21 September 2023
(KTLA) — Weeks after it was revealed Joe Jonas had filed for divorce from actress Sophie Turner, the fight doesn’t seem to be over.
People magazine reports the latest battle is over who will have custody of their young children and where they will live.
According to the outlet, Turner has filed a lawsuit in a Manhattan, New York, court requesting they be returned to England.
Court documents obtained by the magazine say that the “Game of Thrones” actress is calling for “the immediate return of children wrongfully removed or wrongfully retained.” The documents claim this “wrongful retention” began around Sept. 20.
She also alleges she and the singer agreed in late 2022 that England would be their “forever home.” The documents say the couple sold their home in Miami and were in the process of buying a home in the English countryside in April.
Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner attend the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 12, 2023, in Beverly Hills. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
When Jonas started touring with his brothers, the couple agreed to let their daughters join him because Turner was busy shooting the “very intense” series “Joan.” However, the documents allege she had “some hesitation” about it, according to TMZ.
The actress said the plan was to finish filming and then go to New York to get the children and return to England.
She also claims the marriage dissolved “very suddenly” after a fight on Aug. 15. She said she learned Jonas had filed for divorce on Sept. 5 “from the media.”
When the pair met up recently to talk about the next steps of their split, the petition said Turner once again mentioned her plan of taking the girls back to England. From there, Jonas apparently had changed his mind.
“The Father has possession of the children’s passports. He refuses to return the passports to the Mother and refuses to send the children home to England with the Mother,” the lawsuit claims.
Meanwhile, Page Six has obtained a response from Jonas on the lawsuit
The “Cake by the Ocean” singer called the filing a “harsh legal position” and that it’s against the “amicable co-parenting setup.”
“Less than 24 hours later, Sophie advised that she wanted to take the children permanently to the UK. Thereafter, she demanded via this filing that Joe hand over the children’s passports so that she could take them out of the country immediately,” Jonas’ team told the site.
“Joe is seeking shared parenting with the kids so that they are raised by both their mother and father, and is of course also okay with the kids being raised both in the U.S. and the UK,” the statement continued.
The representative also noted that both children were born in the United States, which makes them American citizens.
Jonas slammed claims that Turner was blindsided by the divorce filing. His team said she was “aware” as the two had “multiple conversations” about the topic.
“This is an unfortunate legal disagreement about a marriage that is sadly ending. When language like ‘abduction’ is used, it is misleading at best, and a serious abuse of the legal system at worst,” the representative continued to say.
“The children were not abducted.”
They share 3-year-old daughter Willa and a 1-year-old daughter whose name has not been publicly revealed.
The couple married in 2019 after they started dating in 2016.