A judge overturned
Terrence
Howard’s
divorce settlement
with
his second
wife Monday,
finding
the actor was
coerced into
signing the
settlement
by her threats to leak private
details. Superior Court Judge
Thomas Trent Lewis’ ruling
means Howard and his exwife,
Michelle Ghent, will
now have to renegotiate the
financial terms of their divorce.
The ruling also ends,
for now, any claims Ghent has
to Howard’s earnings from
the Fox TV series Empire.
“The evidence of extortion or
duress was unrebutted,” Lewis
said. Howard contended he
signed a 2012 settlement to
end his marriage to Ghent
out of fear she would leak
private details about him,
including phone-sex recordings
with other women and
a video of him dancing naked
in a bathroom. The initial
agreement entitled Ghent to
a share of Howard’s earnings,
which would include a portion
of his salary from Empire,
which opens its second season
in the fall. “I could not be
any more pleased by today’s
ruling,” Howard wrote in a
statement issued after the
ruling. Ghent’s lawyers have
said she denied extorting the
actor in a deposition and argued
he didn’t prove threats
she made in 2011 forced him
to sign the agreement a year
later. She was not allowed to
testify at a recent hearing because
her attorneys did not
file a sworn declaration from
her before the proceedings
began. Ghent’s attorneys declined
immediate comment.
m It’s been an eventful 15
months or so for comedian
Tracy Morgan
after the
June 2014
traffic accident
where
a Wal-Mart
truck collided
with his limo
bus, putting
Morgan in
a coma and
claiming the life of fellow comedian
James McNair. Morgan
recovered slowly, eventually
settling with Wal-Mart.
He then slowly emerged from
his media isolation, got a star
on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame and will host Saturday
Night Live in October. His
latest life change came Sunday
when Morgan wed his
fiancee of four years, Megan
Wollover. The couple are parents
of a 2-year-old daughter.
This is not Morgan’s first
marriage. In an epic relationship
that ran for 23 years, the
46-year-old comedian was
married to his high-school
sweetheart Sabina Morgan,
with whom he had three
sons. The couple divorced in
2009 after a reported eight
years of separation and the 30
Rock star’s repeated troubles
with alcohol. Morgan has had
many ups and downs since
his divorce. In 2010, he got
a kidney transplant after he
suffered complications from
diabetes, with which he