Britney Spears has shared new details regarding her second marriage with Kevin Federline in the release of her memoir The Woman in Me.
Federline and the singer were married from 2004 to 2007, marking her longest of three marriages, but she writes in her book, released 24 October, that she had no idea he was expecting a child with his ex-fiancée Shar Jackson when they first started dating.
“Kevin had a ‘bad boy’ image. Still, I had no idea when we met that he had a toddler, nor that his ex-girlfriend was eight months pregnant with his second baby,” she wrote in the memoir.
“I was clueless. I was living in a bubble, and I didn’t have a lot of good, close friends to confide in and get advice from. I had no idea until after we’d been together for a while and someone told me: ‘You know he has a new baby, right?’”
Not only was Jackson eight months pregnant at the time, but she and Federline also had a two-year-old daughter named Kori, who was born in 2002, that Spears was allegedly also unaware of.
The singer explained that, when she did find out, she didn’t think the news was true until she confronted Federline about it. “‘You have kids?’ I said. ‘You have children? Not only one child but two children?’” she recalled asking him.
Jackson and Federline’s son Kaleb was born shortly after Spears and the rapper began dating. Following the news of Jackson’s second pregnancy, she went on to allege that she and Federline were still together when he decided to pursue Spears.
However, the actress said that, despite the drama, they were still “really good friends”.
Spears and Federline went on to get married and have two sons of their own: Sean Preston, who was born weeks before their one-year wedding anniversary, and their second son, Jayden James, in 2006.
Just eight weeks after the birth of their second child, Spears filed for divorce from Federline in November 2006, citing “irreconcilable differences”. In the couple’s initial divorce settlement, which was finalised in July 2007, they were granted joint legal and physical custody over their two children.
In her memoir, the Grammy winner described battling postpartum depression during her bitter custody battle with the DJ.
“Kevin tried to convince everyone that I was completely out of control,” she recalls. “He started to say I shouldn’t have my kids anymore — at all.”
Spears suffered a mental health incident in 2008 and was placed on a 5150 psychiatric hold, leaving Federline to retain sole custody of their boys. In February of that year, Spears entered into a conservatorship with her father Jamie Spears, who took complete control over her assets.
She regained custody of her two sons shortly after. However, Spears and Federline have had their ups and downs when co-parenting. At one point, in 2018, there was a battle over how much Spears should be paying him in child support. A settlement was finally reached between the two parties, with Spears increasing her child support payments to Federline from $20,000 to $35,000 a month. Federline also spoke out about their teenage sons seeing their mother’s nude photos online, prompting a public response from Spears.
Spears hit back at her ex-husband in a statement shared to her Instagram Stories, where she responded to Federline’s “hurtful” comments. “It saddens me to hear that my ex-husband has decided to discuss the relationship between me and my children … As we all know, raising teenage boys is never easy for anyone,” she wrote. “It concerns me the fact that the reason is based on my Instagram … It was LONG before Instagram … I gave them everything … Only one word: HURTFUL.”
Federline has been married to Victoria Prince since 2013. The two share daughters Jordan Kay, 12, and Peyton Marie, nine.
