Mary J. Blige is personally attending to all of her business affairs following her marriage breakdown to ensure she never finds herself in a financial “mess” again.
The singer/actress filed for divorce from her manager husband Martin ‘Kendu’ Isaacs in 2016, after 12 years of marriage, and court documents subsequently revealed the estranged couple has an outstanding debt of $11 million, with funds also owed to U.S. tax officials at the Internal Revenue Service.
In October (17), Mary even offered to cover Isaacs‘ half of the fees if the judge overseeing their contentious divorce agrees to end her temporary spousal support payments, which amount to $30,000 a month.
Mary’s troubled personal life has made her pay closer attention to her finances, but she is finding the positives in having to deal with them directly.
“I’m just being straight-up honest (about her personal issues),” she told New York magazine. “I never wanted to do all this stuff, but after what I’ve been through and the mess that I’m in…”
“You have to pay those taxes,” Mary admitted. “It’s good to see what you have and what you don’t have (by personally reviewing her business affairs) – and why are we paying this person $5,000 a week?”
As well as drawing on her heartache for her recent album, Strength of a Woman, the No More Drama superstar channeled the pain and anger of her divorce for her Oscar-nominated role in the movie Mudbound, about two men who experience racism in rural Mississippi upon their return from World War II.
But Mary, who portrays family matriarch Florence Jackson, didn’t tell any of the cast or crewmembers about her crumbling marriage at the time.
“It wasn’t anybody’s business,” she reasoned of shooting the film in the spring and summer of 2016. “I just kept it (inside) and gave it all to Florence.”
Blige and Isaacs are due to face-off in court next month (Mar18).
