Ashley St. Clair says she turned down a roughly $40 million offer tied to silence about Elon Musk, then saw the monthly support for their son fall to $20,000. She says the cut came after she refused to sign paperwork she believed would keep her from speaking publicly about him.
The dispute is back in view because St. Clair appears in Alex Gibney's nearly four-hour documentary about Musk, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 8 and expanded to theaters nationwide on Oct. 16. In that film and in earlier interviews, she has described the deal as starting with a message to Jared Birchall to wire Ashley 15 million for a home and reserve capital, followed by what she says Birchall called some sort of NDA.
St. Clair says the paperwork was labeled as a child support agreement and offered a lump sum of $15 million and then $100,000 a month for 20 years, a structure that would have run until Romulus turned 21. She says it also would have barred her from disparaging or even speaking about Musk, his employees or his affiliates into eternity. By her math, the later $20,000 monthly payment would total about $5 million if it continued for that same period.
That is the point where the story turns from a private dispute into a public fight over money, secrecy and parentage. St. Clair says she could not sign in good conscience and wanted her son not to grow up feeling like a secret. She has said she would rather go to a studio apartment with both my children than sign this, and in March Karen Rosenthal said Musk had financially retaliated against his own child and reduced his financial support substantially and unilaterally.
Musk denied on X on Sept. 9 that he ever made the offer and said she was never offered that and has a history of making false claims. St. Clair first described the offer in a June interview with Don Lemon, and later told The that Musk's team sent her $20,000 after the newspaper asked him for comment in April. She also says she sold her Tesla Model S days later, telling the Daily Mail she needed to make up for the 60% cut that Elon made to our son's child support.
What remains unresolved is whether any document ever matched the numbers St. Clair describes, or whether the money she says was cut was tied to the same kind of legal leverage she describes. For now, the public record holds two clashing accounts: one from St. Clair, who says she was offered payment for silence, and one from Musk, who says the offer never happened.
