Former Genesis frontman and 80’s pop superstar Phil Collins is currently stuck in a land of confusion.
According to an exclusive report early this week by The Miami Herald, Collins has requested an injunction against ex-wife Orianne Cevey in Miami Dade County court. Cevey and her new husband, Thomas Bates, are currently occupying the singer’s $33 million Miami Beach mansion with the aid of at least four armed guards, and they have no intention of budging.
Collins and Cevey, a former jewelry designer, married in 1994 and have two children together. The couple split in 2008 and Cevey received a jaw-dropping $46.7 million settlement; Cevey went on to marry and divorce another man before reconciling with Collins in 2016.
But in August, Cevey took off for Las Vegas and got hitched to her 31-year-old boyfriend. Court documents reveal that on August 6 (four days after the nuptials), Collins—who has 100 percent ownership of the mansion—demanded that she vacate the premises.
Cevey refused. Instead, she employed armed guards to patrol the property, changed alarm security codes, and blocked real estate agents from showing the house to potential buyers.
Collins charges that his ex has threatened to release private information about him unless he forks over “a preposterous amount of money based on an oral agreement that does not exist.” A source via TMZ adds that Collins believes the money from their earlier divorce is already gone, “squandered… through a series of bad investments, along with an expensive divorce from the man she married after Phil.”
Collins’ attorney, Jeffrey Fisher, told the Miami Herald, “Mrs. Bates, as she is now known, is trying to shake down Phil Collins for money, and as his attorney and former federal prosecutor, I have zero tolerance for that type of behavior. I’m going to use every legal remedy to get her out of the house.”
Cevey’s lawyer declined to comment on the matter.