Flipping Out star Jeff Lewis is opening up about his volatile custody battle with his estranged partner Gage Edward over their daughter Monroe Christine Lewis.
On his SiriusXM radio show, Jeff Lewis Live, the Bravo reality star announced that things had gotten very “ugly” between them. Jeff started out his show on Tuesday by stating he had received a letter from Gage’s attorney. The letter said that his former partner wanted “50/50 custody” of their two-year-old daughter.
Jeff revealed he was a bit caught off-guard by Gage’s actions because they had been co-parenting well since their split months ago.
“I’m a little shocked by that considering that for the last five months, he told me that the best place for [Monroe] was in our home,” Jeff shared. “And I’ve been paying all the expenses and everything seemed to be okay until recently.”
According to Jeff, he and Gage had an incident last week that set off the custody dispute.
“Something happened last week where it made me very nervous and scared,” he explained. “We had a disagreement the night before via email, it wasn’t a very big deal. But when he came in the morning, he had locked himself in my guestroom and said he wasn’t going to come out until I left. That made me feel very unsafe in my home.”
“I got back to him and I said, ‘look I don’t think that you should be doing visitation in my home anymore. I just don’t feel comfortable. You can see Monroe whenever you want. I will allow you complete access to Monroe but I think you should do visitations outside the house,'” Jeff continued.
This prompted Gage to get an attorney and fight for 50/50 custody of their daughter.
“That prompted a very strong letter from an attorney,” said Jeff. “Gage had immediately requested that he wants her three and a half days a week right now without any sort of transition.”
And during a meeting with their attorneys on Monday to discuss visitation, things got very heated.
“I thought that we could walk in that [meeting with lawyers] yesterday… but he came in hot and it was really ugly,” Jeff claimed. “It was insane. They had to take him out of the room. He couldn’t keep it together. He was so angry and so irrational. They had to move him to another conference room.”
Jeff also complained about the expenses he incurred during the custody case.
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“I figure we spent $5,000 or $6,000 yesterday in attorney fees. I was there for three hours. I had to finally leave at 5 o’clock because it wasn’t going anywhere. I thought this meeting was going to be about custody arrangements, financial support,” he shared. “Literally, for three hours, we discussed visitation this week and it was never resolved. $5,000 to $6,000 to talk about visitation this week. Am I going to spend $6,000 a week to go over visitation?”
Closing out his drama with Gage, Jeff insisted that he is simply trying to do what’s best for their child.
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“I understand that we’re probably working towards more visitation, nights at his house, the whole thing. I just want to transition her slowly,” Jeff explained. “I’m thinking about her. You can’t pick up a kid on Wednesday, bring her back Friday night and take her to a new place that she doesn’t know with all new things and expect her to be okay.”
Jeff Lewis Live airs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays (11 a.m. ET) on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy.
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