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LOS ANGELES: Troubled actor and Oscar-winning director Mel Gibson will pay his ex-girlfriend $750,000 in a deal which grants the former couple joint custody of their young daughter, a judge said Wednesday.
Details of the legal agreement between Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva were unveiled in the Los Angeles Superior Court, which announced last Friday that a deal had been struck.
Gibson, 55, who appeared subdued in court, will also give a house to their daughter Lucia in a settlement that ended years of public feuding between the estranged couple, said judge Peter D. Lichtman.
Grigorieva and 22-month-old Lucia also will be allowed to live in the suburban Los Angeles home until Lucia's 18th birthday, with the sale of that house then to be part of the child's trust.
After the judge read details of the settlement, Gibson stood up and said, “I'd like to say thanks, your honor, for bringing this matter to a reasonable conclusion.”
Grigorieva, a 40-year-old Russian musician, thanked the judge and promised to do, “what's best for Lucia.” Gibson, who won Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for “Braveheart” in 1996, avoided jail time in March this year when he decided not to appeal domestic violence charges made by Grigorieva in 2010.
He was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to attend a domestic violence counseling program.
Gibson's career has struggled since his 2006 arrest for drunk driving, which exploded into a major scandal because of anti-Semitic remarks he made to a highway patrol officer.
In that case, he was sentenced to three years probation and fined $1,300, after undergoing alcohol rehabilitation.
Gibson won critical acclaim earlier this year for his performance in eccentric movie “The Beaver,” about a depressed man who turns to a hand puppet to help get his life back on track.
The small-budget drama, directed by Jodie Foster, had a shaky release at US cinemas, but was feted at the Cannes film festival in France in May, where Gibson skipped the traditional post-screening press conference.
