England footballer Kyle Walker was “sensible, honest and reliable” during a family court battle with model Lauryn Goodman over child maintenance payments, a judge has said.
Mr Walker, 34, appeared at the Central Family Court in London earlier this month in a dispute with Ms Goodman over the amount of money he should pay to support their one-year-old daughter, Kinara.
Ms Goodman, 33, asked the court to order that Mr Walker pay £14,750 a month in “global” child maintenance for the pair’s two children, as well as tens of thousands for cars, furnishing and property maintenance and other costs such as nursery fees.
The Manchester City defender, who also has four sons with his wife, Annie Kilner Walker, opposed some of the demands or argued they should be decreased, telling the court that he was not an “open chequebook” despite earning between £3 million and £5 million per year.
In his ruling, Judge Edward Hess dismissed many of Ms Goodman’s demands, concluding that she was “not reliable” while claiming Mr Walker “acted with dignity and generosity”.
He said: “Plainly, he (Mr Walker) was embarrassed and remorseful as to the difficult situation in which he has placed a number of people, including all of his children, and regretted his decision-making in trying to keep his paternity of Kinara a secret.
“But he has in my view acted with dignity and generosity, and, once the secret was out, honesty, in facing up to the financial and personal consequences of what happened.
“In contrast, my assessment of the mother is that she was not reliable, often said what she thought would help her case rather than what was true, failed to make a calm and measured assessment of what she needed and often exaggerated her need to spend money.”
The two-day hearing began on July 16, a day after Mr Walker returned from Germany after England’s European Championship final defeat to Spain.
The press was restricted from reporting on the case during the hearing, but Judge Hess ruled that the restrictions should be lifted on Tuesday.
The court heard that Ms Goodman began her legal claim two days after Kinara’s birth.
![Lauryn Goodman at a premiere in London in 2018](https://www.irishnews.com/resizer/v2/UT6QPLCWOFJHTCBD6LTZZLZUW4.jpg?auth=5b230f22691c4d8393a84d22ff1d38d636838e1d492830fd9b37d2b1b879385b&width=800&height=1143)
Her demands included that Mr Walker paid for the upkeep of a hydro-pool, a £28-per-hour gardener, a car worth up to £70,000 every three years and air conditioning costing around £33,000.
In court, Ms Goodman justified the need for a £31,200 artificial turf pitch by stating that Kinara kicked a ball from a crawling position, which could make her a future England footballer, adding: “The Lionesses are better than the Lions.”
But the judge dismissed the demand, describing her reasoning as an “unjustified evidential leap”.
Ms Goodman further claimed that Mr Walker should pay to fix 59 “snagging issues” at the property bought for her and the children by the footballer under the terms of a previous court order related to their first child, Kairo, claiming they pose a safety risk.
Giving evidence, Ms Goodman said that the money was needed to “secure my children’s future” and that she did not want them to be “different” from Mr Walker’s other children.
The court heard that Mr Walker accepted some of Ms Goodman’s demands, but felt others were disproportionate, with his lawyers claiming that she was making a “blatant attempt to leverage” money for “personal benefit”.
The judge said that Walker had already paid more than £430,000, plus thousands more per month, to Ms Goodman for Kinara and changes to her £2.4 million Sussex property, which he also purchased.
The footballer also agreed to pay “all but a very small portion” of Ms Goodman’s £259,298 of legal costs related to the dispute, on top of his own fees of £171,440.
In his judgment, Judge Hess encouraged both sides to “compromise” over the “snagging” issues but said he was “not persuaded” by many of Ms Goodman’s demands.
Dismissing Ms Goodman’s claim for air conditioning, the judge said she could mitigate high temperatures in her home by “deploying a modestly-priced electric fan”.
Mr Walker was ordered to pay £12,500 per month in child maintenance – a figure he offered before the hearing began – and a sum of £5,000 for furniture compared with Ms Goodman’s initial demand of £20,000.
Mr Walker was also ordered to pay £30,000 for a car to be used by a nanny and other fees.
Ms Goodman has previously publicly confirmed that Mr Walker was the father of her second child, and sent a text to Mrs Walker last December stating: “Hey it’s Lauryn I just wanted to quickly tell you that Kyle is the father of our daughter.”
In his ruling, the judge said that Mr Walker had made payments to Ms Goodman to “keep the lid” on the news of her second pregnancy, adding “honesty might have been a better policy”.
![Mr Walker appeared in court the day after arriving back from Germany following the European Championships](https://www.irishnews.com/resizer/v2/Y64ZAREQ5JP57LA7JXNL47L74Q.jpg?auth=09cfe155973718115ed4ee5bba23b1cccca98c3af212a200cbafd66e05ac90fb&width=800&height=1199)
The judge also added that it was not the court’s role to “make moral judgments” or “punish or condemn any perceived human frailties or lack of wisdom”.
But he ruled that the text sent by Ms Goodman to Mrs Walker “intended to, and did, cause distress”.
He said: “I do not accept the mother’s explanation that this text message was sent in an attempt to create a good working relationship between the two women in the father’s life.
“In my view, this text was written in the same spirit as the series of text communications with the father’s next-door neighbour in Cheshire in which the mother sought to persuade the neighbour to record conversations over the garden fence with a view to gain material to undermine the father’s marriage.
“When the mother texted the neighbour to say ‘ready to finish them’, she had in mind causing irreparable damage to the father’s marriage.”