Kelly Clarkson Must Pay Ex-Husband Nearly $200,000 A Month Amid Divorce

Good thing Kelly Clarkson is on her way to making Ellen DeGeneres money, because becoming Miss Independent in her love life won’t come cheap.

The Grammy-winning singer has been ordered to temporarily pay her ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock, nearly $200,000 in spousal and child support each month, according to People, amid her ongoing divorce from the music manager.

As for how the money breaks down piece by piece, Clarkson will hand over $150,000 in spousal support every month, with an additional $45,601 tacked on for child support for the former couple’s 7-year-old daughter, River Rose, and 5-year-old son, Remington.

In case you don’t have a calculator handy, that means Blackstock will receive more than $2.3 million per year for the foreseeable future, in addition to $1.25 million from Clarkson to cover his legal fees. 

But before you start feeling too bad for Clarkson, the monthly amount is less than half of what Blackstock originally requested, as previous reports put his desired figure at $436,000 per month.

Given her successful daytime talk show, a guest stint on this season of “The Voice” and album residuals galore, the payments shouldn’t put too big of a dent in the singer’s fortune, as she earns more than $1.5 million in income each month, according to the celebrity news website The Blast.

Clarkson filed for divorce from Blackstock in June 2020 after nearly seven years of marriage. Earlier this month, she filed legal documents asking to be declared single, as the two continue to hammer out the remaining details of their divorce proceedings.

In November 2020, the “American Idol” alum was awarded temporary primary physical custody of her children with Blackstock, who plans to live on the family’s Montana ranch full time while Clarkson resides in Los Angeles to film her daytime talk show.

On the second season premiere of “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in September 2020, the host revealed that she “didn’t see” her divorce coming and that her life as of late has been a bit of a “dumpster fire.”

“What I’m dealing with is hard because it involves more than just my heart. It involves a lot of little hearts,” she said at the top of the episode. “And divorce is never easy. And we’re both from divorced families, so we know the best thing here is to protect our children and their little hearts.”

Clarkson has stayed relatively quiet on the details of the divorce since then, preferring instead to channel her emotions into the 60 or so songs she’s written since the split.

“I have this record that we’re working on. It’s really great and really honest,” she told Entertainment Tonight in February. “Like, I don’t know how anybody — I’ll just be real with you — goes through grief like divorce, any kind of grief, any kind of loss, without having an outlet like this.”