Halle Berry is celebrating a major milestone—daughter Nahla's high school graduation—with family by her side. The actress has moved on with fiancé Van Hunt and continues to prioritize her children's happiness above all else.
Sources close to the situation say Berry and Aubry barely exchanged pleasantries at Thursday's ceremony. These two have history—ugly, expensive, court-filed history—and nobody expected a warm reunion after years of bitter fighting over money and custody.
In 2014, Berry was ordered to pay Aubry $16,000 per month in child support until Nahla turned 19 or graduated high school. By 2021, that figure dropped to $8,000 monthly—still nothing to sneeze at—and she owed an additional 4.3% on income exceeding $1.95 million annually.
Eighteen years of co-parenting through custody wars, six-figure support payments, and physical altercations with ex-husbands—all for the privilege of sitting in the same graduation venue without making eye contact. The real gift for Nahla? Finally being old enough to not have to watch her parents pretend they don't hate each other.
Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry showed up to their daughter Nahla's high school graduation on Thursday, and if you were hoping for a tearful reconciliation scene worthy of a Lifetime movie, prepare to be disappointed. The former couple—who spent years locked in one of Hollywood's ugliest child support battles—attended the ceremony completely separately, arriving at different times and, according to witnesses, exchanging minimal acknowledgment of each other's existence. Berry, 59, walked the red carpet-adjacent arrival area with her fiancé Van Hunt, dressed down in a black blouse, blue jeans, and sunglasses.
Meanwhile, Aubry—10 years her junior at 49—exited solo wearing a grey suit, white sneakers, and his own pair of shades. The message was clear: we're here for Nahla, not each other. And honestly?
After everything these two have put each other through over the past decade-plus, that's probably the healthiest outcome anyone could have hoped for. The couple's relationship timeline reads like a telenovela: together from 2005 to 2010, they welcomed daughter Nahla during that span and immediately began their descent into legal warfare after splitting. By 2012, they'd reached a custody agreement granting equal parenting time—which seemed reasonable enough until the child support numbers started climbing.
In 2014, a Los Angeles court ordered Berry to pay Aubry $16,000 per month until Nahla turned 19 or graduated high school. For context, that's $192,000 annually going from one parent to another for a child who split time between two households. But here's where it gets really expensive: in 2021, the payment amount was lowered to $8,000 monthly—but Berry also owed an additional 4.3 percent of any annual income exceeding $1.95 million.
For someone pulling in multi-million dollar acting salaries, that percentage adds up fast. The financial gymnastics required to maintain this arrangement probably paid for someone's law degree. And let's not forget the early days of their custody war, when things got physical between Aubry and Berry's then-husband Olivier Martinez.
Yes, actual fisticuffs occurred during what was supposed to be a civil handoff involving their child. Berry and Martinez married in 2013, divorced by 2016, and she's been with musician Van Hunt since 2020—so at least some romantic stability exists for the actress these days. But even that hasn't stopped her from waging separate custody battles over son Maceo, now 12, claiming she spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars trying to co-parent with Martinez in court documents filed last year.
Thursday's graduation wasn't just a milestone for Nahla—it was essentially the finish line for one of Hollywood's longest-running financial and custodial wars. Eighteen years old means legal adulthood in most jurisdictions, which means those monthly payments will eventually stop flowing. Whether Berry and Aubry will ever manage civil conversation remains to be seen, but at least their daughter finally gets to celebrate her achievements without the shadow of her parents' courtroom battles hanging overhead.
