Kate Gosselin has been getting called out for being a controlling, toxic mom for years, but she might be even more manipulative than anyone could have predicted. Last year, her ex-husband Jon publicly accused her of secretly taking an outrageous amount of money from their kids.
Between the exes’ legal battle over the missing funds, Kate’s bizarre side of the story, and the details of her alleged theft, this scandal is honestly insane. After Jon and Kate called it quits in 2009, they spent over a decade battling in court over custody and child support.
But even after the sextuplets turned 18 years old in May 2022, their parents’ legal drama was far from over. Just three months later, Jon dropped an unexpected bombshell. In an interview with The U.S. Sun, he revealed that after he was granted full custody of Collin and Hannah in 2018, he made a seriously shocking discovery.
Jon claimed that Kate had dipped into Hannah and Collin’s trust funds without their approval or even their knowledge. She had reportedly made huge withdrawals from their accounts that added up to over $100,000. Not surprisingly, the kids were extremely upset.
Collin and Hannah Confronted Kate About the Money
Jon admitted that both Collin and Hannah had recently called Kate to confront her about taking so much of their money, especially without their permission. But unfortunately, she didn’t really care and they were angry with her, which is actually pretty disturbing.
Before Jon and Kate’s marriage completely crumbled, they had set up trust funds for their children. All eight kids were making money from appearing on reality TV and from attending promotional events, and their parents wanted to be able to help keep all of it safe.
Just like everyone else does with their kids’ trust funds, the Gosselins created the accounts to protect their children’s finances. The kids wouldn’t be able to access their trust funds until they were 18, so the fact that Kate supposedly took tens of thousands of dollars from Collin and Hannah’s accounts when they were only 14 is absolutely terrible.
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Hannah and Collin were the only kids who lived with Jon. Over the years, the other six children ended up cutting off contact with their dad, which he chalked up to Kate’s manipulation and twisted narratives. Sadly, Collin and Hannah’s siblings later turned against them as well.
Jon also told The U.S. Sun that he wished he could tell his children who were living with their mom about what she had done. However, he had basically no way of knowing if Kate had stolen money from their trust accounts, too. But what an inside source revealed next was honestly unbelievable.
Kate Took $100,000 From Her Children
According to what an insider shared with In Touch Weekly, Kate had allegedly left Collin and Hannah’s trust accounts extremely low in funds. And for her to take $100,000 from the two kids who had recently moved in with Jon seemed like more than just a coincidence.
Kate seemingly always wanted to have complete control over the kids, and she never wanted to have to pay Jon any child support. So when Collin and Hannah started spending more time getting to know their dad, it seemed like their mom became super spiteful.
It’s a little suspicious that Kate took such an enormous amount of money from Collin and Hannah, right before Jon was granted full custody of them. It doesn’t make a lot of sense why she would withdraw so much, just from the two kids who wanted to live with their dad.
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Meanwhile, the trust funds of the children living with Kate either went totally untouched, or the kids were just too nervous to bring it to anyone’s attention. And who could really blame them if they were too scared of her possibly retaliating to speak out about it?
Kate already had a well-known history of pushing her kids to do whatever she wanted, just so she could keep exploiting them. The In Touch Weekly source even explained that that’s one of the reasons why Collin and Hannah weren’t just outraged, but hurt as well.
They supposedly felt so devastated by their mom’s shady actions because of what the missing money actually meant to them. They had been forced by Kate to appear on her reality show and its spin-offs, despite how much they didn’t want to be a part of it.
The Gosselin Kids Were Pressured to Be On TV
None of the Gosselin kids had ever been given the choice to be on TV or not, but Kate wasn’t about to simply let them walk away. Instead of risking a huge pay cut from TLC by allowing the kids to leave the show, she just continued pushing them into participating.
Collin and Hannah had supposedly been pressured into filming for a big part of their lives. At least they could look forward to having all the money they’d made over the years when they turned 18, but after Kate reportedly stole their earnings, they were understandably crushed.
A few days after Kate’s alleged theft made headlines, another source shared a shocking detail with In Touch Weekly. Thankfully, Jon had already taken matters into his own hands and filed a legal complaint against Kate.
It turns out that he had actually gotten the court involved in 2018, more than four years before he went public with his startling accusations. But the reason why he waited so long after filing to expose his ex-wife’s selfish, appalling behavior was truly insane.
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Apparently, the sextuplets’ 18th birthday was a major turning point in the whole ordeal. Since Hannah and Collin were legally adults, Jon couldn’t keep trying to take legal action against Kate to try to get the missing money back for them. If Collin and Hannah wanted to even attempt to get the stolen funds back from their mom, it wasn’t going to be easy.
They would both have to file their own civil lawsuits against her, which is obviously pretty intimidating. Despite the fact that Hannah and Collin have each taken a stand against Kate in the media, going head to head with her in court is a totally different story.
Especially since her version of what happened with the money from their trust accounts is absolutely bizarre. According to legal documents obtained by The U.S. Sun, Kate confessed in a 2019 court hearing that she had withdrawn $100,000 from her kids’ trust funds.
Kate Said That she ‘Borrowed’ the Money to Survive
But she described the money as a loan that she had “borrowed” for a shocking reason. Kate told the judge that she had only taken money from Collin and Hannah’s accounts in order to survive. She reportedly made two separate withdrawals of $50,000 each, just so that she could afford to pay for the children’s basic necessities and daily expenses.
But the same year that she took the money, she also made an unbelievably massive purchase. Kate managed to buy a big, luxurious North Carolina lake house for $750,000, so she must not have been struggling TOO badly. But her claim about using the stolen money to survive wasn’t the only ridiculous thing she said.
The court documents also revealed that Kate apparently had no plan to stop “borrowing” money from her kids. She confessed that she was going to have to continue taking loans from their accounts just to get by, but she honestly didn’t seem to feel sorry at all, and the reason why was seriously mind-blowing.
Believe it or not, Kate claimed that even factoring in the $100,000 she used, her children were actually in debt to her. She acted like she was doing them a favor by not taking $387,000 from them, which she said they owed her for their private school tuition.
Kate decided where to send the kids for school, not the other way around. They didn’t choose to attend a super expensive school. But let’s be real, even if Kate they had suggested it, why does Kate think it’s her children’s responsibility to pay for their schooling?
Not only did Kate fail to get permission to take money from Collin and Hannah’s trust accounts, but she also never made a plan to repay them. After they turned 18 and Jon could no longer lead the fight for them in court, she basically dismissed the entire thing.
It’s no wonder Jon accused Kate of living off of her children’s money. Especially since she genuinely thought that they owed her for their school tuition. Unfortunately, Kate still hasn’t paid back Collin and Hannah, and it doesn’t look like either of them have any active court cases against her.
