getty Images

Errol Musk (Dad)

Elon's father is an engineer and like Elon, was born in South Africa.

Though Errol said in a 2015 Forbes interview that he often took his kids on trips overseas"Their mother and I split up when they were quite young and the kids stayed with me. I took them all over the world."—his relationship with Elon isn't picture perfect.

In an emotional 2017 Rolling Stone interview, Elon criticized his father and talked about his upbringing, saying that after his parents split, he moved in with his dad, which, he said, "was not a good idea."

However, Errol told Rolling Stone, "I love my children and would readily do whatever for them."

Following his divorce from Maye, Errol married Heide, whose daughter Jana Bezuidenhout was 4 years old at the time. Errol and Heide went on to have two daughters together before they, too, broke up. 

Years later, Jana reached out to Errol following a breakup of her own. "We were lonely, lost people," Errol explained in a 2018 interview with The Sunday Times. "One thing led to another—you can call it God's plan or nature's plan."

Either way, the duo became romantic and welcomed son Elliott in 2017 and then a baby girl in 2019. As Errol put it to The Sun, "The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce. If I could have another child I would. I can't see any reason not to."

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Kimbal Musk & Tosca Musk (Siblings)

Kimbal, born in 1972, is a restauranteur and the founder of The Kitchen, a collective of five restaurants that source directly from local farmers. He also runs a non-profit, Big-Green, that has built 200 learning gardens in schools across the U.S., the outlet said.

Tosca, born in 1974, is a filmmaker. In 2017, she founded Passionflix, a female-focused streaming service that targets the billion-dollar romance novel industry. 

Twitter / Justine Musk

Justine Wilson (Ex-Wife)

Elon and Justine, his college sweetheart from Queen's University in Ontario, married in 2000. In a 2010 article she penned for Marie Claire, titled I Was a Starter Wife: Inside America's Messiest Divorce, Justine said that while dancing at their wedding reception, Elon told her, "I am the alpha in this marriage."

In the moment, "I shrugged it off," Justine wrote, "just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious."

The two faced an unthinkable tragedy when their baby boy Nevada Alexander died at 10 weeks in 2002 from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). "Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always," Justine wrote in her article, "and stopped breathing."

The couple pursued IVF to conceive again and went on to welcome five more kids: Twins Vivian and Griffin and triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian.

In 2008, Elon filed for divorce.

Twitter / Elon Musk

Griffin, Kai, Damian & Saxon Musk (Sons)

In 2022, Elon revealed he took Griffin and the triplets to meet Pope Francis. While he was honored to meet the head of the Catholic church, Elon added of his 'fit, "My suit is tragic." 

Instagram / Vivian Jenna Wilson

Vivian Jenna Wilson (Daughter)

Also in 2022, Griffin's twin sister filed a petition to change her full name in accordance with her new gender identity, writing, "I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."

In July 2024, Elon spoke out about his daughter's transition. "I lost my son, essentially," he said in a Daily Wire interview with Jordan Peterson, adding that his child, who he referred to by her birth name, was "dead, killed by the woke mind virus."

He also alleged that he was "tricked" into signing medical documents granting Vivian gender-affirming treatments.

She disputed his comments. "He was not by any means tricked," Vivian said in an NBC News. "He knew the full side effects."

In a 2025 Teen Vogue interview, Vivian revealed that she relocated from L.A. to Japan and hasn't spoken to her father since 2020. "He's a pathetic man-child," she surmised. "Why should I be scared of this man? Because he's rich? I don't give a f--k how much money anyone has."

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Talulah Riley (Ex-Wife)

Elon and Talulah—who starred on HBO's Westworld—married in 2010. "It all happened very fast," she told CBS News in 2014. "We were engaged after, I think, two weeks of knowing each other."

The two divorced in 2012, then remarried a year later before divorcing again in 2016. In June 2024, Talulah wed Love Actually alum Thomas Brodie-Sangster.

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Amber Heard (Ex-Girlfriend)

Elon and Amber went public with their romance in early 2017, a year after she filed for divorce from Johnny Depp and Elon ended his (second) marriage to Talulah. Though their relationship didn't last long.

"I just broke up with my girlfriend," Elon told Rolling Stone in a November 2017 interview. "I was really in love, and it hurt bad...Well, she broke up with me more than I broke up with her, I think."

ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

Grimes (Ex-Girlfriend)

Elon and the singer dated on-and-off for four years, starting in 2018. In September 2021, Elon told Page Six that he and Grimes "are, I'd say, probably semi-separated," adding, "It's mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or traveling overseas and her work is primarily in LA. She's staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room."

However, in March 2022, she told Vanity Fair that they "live in separate houses" and are "best friends."

She later tweeted, "Me and E have broken up *again* since the writing of this article haha, but he's my best friend and the love of my life, and my life and art are forever dedicated to The Mission now."

When news broke in September 2023 that the couple actually had three children together, the "Crystal Ball" singer confirmed that, yes, their most recent addition Techno Mechanicus had joined son X Æ A-12 and daughter Exa Dark Sideræl.

In November 2024, Grimes revealed that she had "spent a year locked in battle in a state with terrible mothers rights having my instagram posts and modeling used as reasons I shouldn't have my kids," all the while, "fighting and detaching from the love of my life as he becomes unrecognizable to me."

Fighting with just a "fraction" of his resources, she was kept from one of her kids for five months, she continued, adding, "This is only what can be said publicly, since most of my experience these last years should remain behind closed doors."

Theo Wargo/Getty Images for TIME

X Æ A-Xii Musk (Son)

In 2020, Elon and Grimes welcomed their first child together, a son. They soon modified the spelling of his name in order to meet California's legal guidelines, which only permit letters from the English alphabet. Switching over to roman numerals, the parents agreed to spell his name, X Æ A-Xii.

"X, the unknown variable," Grimes explained on social media. "Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence) A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent."

Grimes continued, "A=Archangel, my favorite song" adding a rat and sword emoji. "Metal rat."

Dia Dipasupil/WireImage

Exa Dark Sideræl Musk & Techno Mechanicus Musk (Kids)

In her 2022 Vanity Fair interview, Grimes revealed she and Elon privately welcomed a baby girl via surrogacy.

"Exa is a reference to the supercomputing term exaFLOPS (the ability to perform 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second)," she said. "Dark, meanwhile, is the unknown. People fear it but truly it's the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe.'"

Sideræl—pronounced "sigh-deer-ee-el"—is, according to mom, "the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time," and a nod to her favorite Lord of the Rings character, Galadriel, who "chooses to abdicate the ring."

Walter Isaacson revealed in his biography Elon Musk that Exa was born in December 2021 via surrogate.

The book also stated that around Father's Day 2022, the on-again, off-again couple welcomed a child named Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, also via surrogate. The biography includes a photo, dated June 2022, of Elon feeding the baby boy.

Though Grimes would prefer other salient details be kept private. "I have tried begging the public and my kids dad to keep them offline, and I've tried legal recourse," she shared on social media in 2025. "The state of my children's lives being public is of grave concern to me and I think about how to solve this every day. It's insane to me that theres no way to deal with this."

X / Shivon Zilis

Strider Sekhar Sirius & Azure Astra Alice (Kids)

In 2022, Business Insider published court documents that stated Elon welcomed twins with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis in November 2021. The babies were born in Austin, Texas, where he lives.

He also seemingly weighed in on the report on X, writing, "Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far."

"Mark my words," he added, "they are sadly true."

In the 2023 biography Elon Musk, it was revealed that the twins' full names are Strider Sekhar Sirius and Azure Astra Alice. Elon later shared that Strider's moniker was inspired by the nickname of Lord of the Rings character Aragorn and late physcist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Meanwhile, Azure was named after a spell from the video game Elden Ring.

Twitter/Getty Images

Arcadia (Kid)

On Feb. 28, 2024, Elon and Shivon welcomed their third baby together. The billionaire confirmed the news in June 2024, telling Page Six, "All our friends and family know," adding, "Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean 'secret.'"

One year later, Shivon tweeted, "Happy 1st birthday, darling Arcadia. Mommy loves you with all her heart."

Ashley St. Clair/X; Kevin Lamarque - Pool/Getty Images

Ashley St. Clair (Alleged Mother of His Child)

Roses are red, violets are blue and on Valentine's Day 2025, conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair had a little sharing to do.

“Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father,” the Elephants Are Not Birds author wrote on X Feb. 14 of her son Romulus, in honor of Rome’s legendary first king and founder. “I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child's privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that the tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause.”

“I intend to allow our child to grow in a normal and safe environment,” she continued. “For that reason, I ask that the media honor our child's privacy, and refrain from invasive reporting.”

Weeks after her rep called on Elon to “publicly acknowledge his parental role with Ashley,” she accused him of cutting his child support payments for the baby, prompting him to address the matter on social media.

“I don’t know if the child is mine or not, but am not against finding out,” he wrote in a post on X March 31, adding, “Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year.”

She'd actually had a chance to pocket even more, an April Wall Street Journal article alleging that Elon's staffer Jared Birchall offered Ashley $15 million and $100,000 a month in child support in exchange for her silence about her baby.

However, Ashley said she told him, “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret.”

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Seldon Lycurgus (Son)

Elon and Shivon announced on Feb. 28, 2025, that they had welcomed their fourth child, a baby boy named Seldon Lycurgus. They were inspired to share the news while marking their third child's first trip around the sun.

"Discussed with Elon and, in light of beautiful Arcadia’s birthday, we felt it was better to also just share directly about our wonderful and incredible son Seldon Lycurgus," she wrote on X. "Built like a juggernaut, with a solid heart of gold. Love him so much."

Elon responded with a heart emoji.  

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