Celebrities Who Broke Up While Pregnant

Christina Milian and The-Dream split up just nine days before the birth of their daughter, Violet. According to TMZ, the producer filed for divorce on Feb. 17, 2010, and Violet was born on Feb. 26 of that year. However, the public apparently didn't know about the split until that July. And the breakup was ugly: in a missive on his own website (via People), The-Dream claimed he was so distraught over the failed marriage that he tried taking his own life. Before the breakup was even announced, he dished in interviews that he didn't help out much in raising the little girl.

TMZ reports that Milian accused The-Dream of cheating on her and claimed the only reason she signed their initial divorce forms was because he presented them to her when she was nine months pregnant and in no condition to put her John Hancock on paperwork. Thankfully, the exes reportedly reached an amicable agreement by November 2010.

Moesha actress Shar Jackson was engaged to dancer Kevin Federline when she got pregnant with their second child in late 2003. Unfortunately for her, by early 2004, K-Fed met none other than global pop superstar Britney Spears — and the "Oops! I Did It Again" singer inadvertently spelled the end of Federline and Jackson's engagement. In June 2004, Spears and Federline tied the knot, leaving Jackson in the dust. Jackson gave birth to son Kaleb a month after Federline and Spears' wedding. Though Federline and Jackson are amicable now, it was understandably an ugly situation for quite a while, with Jackson revealing in 2005 that she and Federline were still together when he began seeing Spears.

"How do you call yourself a human being knowing that you put somebody else through that pain? That's a vicious cycle right there, man," she told Sister 2 Sister magazine (via The Associated Press). "We gotta break that." She also said (via the Daily Mail) that Federline's abandoning her "wasn't like just breaking up a relationship. It was breaking up a family." The pair have since made peace, perhaps in part because Jackson also told Sister 2 Sister that she didn't want child support from Federline — just for him to spend time with their kids.

When Mary-Louise Parker was pregnant with longtime boyfriend Billy Crudup's son, William, in 2003, he dumped her for Claire Danes. Parker never spoke outright about the breakup, but did touch upon its impact on her life in her 2015 memoir, Dear Mr. You (via Jezebel). In one chapter, Parker writes a letter to a cab driver she encountered shortly after the split, whom she berated for getting lost. The driver said he didn't want her in his cab anymore, and she broke down, wailing, "No one does ... I am pregnant and alone ... I'm trying to get through it but I'm by myself every night and every morning and no one, nothing helps. I'm sorry I yelled ... Please, I know I am awful, it's been made clear but ... please look at me."

Meanwhile, Crudup hinted to the Los Angeles Times that he thinks his personal life temporarily affected the types of roles he was offered, but chalked it up to his own behavior, admitting, "Not that I haven't behaved like an [expletive]. That's common to human experience, and maybe I've done that as a public figure in a way that's hard to handle. But that's part of existence — dealing with frailties."

Despite their bitter split, these two have managed to successfully co-parent their son, who's taken to writing and directing his own work. In January 2020, Crudup revealed to Us Weekly that he and Parker even co-starred together in one of William's student films.

Former Gossip Girl matriarch Kelly Rutherford announced she was pregnant with her second child by husband Daniel Giersch in December 2008. One month later, she filed for divorce, People reports, with Rutherford accusing Giersch, a German citizen, of being a flight risk. The divorce was extremely acrimonious — the couple fought a bitter international custody battle for nearly six years, and the California judge in the case said in a filing that Rutherford's own attorney called immigration and got Giersch deported (Rutherford denied the claim). After a long, drawn out case, People reported that Giersch won primary custody of his and Rutherford's son, Hermes, and daughter, Helena, because his work visa had expired so he couldn't legally come back to the United States. The children would reside with him in Monaco for most of the year.

In 2015, Hermes and Helena visited Rutherford and stayed with her for the summer, and Rutherford refused to send them back to Monaco as required by her custody agreement with Giersch. She lost custody entirely, the Daily Mail reported, and is now only allowed to visit her children in France and Monaco.

Rapper Nas and "Milkshake" singer Kelis split while she was pregnant with their son, Knight, in 2010. Nas told Complex in 2012, "There was a point where we were trying to hold onto a relationship that was finished. She was pregnant and in the studio while we were recording Distant Relatives, and [Knight] would move when the music would come on. That was a great feeling for me, just to have that feeling of family. It ended around the time the record was being done." Kelis had a bit of a different take on why the marriage failed, writing on Instagram (via Global Grind), "I divorced his cheating behind lol I don't want him back at all."

The split may have been even uglier than anyone imagined, however: in a 2018 interview with Hollywood Unlocked, Kelis accused Nas of being both mentally and physically abusive throughout their marriage, including while she was pregnant, as well as of abusing alcohol, and admitted to hitting him back during their altercations. Kelis also confessed that if she hadn't been pregnant, she may have stayed with Nas. Meanwhile, the rapper later denied her allegations on Instagram (via People), accusing Kelis of being verbally abusive to their associates and claiming her interview was in retaliation over their joint custody agreement.

Cosby Show alum Keshia Knight Pulliam and NFL linebacker Ed Hartwell were married for only six months — and together for just 10 months total — when he filed for divorce in July 2016, reportedly a week after Knight Pulliam announced she was pregnant with daughter Ella. 

Hartwell told Page Six at the time that the pregnancy was the catalyst for the breakup, and that he wanted a paternity test to make sure the child was his before he paid support: "She wanted a baby really fast, and what I was trying to explain to her was that ... when you first get married, especially since we didn't have a long courtship, that we should actually focus on each other." He added that the couple had stopped being intimate because of her desire to have a child, saying, "Some things just weren't adding up ... I just want to make sure it is mine."

Pulliam continued to insist the baby is Hartwell's. Following some delays in paternity testing — Pulliam reportedly called for a judge to "lock him up until he hands over his sample," per TMZ — Hartwell admitted he's the father in February 2017, after a DNA test proved as much. Fast forward to April 2020, when Pulliam called for Hartwell to be jailed once again, this time for allegedly missing $31,647 in child support payments (via Bossip). As of this writing, there's no word on whether Hartwell has settled this reported debt.

Outspoken DJ and producer Diplo's on-again-off-again girlfriend, Kathryn Lockhart, was off-again when it was revealed she was pregnant with their second child — and Diplo was dating Katy Perry at the time. Us Weekly reports that son Lazer Lee Louis Pentz was born in November 2014. Diplo and Perry split not long after the birth, but Lockhart and Diplo haven't publicly reunited since then. Still, they have always seemed really amicable.

Before their split and after the birth of their first child, Diplo told Ask Men of love and relationships, "I've learned a lot. You don't really have a chance with a real relationship unless you would give up everything for it. Now, I'm with an awesome girl with a baby, and I didn't plan it, but I couldn't ever ask for a better person to share this life with." He also admitted to Rolling Stone in 2012 that he and Lockhart "got pregnant by accident" with their first child and were living together, even though they weren't exactly dating anymore — adding that he had "local girls" in other cities.

Minnie Driver announced her pregnancy in 2008, but never revealed the father of her son, Henry, until four years after he was born — and whatever went down during that relationship appeared to have left her at least slightly salty. The father turned out to be Timothy J. Lea, a producer and writer on TV series The Riches, in which Driver starred alongside Eddie Izzard from 2007 to 2008. "I don't need to protect him anymore," the Good Will Hunting star told the Observer (via the Daily Mail) in February 2012. "He can fend for himself. He's a grown-up." She added, "Our relationship was very complicated and private, and I honestly didn't want to have to talk about it. I didn't want people coming up to him ... and raising eyebrows."

Unfortunately, that backfired for her, she said, with paparazzi often shouting at her and asking who her "sperm donor" was, which baffled her because her baby's father isn't famous. When asked if Lea was acting as a father to Henry, Driver replied, "Sort of. He's figuring it out ... I mean, he hasn't been that involved; his choice. But he is now."

Sherri Shepherd married her second husband, Lamar Sally, in 2011, and Sally filed for divorce from Shepherd in May 2014 — when their surrogate was six months pregnant with their son, Lamar Jr. This created a lot of complications in the split, because Shepherd had no biological tie to the child and didn't want to pay child support for the baby boy. A judge ruled in 2015 that Shepherd was, in fact, considered Lamar's mother, and TMZ reported that she eventually agreed to pay $4,100 a month in child support.

In February 2017, however, Shepherd made clear that she considers Lamar Jr. to just be Sally's child, not hers. She told Dr. Oz, "I feel I had a very tight pre-nup, but there's a baby here and I have always said I would take care of his son because he's here and I make money. I always said I would provide financially."

Little Women: LA star Briana Renee split from husband Matt Grundhoffer when she was pregnant with his child after he was allegedly busted cheating on her, Radar Online reported. According to the media outlet, Grundhoffer reportedly sent explicit messages to a woman named Makayla, then graduated to full-on sexting and nude photos (complete with identifying tattoos) before Makayla says she put the kibosh on the affair. 

In a clip of the show (via Radar Online), Grundhoffer sobs to Renee, "I feel like I made a horrible decision. And that decision cost me more than I know to f**king say. And I can't change that. I'm sorry. You don't deserve this." An unmoved Renee remarked to the cameras that she needed a break and space from Grundhoffer, adding, "I understand he's hurting, I understand he's sorry, I understand all that, but I don't care."

The couple reconciled just before she gave birth to their son, Maverick. However, TMZ reported that Renee gave Grundhoffer and his alleged wandering eye and smack-talking mouth the boot for good in November 2017. Two months after they finalized their bitter divorce, during which Renee and their son were granted a five-year domestic violence restraining order against Grundhoffer (via The Sun), Renee got remarried to artisan carpenter Tim Manning in December 2019.

If Tristan Thompson and Khloé Kardashian were indeed hooking up behind Jordan Craig's back, karma came swiftly for KoKo: in April 2018, just days before Kardashian gave birth to her and Thompson's daughter, True, video footage emerged of Thompson with other women. One video posted to TMZ was from October 2017, which would have made Kardashian about three months along at the time, as well as footage from April 2018 of Thompson entering a New York City hotel with another woman. TMZ reported that Kardashian began "having early contractions" on April 11, 2018, though her due date wasn't until the end of the month, noting, "It may not be a coincidence [the contractions] happened just hours after videos surfaced of Tristan hooking up with other women."

Kardashian and Thompson were estranged afterward, but over time their couple status was relatively murky — until it was reported that Thompson kissed Kylie Jenner's BFF, Jordyn Woods, at a party ... at which point the pair were seemingly dunzo forever.

NBA star Brandon Jennings was excited enough about then-girlfriend Lashontae Heckard's pregnancy to announce it on Instagram in May 2015. However, a month later, Jennings boasted on social media about his single status. Shady much? Heckard gave birth to Jennings' third child (their only one together) in November 2015, and since then they've appeared to have been at odds.

In July 2019, Jennings slammed Heckard for allegedly trying to get cast on Basketball Wives, writing on Snapchat (via Atlanta Black Star) that she wasn't actually a wife (nevermind that not all of the women featured on the VH1 reality series were ever married). He went on to shade her for allegedly speaking poorly about him, irony be damned, and later added, "If I'm not bothering you or asking you for anything! You don't exist to me! That means don't ask me for s**t! Go find another n***a to help u!" That should go over well in a child support hearing.