Allexis Holmes, ex-wife of Kings player, sought justice in courts that set her up to fail
May 18, 2022 05:00 AM
Allexis Holmes was set up to lose this case before it even started.
Holmes lost the custody battle for her son when she agreed with her ex-husband, Sacramento Kings center Richaun Holmes, to go to private arbitration. Richaun has millions of dollars, an expensive legal team, and the support of an NBA franchise deeply invested in maintaining his public image — and theirs.
A recent ruling in a Georgia court grants Richaun full custody of the couple’s 6-year-old son, a development that was triumphantly paraded around Sacramento by the Kings’ communications team. But there’s nothing to celebrate here, much less to gloat about.
No one ever wins in custody disputes. But when the custody battle is between someone who is rich and someone who is not, one side is set up to lose. That’s what happened here; Allexis lost to a system that benefits the wealthy party. Private mediation is often recommended in family court, but according to documents available from the Superior Court of Riverside County for parents in the same situation as the Holmeses, it’s not a recommended process when the parties “lack equal bargaining power or have a history of domestic violence.” As the ex-wife of an NBA star, alleging child abuse, Allexis falls in both categories.
Private mediation is a system that plays out in secret, which is what this terrible dispute was when the Kings mysteriously ended Richuan Holmes’ season in March. There was no specific reason given, but as The Bee reported, he left the team because his ex-wife was seeking a restraining order in Sacramento.
Allexis claims Richaun is hiding behind a private court mediator whose ruling ultimately decided the fate of all three cases. Richaun has been paying for a private mediator in Los Angeles for years, Allexis claims.
By bringing her case to Sacramento and to a third court in Georgia, Allexis finally stepped out from beneath the shadow of a deal she erroneously agreed to when she thought she was helping Richaun’s career by keeping their custody battle quiet.
Meanwhile, because of that mediator’s decision, Allexis has been forced to live in the Sacramento area even though it is not her home. She has been forced to live in a city that idolizes her son’s father.
She pursued the case for a third time, in Georgia, not because she was trying to evade the California court system, but because that’s where she lives. After her story was made public, Allexis claimed she received threatening text messages from people she believes to be associates of her ex-husband, which prompted her to seek a third restraining order in Georgia.
The court in Fulton County, Ga., remanded her back to the private Los Angeles-based mediator, stating in documents that it was “disturbed by (Allexis Holmes’) apparent attempt to use the protections afforded to victims of domestic violence by this Court and the laws of this state to evade the Custody Order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California.”
There’s more but it’s pretty much just the writer ascribing a whole power dynamic to this case that doesn’t seem to actually exist.