Kevin Costner, Christine Baumgartner Split in April, Had Prenup
Hammering it out. Christine Baumgartner filed for divorce from Kevin Costner earlier this week, but her court filing reveals that they split nearly one month ago.
In court docs obtained by Us Weekly, the handbag designer, 49, listed the estranged couple’s date of separation as April 11. Baumgartner filed the paperwork in California on Monday, May 1, citing irreconcilable differences as the reason for the split.
Costner, 68, filed his response one day later and also listed irreconcilable differences as the cause of the divorce. The Dances With Wolves director’s filing noted that he and Baumgartner signed a prenuptial agreement before tying the knot in September 2004.
Us Weekly confirmed the couple’s split on Tuesday, May 2. The pair share three children: Cayden, 15, Logan, 14, and Grace, 12. The Oscar winner, for his part, also shares daughters Annie, 39, and Lily, 36, and son Joe, 35, with ex-wife Cindy Silva and son Liam, 27, with ex Bridget Rooney.
“It is with great sadness that circumstances beyond his control have transpired which have resulted in Mr. Costner having to participate in a dissolution of marriage action,” a rep for the Yellowstone actor told TMZ in a statement on Tuesday. “We ask that his, Christine’s and their children’s privacy be respected as they navigate this difficult time.”
Costner and Baumgartner originally met in the early 1990s while golfing. They reconnected in 1999 after the Waterworld star had divorced Silva, 66, and split from Rooney, 61.
Early on in their relationship, the Cat Bag Couture founder told Costner that she wanted to have children with him, but he was initially hesitant. “Finally, there came a moment where maybe this doesn’t go forward,” the Open Range star recalled to Extra in 2020. “Because I thought to myself, I could be divorced again, but what I couldn’t be is divorced again with children. That crushed me. I had to kind of face life and go, ‘Are you gonna miss life, are you gonna miss love because you’re afraid?’ And the answer finally came back, ‘I’m not gonna lose her because I’m gonna be afraid.’”
The duo briefly split in 2003 when they couldn’t come to an agreement about having kids, but Costner eventually changed his mind and rekindled his romance with Baumgartner. “I woke up and thought, ‘Am I going to lose a beautiful woman who is willing to be with me to my very last breath because I am afraid to say yes to a child?’ That’s all it took,” the Message in a Bottle star told Closer Weekly in 2018. “Sometimes you learn the thing you’re most afraid of will save your life.”
Earlier this year, the Bodyguard actor credited his wife with making his Golden Globes win special. Costner won the trophy for Best Actor in a Drama Series for playing John Dutton on Yellowstone, but he wasn’t able to attend the January awards show because of flooding in California.
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“Chris had a dress, I had a tuxedo, [but] it was in another hotel in L.A.,” the Untouchables actor explained in a February Instagram video that showed him unboxing his award. “I never like to be too cool for school, I wanted to be there.”
The Field of Dreams star watched the ceremony at home with his family, but Baumgartner made sure it felt like a real event. “My wife — with 30 bucks — went down to the store, I’ll never forget this, and she bought about 30 balloons because it was just going to be us and our family in the den watching the Golden Globes,” Costner recalled, adding that his partner and their children “stood up and cheered” when his name was called. “My wife found a way to take something really simple and my children sat on the couch and watched the doggone thing.”
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