Hunter Biden agrees to pay child support to Arkansas woman, avoids contempt hearing
- Hunter Biden, the son of leading Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden, has agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of monthly child support to an Arkansas woman who bore him a baby out of wedlock.
- The support is retroactive to November 2018, when the child was born to Lunden Alexis Roberts, according to a filing in Independence County Court in Arkansas.
- President Donald Trump was impeached late last year after disclosures that he had asked Ukraine's new president to announce investigations of the former Vice President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden, the son of leading Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden, has agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of monthly child support to an Arkansas woman who bore him a baby out of wedlock, avoiding a hearing Wednesday that put him at risk of being held in contempt of court.
The support is retroactive to November 2018, three months after the child was born to Lunden Alexis Roberts, according to a judge's order filed Monday in Independence County Court, Arkansas.
And Biden must pay Roberts, 28, an undisclosed amount for her attorneys' fees and costs, according to the order.
The amount of child support that Biden must pay could increase — or decrease — in the future, Judge Holly Meyer noted in her order.
Meyer wrote that she currently lacks sufficient information about Biden's income to determine a permanent amount of support.
The order came two days before the 49-year-old Biden was due to appear in court for a hearing on whether he should be found in contempt for failing to disclose financial information to Roberts as ordered by a judge.
Meyer, in her order Monday, postponed that hearing until March 13.
But if Biden produces the required financial information by March 1, then the motion for contempt filed by Roberts will be dismissed.
Biden, who is a lawyer, originally denied having sex with Roberts.
But a DNA showed that the child was almost certainly his, and he stopped contesting paternity in the case.
Clint Lancaster, an attorney for Roberts, declined CNBC's request for additional comment on the court filing.
Biden's lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Hunter Biden was married for 24 years to Kathleen Biden, with whom he has three children.
After separating from his wife, Biden for several years dated Hallie Biden, the widow of his elder brother Beau, a former Delaware attorney general who died of brain cancer in 2015.
After splitting with Hallie Biden in early 2019, he married South African filmmaker Melissa Cohen.
He had met Cohen, 34, just six days before they wed.
Roberts sued Hunter last month in May, less than a month after his latest marriage, claiming that she had his child in August 2018 — while Hunter was still seeing Hallie Biden.
President Donald Trump was impeached late last year after disclosures that he had asked Ukraine's new president to announce investigations of the former Vice President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden while Trump was withholding military aid from Ukraine.
The Senate is currently conducting Trump's impeachment trial.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
Trump and many of his Republican allies have said that they want Hunter Biden to testify in the Senate trial if the chamber votes to approve new witnesses and documents.
The Senate is expected to hold that vote Friday, after Trump's legal team concludes its arguments in defense of the president and after both sides field questions from the senators.
Roberts' lawyers last month, as part of their child support claim, asked in court filings that Biden admit he could have continued serving on the Ukraine gas company Burisma's board.
Biden reportedly earned about $50,000 per month from that position, which he held from April 2014 through April 2019.
Trump, in defending his call for a probe of the Bidens by Ukraine, has suggested that Joe Biden, while serving as vice president in the Obama administration, improperly pressured Ukraine to oust a prosecutor who at the time was supposedly investigating that company.
Trump has implied that Joe Biden took such an action to protect his son from the prosecutor's purported inquiry.