MAMMA MIA: Linda Evangelista arrives at Manhattan Family Court yesterday ready to go toe-to-toe in her fight for $46,000-a-month in child support for her 5-year-old son. (WireImage)
Cad! Gold digger!
Right out of the gate, the insults were flying yesterday in a Manhattan celebrity child-support trial pitting Linda Evangelista against her billionaire French baby-daddy, François-Henri Pinault — with a potential $46,000-a-month settlement for their 5-year-old son, Augie, on the line.
Pinault, the 49-year-old CEO of the Paris-based luxury conglomerate that controls Gucci and Yves St. Laurent, took the witness stand on Day 1, hinting that the supermodel had intentionally gotten pregnant during a fleeting 2005 affair in which they saw each other just seven times over the course of four months.
“Well, she can answer that,” Pinault testified, in heavily accented English, when asked if he thought Evangelista had “taken steps” to get pregnant. “But I guess,” he shrugged.
Evangelista, still stunning at 46, was prepared to drop her own bombshell — her lawyer indicating that she’ll take the stand today and accuse Pinault of asking her to abort the baby.
“After some initial happiness, he indicated his preference to Ms. Evangelista that she terminate the pregnancy,” Evangelista’s lawyer William Beslow told Support Magistrate Paul Ryneski in opening statements, describing a conversation from January 2006.
Evangelista told Pinault she would keep the baby, the lawyer said.
“She would support the child herself,” Evangelista told him, “since he had made it perfectly clear to her that he had no interest in doing so.”
“And she did,” the lawyer said.
A Pinault spokesman later insisted that the Frenchman never asked Evangelista to terminate the pregnancy.
Pinault, whose family is worth an estimated $13 billion, has blasted Evangelista for seeking not just child support, but “mom support.”
Augie’s expenses include up to $16,000 a month for gun-toting, ex-NYPD detective chauffeurs, plus a 24-hour nanny costing almost $7,000 a month.
On the stand yesterday, Pinault said he met Evangelista in May 2005, began dating her in September and learned of the pregnancy in early 2006.
“I asked her what was her intention with the pregnancy. I was not involved in the decision of having babies,” he said under questioning by Beslow.
“We were dating four months, and I didn’t even know her very much.”
The Frenchman admitted he dumped Evangelista because he wanted nothing to do with the baby.
“She was so happy to be pregnant,” he remembered. “But it was not planned. I decided to stop the relationship at that point.
“I was not involved in the decision of having a baby,” he said.
“Then, of course, I told her I would recognize the baby, which I did. I would take my responsibility, and I did.”
Four months after the affair crashed and burned, in April 2006, Pinault met his future wife, actress Salma Hayek, impregnating her by year’s end.
In court yesterday, Evangelista flashed Pinault a fast, flinty look as she entered court, wearing tan high heels, a knee-length black skirt and a pink and black floral-print blouse.
Pinault watched her with a bemused smile.
For the first four years of Augie’s life, Evangelista paid all of his expenses, “without one penny, franc or euro in financial contribution from the father,” her lawyer Beslow said — despite Pinault’s personal net worth in excess of $3 billion, plus annual income approaching $5 million.
Evangelista suffered a “tremendous diminution in her income in 2011,” Beslow said, due to the conclusion of her contract as the face of L’Oreal.
“Ms. Evangelista is not looking to piggyback on the lifestyle of Mr. Pinault,” Beslow insisted. “She is looking for a continuation of the reasonable lifestyle of Augie.”
Pinault’s lawyer, David Aronson, countered that Evangelista is trying to shake Pinault down for what is, in effect, alimony, he complained.
“Most of the expenses do not relate to Augie but they relate to Ms. Evangelista,” he said.
“It is the classic case of someone trying to bootstrap herself to something that is alimony.”
“Is Mr. Pinault a comfortable man of substantial means? Yes.” Aronson said.
“But in the four years preceding 2011, her average income was $1.8 million,” he said.