After days of acrimony in court and a night of intense negotiation going into the wee hours of the morning, Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook settled their contentious divorce case.
“It is my pleasure to report to the court that with much hard work … we reached an agreement,” Brinkley’s lawyer Robert Cohen said in Suffolk County Supreme Court in Central Islip.
After Judge Mark Cohen signed off on the deal and Cook left the courtroom, Brinkley hugged two friends and sobbed quietly.
“It’s to me a very bittersweet moment because it really is the death of a marriage,” Brinkley said later, outside the courtroom. “I’m very pleased with the results today. I was here fighting for custody.”
She held an elaborate dinosaur diorama she had helped her son make for a science class that had been used as evidence at the trial.
“It’s everything I asked for,” Cook said as he walked quickly away from the building.
The hard-fought deal’s main sticking point – custody of the couple’s two children, Jack, 10, and Sailor, 13 – was resolved with Brinkley getting sole custody and final decision-making power over the children.
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Cook is allowed visitation and will be consulted regarding decisions about the children.
Brinkley retained ownership of all real estate holdings and her boat Sweet Freedom. She agreed to pay Cook a flat amount of $2.1 million, mainly to cover his legal costs. The rest of the terms remain confidential, the pairs’ attorneys said.
The marathon negotiating session to end their 10-year marriage was held at a Marriott hotel in Islandia and finally ended at 6 a.m. Both sides appeared relieved to have the ugly trial concluded.
The settlement comes after five days of all-out war in the courtroom, where a string of witnesses, including Brinkley, 54, and Cook, 49, painted the model’s husband as a narcissistic horndog who slept with a teenage employee and had a $3,000-a-month Internet porn habit.
When asked why they didn’t settle sooner, Brinkley – wearing a pink, brown and tan skirt, pink sweater over a white blouse and designer high-heel open-toed shoes – said she didn’t “have a choice.”
“I was trying to settle the day I learned about – you know – about the absolute truth, the facts. I wanted to settle but, unfortunately we could not reach an agreement until 6 a.m. this morning,” she said.
Cohen said that after days of bruising testimony, Cook realized that settling was a wiser option.
“Most of you heard what went on in that courtroom – I think it was pretty clear where this case was going and so it was resolved,” he said.
At the center of the trial – where custody of the couple’s two children was at stake along with her considerable assets – was the affair Cook had with Diana Bianchi, a teenager he hired as an assistant for his architecture firm and paid $300,000 for her silence.
Then, two days ago, a court-appointed psychiatrist deemed Cook a self-obsessed egomaniac, and said Brinkley should have primary custody of the children.
(source)
