Phil Collins and his ex-wife Orianne Cevey have come face to face for the first time in nearly two years — and he is accusing her of “committing fraud.”
Cevey, 48, has waged a legal fight against the 71-year-old superstar for half the proceeds of the sprawling Miami Beach waterfront estate they once shared and that he sold for $40 million in January 2021.
The latest round of the dispute saw the pair meet up online Wednesday in front of a judge. Collins’ legal team is attempting to prove that Cevey has no rights to the proceeds of the house. The exes did not speak to each other.
Collins’ lawyers said in documents that, in a 2016 court filing, Cevey claimed she was “mentally incapable” of understanding a divorce settlement — from her second husband, Charles Mejjati — but that she changed her tune in 2020. According to court papers, Cevey claimed that she went ahead with that divorce settlement voluntarily because Collins had promised her half of their shared Miami house if she split from Mejjati.
Cevey claims she was “unable to understand what she was signing as she relied heavily on her pain medication and suffered from incredible pain” from a spinal and neck surgery that left her partially paralyzed and unable to walk.
Collins denies promising her half of the proceeds from the house.
In statements seen in the latest filing, Cevey claims that Collins said she should move in with him and he would “take care” of her. The two had perviously been married from 1999 to 2008. She was then wed to investment banker Mejjjati from 2008 to 2017, but reunited with Collins in 2016. They then broke up again in 2020 and she married Thomas Bates.
It was reported in court papers last week that Cevey had picked Bates, whom she filed for divorce in December 2021, from a male escort site where he advertised himself as a “sexy intellectual.”
The latest filing, which refers to Cevey under her latest married name, Bates, reads: “There are literally dozens of additional irreconcilable conflicts between Mrs. Bates’ position in this case and her pleadings, financial affidavit, and other documents filed in her 2016 divorce from her former husband Charles.”
Cevey’s reps did not return a request for comment.
Collins’ legal team, led by high-profile Palm Beach divorce attorney Jeffrey Fisher, also claimed that forensic accountants discovered that Cevey had not listed a vested interest in the home she had shared with Collins.
In the latest filing, Collins’ side claims that “Mrs. Bates either committed a fraud on the divorce court which heard her divorce [from Mejjati] or she is committing a fraud on this court … In her 2016 divorce, Mrs Bates filed a financial affidavit which did not list her interest in the LLC [that owned the Miami Beach home] even though in this case she claims she had an enforceable oral agreement dating back to April 2015 entitling her to half of the LLC, which owned roughly $40 million piece of property. Likewise, she testified in the divorce case that the [home] was Phil Collins house, not hers.”
After her reunion with Collins, Cevey went on to marry Bates, 32, in a secret Vegas wedding in 2020 and then moved him into the Genesis star’s Miami Beach mansion while Collins was in Europe.
Collins was blindsided when he learned his ex had remarried, and launched a successful legal bid to throw them out, as The Post reported.
Cevey was awarded $46 million upon her 2008 divorce from Collins — at the time, a record in the UK. The pair share two sons, Nic, 21, who took over his dad’s drumming duties in the recent Genesis tour, and 17-year-old Matthew.
Cevey has lately been trying to raise funds by selling off her extensive designer clothes and bags, as well as Collins’ memorabilia. The singer is now living in Switzerland.
