De Niro having difficulties to hold up with wife’s expensive way of living

“Aging Bull” Robert De Niro is remaining labored to loss of life to preserve up with his estranged wife’s extravagant way of living — which include her “thirst for Stella McCartney” and $1 million-plus diamond rings, his attorney claimed in court Friday.

The elderly performing legend is currently a tax delinquent yet again — with the paychecks from his subsequent two videos to offset his most up-to-date multimillion-greenback monthly bill to Uncle Sam, his divorce attorney claimed.

“Mr. De Niro is 77 a long time old, and when he loves his craft, he need to not be forced to function at this prodigious tempo because he has to,” De Niro’s attorney, Caroline Krauss, told a Manhattan decide for the duration of a digital divorce listening to.

“When does that end? When does he get the opportunity to not choose each and every challenge that will come alongside and not get the job done 6-working day weeks, 12-hour days so he can retain speed with Ms. Hightower’s thirst for Stella McCartney?” Krauss stated, referring to her client’s ex, Grace Hightower, and the celebrity designer.

“He could get ill tomorrow, and the party’s above,” she stated of the famed “Raging Bull” and “The Irishman” star.

De Niro phoned into the proceeding, when Hightower appeared by movie link.

The hearing came as the pair continues to squabble above how much income De Niro really should have to pay out to Hightower right until the phrases of their 2004 prenup settlement kick in, presumably just after their divorce is finalized.

Hightower’s attorney, Kevin McDonough, argued that given that filing for divorce in 2018, De Niro has unfairly continued to cut the total of cash he has been sending his estranged spouse, together with involving her credit history-card expenditures, likely from $375,000 a month to just $100,000 regular monthly as recently as January.

But Krauss claimed that in the a long time foremost up to their separation, Hightower was shelling out a lot more and additional. In just 2019, she experienced spent $1.67 million — including buying a diamond worth $1.2 million from jeweler Kwiat, the law firm reported.

Krauss said De Niro is powering millions of bucks on his taxes and that the dollars from his following two movie jobs will go towards paying out off all those liabilities. De Niro — who was clobbered with a $6.4 million tax lien in 2015 — has formerly claimed the pandemic decimated his finances.

De Niro doesn’t want Hightower and their two young ones to have to shift out of their Manhattan condominium as for every the prenup, which calls for the former pair to promote the $20 million pad, break up the income and then have him invest in a new $6 million home for the trio, Krauss explained.

But “if the decision is advertising the condominium and next the settlement or paying out pursuant to Ms. Hightower’s calls for — which are prosperous with indulgence, and waste and greed — then we would go with the former,” Krauss reported.

McDonough stated that until finally the prenuptial agreement goes into influence, De Niro is intended to pay out her so she can “maintain the status quo” way of life she experienced when they were married — though also crying foul on Krauss’ statements that De Niro is struggling economically.

“If he wishes to direct or compel his relatives to depart their longtime home when he’s shelling out tens of millions and tens of millions and hundreds of thousands on himself, on his personal houses, on renovating what his legal professionals tongue-and-cheek simply call his cottage in Montauk, which he has poured hundreds of thousands and thousands and thousands into around the previous few of years, he can choose that position,” McDonough claimed of the actor.

“There have been no cutbacks and no slowdowns in Mr. De Niro’s way of living in any way,” McDonough reported. “When Mr. De Niro goes to brunch Sunday in Connecticut, he charters a helicopter up there. When he flies down to see his friends in Florida or anywhere else, it’s a private jet.”

Krauss denied the assert that De Niro took a helicopter to brunch, even though McDonough scoffed that his client used $1.2 million on a diamond.

“I want to get these get-togethers divorced,” Manhattan Supreme Court docket Justice Matthew Cooper stated. “I want to get Ms. Hightower and Mr. De Niro to go their independent approaches.

“They will nonetheless occur out of this richer than almost any human getting who walks this Earth,” Cooper said.

Before in the listening to, Cooper reminded each sides, “There is absolutely nothing regular about these fees. For 99.9999 p.c of the entire world, these are remarkable to an just about unimaginable diploma.”

De Niro and Hightower were married in 1997, split in 1999, then obtained again with each other and renewed their vows in 2004 prior to he submitted for divorce three many years in the past.