She Had Musk's Baby. Inside Her Fight for Money

That Elon Musk has a gaggle of kids is well known. In a piece for the Wall Street Journal, Dana Mattioli tries to delve into just how that works. Musk's longtime fixer, Jared Birchall, is apparently a big part of the puzzle. He runs Musk's family office and has been heavily involved in everything from Musk's super PAC to his purchase of X. But in Mattioli's telling, Birchall also handles something much more quietly in the background: the "financial and privacy deals Musk wants for the women raising the world's richest man's babies." Ashley St. Clair is one of them. The conservative children's book author announced in February that she'd given birth to Musk's child five months prior. Her interactions with Birchall, "a practicing Mormon with a large family who works hard to keep a low profile," began earlier.

Mattioli reports that St. Clair spent two hours on the phone with Birchall in December and was advised by him not to take "the legal route ... that always, always leads to a worse outcome for that woman than what it would have been otherwise," he reportedly told her. St. Clair says she was offered $15 million and $100,000 a month in support until son Romulus was 21, so long as she kept quiet about the child. Birchall reportedly told her similar agreements had been inked with other mothers of Musk's children. St. Clair says she kept Musk's name off the birth certificate at Birchall's request but refused to sign the agreement. She and Musk are now battling it out in court.

St. Clair took issue with the lack of funding for security, which she said ran her $100,000 a month during her pregnancy, and the absence of guaranteed money for her son if Musk were to die before the child was 21. She also wanted a paternity test, which the court ordered. Mattioli reports the $15 million offer was yanked four days after St. Clair made that February X post about the child, and the monthly support offer was cut to $40,000. Last Thursday, the Journal asked Musk to comment on the article. St. Clair says her next monthly payment from Musk arrived just yesterday—and had been slashed to $20,000. As for the paternity test, it came back Friday. The chance Musk is the father? 99.9999%. (Read the full story.)