A (not so) pretty mess. Erika Jayne’s lawyer, Peter Mastan, wants to be taken off the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star’s bankruptcy case, Us Weekly can confirm.
According to documents obtained by Us, Mastan’s motion was filed on Monday, June 14. His petition came after a documentary about Erika, 49, and her estranged-husband, Tom Girardi, was released titled The Housewife and the Hustler. The ABC News Originals documentary detailed ongoing allegations against Tom, 82, and his law firm, Girardi Keese.
The former couple were previously accused of embezzling settlement funds intended for the victims of families killed in the Lion Air Flight 610 in 2018. Tom came under fire for the allegations in December 2020, one month after his spouse of almost 20 years filed for divorce.
Mastan’s new motion will force Erika to get a new attorney. The update also shows that there may be underlying drama going on with the bankruptcy proceedings.
In the documentary, it was revealed that the “How Many F—ks?” singer — who has not been charged with anything — potentially knew more than she let on about her husband’s financial situation.
Erika was listed on one of Tom’s LLCs as his “secretary,” which Law360’s features reporter Brandon Lowrey noted raises “questions” about “what she knew” and whether she benefited from the situation.
“Tom and Erika, they’re stuck together in these bankruptcy proceedings,” Lowrey said in the doc. “A lot of these debts, that they owe in bankruptcy proceedings, [they] owe together, possibly. It’s going to be hard for her to say she didn’t know that anything was going on.”
Last week, the bankruptcy case judge gave the OK for the bankruptcy trustee to hire another attorney to investigate whether Erika received fraudulent transfers from Tom’s firm. Thus, Mastan’s decision to leave the case comes at a complicated time.
Tom gave a disposition about his finances in September 2020 where he admitted he was broke.
“At one point I had about $80 million or $50 million in cash. That’s all gone. I don’t have any money,” the former lawyer said in a recording of his statement featured in the documentary.
While the reality star was also supposed to give a deposition about their finances in May 2020 and September 2020, her hearing dates were postponed.
According to Sunny Hostin, her defense is that many of the luxury items she owns were “gifts to her” and thus “separate property” from Tom. “I’m not sure as a legal proposition wins the day,” Hostin said in the documentary, which is streaming on Hulu.
The Broadway actress has not spoken publicly about The Housewife and the Hustler or her now-former lawyer’s decision to leave her case. However, she shared a preview for the Wednesday, June 16, episode of RHOBH to Instagram on Tuesday, June 15.
The trailer, which teased the “biggest scandal in Housewives history,” showed Erika dramatically entering the room as her fellow Housewives appeared to gossip about her and Tom’s situation.
