Grimes' year from hell

2023 was an eventful year for Claire Elizabeth Boucher.

The Canadian musician — better known as Grimes — moved from Texas to California, evangelized about artificial intelligence, raised three children under the age of four, and levitated across the stage of one of the world's biggest electronic dance music festivals.

She also went to war with the world's richest man.

Over the last half-decade, Grimes — who first rose to fame in the 2010s with her distinctively ethereal vocals, synth-pop tracks, and avant-garde persona — became better known for her on-again, off-again relationship with Elon Musk, the abrasive futurist behind Tesla and SpaceX. Grimes is the mother of three of Musk's children: 3-year-old X Æ A-Xii, also known as baby X, 2-year-old Exa, or Y, and 1-year-old Tau.

This year, their oddball relationship finally appeared to reach its end, and the duo are currently locked in a high-profile battle over custody of their children. At the center is a contentious fight over jurisdiction: Grimes wants legal proceedings to play out in California, while Musk is gunning for Texas. The decision could mean the difference in millions of dollars in child support payments.

The breakdown of their partnership coincided with a year of chaos for Musk. After throwing his chips — $44 billion worth — behind Twitter in late 2022, he used it to parrot Russian propaganda, boost anti-semitic messaging, and rail against the "woke mind virus." A year later, the platform, now known as X, is still hemorrhaging cash, followers, and advertisers. Meanwhile, Tesla is losing a price war, and the interconnectivity of Musk's massive empire threatens to bring the whole thing down.

But 2023 has perhaps been even more difficult for Grimes, who has watched her children — now living separate lives in separate states — become unavoidable centerpieces in a highly public battle against a man with effectively unlimited resources.

The singer and the billionaire

Grimes and Musk began dating in 2018. The oft-repeated origin story goes something like this: The two met on X, then known as Twitter, after bonding over a hyper-nerdy joke about artificial intelligence. Musk wanted to make the niche reference, but Grimes had already beaten him to the punch.

The couple made their public debut at the Met Gala that year, with Grimes decked out in a goth robot getup as she posed for photos with her white-suited boyfriend.

In the years that followed, the duo broke up publicly at least twice. During their "off" periods, both dated other people: Grimes courted whistleblower Chelsea Manning, while Musk was photographed globetrotting with Australian actress Natasha Bennett. At various points in their relationship, Grimes said Elon was "probably" her boyfriend, while he described their situation as "semi-separated."

The couple also had three children. Grimes gave birth to the pair's eldest son, X, in May 2020. (She was "horrified" after a "clueless" Musk sent a photo of her during her C-section to her father and brothers.) The couple's two youngest children were born via surrogacy in December 2021 and June 2022. The existence of their youngest son, Tau, was revealed this September by Musk's biographer Walter Isaacson.

But X, Exa, and Tau weren't the only children Musk had during the relationship. Grimes was reportedly "outraged" after Business Insider broke the news in July 2022 that Musk had twins with one of his top Neuralink executives, Shivon Zilis, in November 2021 — one month before Exa was born. (Musk is an outspoken proponent of pro-natalism — a growing movement within the tech world that posits falling birth rates spells doom for the US and other developed countries. He also had six children with his first wife, Justine Musk, to whom he was married for eight years.)

Musk's father, Errol Musk, said he saw his son and X, alongside Zilis and their set of twins, earlier this month at a SpaceX event.

"I know one thing. Elon wants what's best for his children. No exception," he told Business Insider in an email. "They are all in good spirits. The battle with Claire is difficult," he added. (Zilis did not respond to a request for comment.)

From the outside, however, Grimes, Musk, and their children appeared to be a happy family throughout most of 2023. Grimes spoke about Musk positively in an early August Wired cover story, discussing their life as co-parents and praising his leadership abilities.

The couple even vacationed together in Japan in mid-August. Musk live-streamed part of Grimes' gig from Tokyo and posted photos of X at a popular light exhibit in the city.

But according to court filings that came shortly after, the trip would be among the final moments of bliss for the now-fractured family.

To sue him, you have to serve him

Their problems became public in early September, when Grimes posted and quickly deleted an angry plea.

"Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer," she wrote in response to a photo of Musk and Zilis's twins. "I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite this situation utterly ripping my family apart."

Musk sued her that same day.

Initially, the lawsuit, filed in Texas, flew under the radar. It was only publicly revealed weeks later, after Business Insider obtained the heavily redacted documents. What Musk wanted, exactly, was unclear — it had been filed only to "establish the parent-child relationship."

Three weeks later, Grimes counter-sued. The filing indicated she wanted primary physical custody of the three children.

Successfully serving the world's richest man with custody papers, however, was another story.

For a week in October, a cadre of process servers attempted to get the papers into Musk's hands. One started her search with the flight records of his private jets. "It has been written that Respondent utilizes his aircraft to such an extent that his travel on his owned aircraft has been likened to a rideshare, such as Uber," she later said in a court filing. (Jet tracking is a practice Musk has publicly criticized.)

She instructed field operatives to visit likely Musk destinations around Los Angeles County.

They set up surveillance positions around an airport he frequented and near a SpaceX facility. The process server also scoured news sites and social media accounts of people in Musk's orbit. Still, he remained elusive.

Back in Texas, servers visited residential addresses associated with Musk and Zilis. (A person who answered the call box at the latter location claimed to not know who Musk was, a server said.) They also made stops at the Tesla Gigafactory, SpaceX facilities, and even a horse farm linked to the billionaire.

"Nope, not here," a woman at the property said when asked about Musk, according to a court filing.

After visiting more than a dozen locations across Texas and California, the process servers never found Musk. Instead of serving him directly, they left copies of the documents at places they visited and mailed them to those addresses as well.

A security guard at X headquarters in San Francisco told the process server she would bring the documents to Musk's legal team. But when security personnel at Tesla and at SpaceX refused to take the documents, the servers simply left the envelopes on the ground in front of them.

While the servers never reached Musk directly, family law experts told Business Insider Grimes had done her due diligence. "None of these security guards were going to let the process server in," said Chris Melcher, an attorney who has repped Kanye West and other high-net-worth families. "They could've come 100 times."

Texas vs. California

Meanwhile, the primary dispute in court was already taking shape: Texas vs. California.

Musk, whose net worth is an estimated $255 billion, wanted the case to proceed in Texas — where monthly child support payments for three children are capped at $2,760 — while Grimes pushed for California, which has no limit.

According to Musk, Grimes had only moved to California recently — bringing their two youngest kids with her — to avoid Texas courts. But filings from Grimes' lawyers said they moved to California around December 31, 2022, and that X was only with Musk over her objections.

She took it one step further in an October filing. Not only do the kids not live in Texas, Grimes' lawyers argued, Musk himself barely spends much time there. A filing from her lawyers said that from December 2022 to August 2023, Musk spent less than half his time in Austin, and that he was in California two to three days a week.

In mid-November, Musk began raising safety concerns. His lawyers requested a secure location and an undisclosed time and date for him to provide a deposition. By the end of the month, Musk's team asked the court to restrict public access to the case, citing the safety of his children.

On November 30, Grimes' lawyers argued that Musk was using non-disclosure agreements to prevent the kids' nannies from providing her with information, while simultaneously using them to build his own case.

"[Elon] apparently believes that the rules of discovery simply do not apply to him, and that he can thumb his nose at any obligation to disclose information to [Claire] if he believes such information might level the playing field in this litigation," a filing from Grimes' lawyers said.

The back-and-forth only escalated from there, with Musk doing something that only he could do: using his own company as a cudgel in a custody dispute.

December 4 court filings by Musk cited Grimes' own tweets in which she said "I live in Austin" and "I live in Texas" in 2021 and 2022. There was also a tweet from April 26, 2023, in which Grimes suggested she still lived in Austin but was moving houses. (Musk said the singer was moving into his residence at the time.) Other tweets she sent in May about issues with housing in Texas also seemed to suggest she still lived in the state, according to Musk's lawyer.

But Musk didn't stop there. In a written declaration, he listed specific dates in April, May, and July of 2023 in which the children saw their pediatrician in Austin. Musk also claimed the children had been attending a daycare in Austin as recently as July and August. X, he said, is still attending preschool there.

After the Tokyo trip, he said, they all flew back to Texas for a few days, and on August 23, Grimes left for California with two of the children.

Musk said he filed his lawsuit 15 days later, when he realized she wasn't returning to Texas with their children.

He also hinted at why he thought Grimes had gone to California.

"At various times within the past year, when there was conflict in our relationship, [Grimes] told me that her friends were warning her that California would be a better court jurisdiction for her than Texas, if she ever needed to litigate," Musk wrote.

The 'Grimes' project

Long before Grimes dated Musk — before Grimes was even Grimes — she was Claire Boucher.

In 2006, the 18-year-old moved to Montreal and quickly became part of the experimental music scene, where she eventually developed her on-stage persona.

"She was pursuing this professional artistic career, but at the same time was extremely supportive of more avant-garde and more politically focused art, particularly in our local scene," Matthew Edmund Duffy, a longtime friend and collaborator, told Business Insider. But as her profile grew, he said she struggled to balance outsider art projects and the commercialization of her work as Grimes.

The divide grew particularly strong after she relocated to Los Angeles in 2015. When she started dating Musk, some of her old friends cut her off completely, Duffy said.

He and several other friends "were very put off by it. We don't really have much faith or trust in those sorts of individuals," he said. Still, he said he kept in touch with Grimes, and that she seemed happy with Musk and their family in the early days.

Now, however, Duffy sees similarities between her relationship with Musk and her complicated relationship with what she has referred to as the "trash" music industry.

"I don't think she really realized the all-controlling aspects of what happens when you get involved in these sort of corporate environments," Duffy said. Similarly, he believes she saw Musk as a person, rather than the powerful, political entity that billionaires can represent.

"They're not just the person. They're also that institution behind them," he said. "You get trapped in that sort of relationship where you can't quite maintain your own independence."

Still, despite her tumultuous year, Grimes released new music, performed at Tomorrowland in July, participated in a free speech debate on the success of the sexual revolution in September, and ramped up her AI evangelism across all platforms.

The singer, however, remains largely tight-lipped about her ongoing custody battle, save for a recent post on X that referenced "personal life drama" and noted that she did "not wanna be properly in public again until it's over for sanity." She did not respond to a request for comment, and her spokesperson declined to comment on the legal fight. Neither Musk nor his lawyers responded to a request for comment.

As the battle drags on, the minutiae of the dispute may remain classified. Musk's efforts to have the Texas case sealed paid off: A judge restricted access to case documents in early December.

Though Grimes and Musk never married, the billionaire's prior divorces may offer insight into the uphill battle Grimes faces in going head-to-head with the ultrawealthy mogul.

All three of Musk's divorces — two of which were with the same woman — played out in California courts, where the higher-earning partner is often required to foot much of the cost of the divorce for both parties. In 2010, Musk wrote about his split from Justine Musk for Business Insider, estimating that it had already cost him $4 million in two years. This time around, he's adamant his next legal battle plays out in Texas, a state court system much friendlier to the über rich.

From the looks of their respective legal lineups, it's setting up to be an ill-matched battle. In Musk's most recent filing, Grimes had five attorneys listed compared to his 11 named lawyers, who spanned three top-tier Texas law firms.

But Grimes may have other factors working in her favor in 2024.

If X goes bankrupt or Tesla autopilots off a cliff, Musk's attention — and his money — might be tied up elsewhere.