Grimes Pursues Elon Musk Across 12 Different Locations to Deliver Custody Papers, Including X Headquarters and a Horse Farm

Claire Boucher, Canadian singer and songwriter, is suing Elon Musk for physical custody of their three children. Boucher, better known as Grimes, made it known to a Texas court that Musk had custody of their three-year-old son, X A-Xii. Her lawsuit comes as a countersuit after Musk quietly sued her in a bid to establish a parent-child relationship between him and his children.
Grimes’ lawyer submitted supplementary proof-of-service documents, indicating multiple attempts to serve Musk with custody papers. The documents were provided through substituted service, wherein workers at some of Musk’s businesses and staff at a property linked to the billionaire received the documents, eluding direct delivery to Musk.
As of the day of the hearing, Musk had yet to give a formal response.
Grimes went all out, engaging four determined process servers to hand-deliver the papers. Between October 13 and October 20, they relentlessly pursued the elusive billionaire, scouring over a dozen locations such as X’s headquarters in San Francisco, SpaceX’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, Tesla’s Austin gigafactory, and multiple addresses linked to Musk within Austin.
One of the process servers went to a horse farm linked to the billionaire, where they were turned away with Musk playing an absentee at the time. “Nope, not here,” was the response gotten from the farm.
Two process servers quickly tried to serve Musk at Shivon Hills’ house. Zilis, a director at Neuralink, is one of the numerous startups owned by Musk and is also the mother of two of his children. Surprisingly, as per the documents presented in court by the plaintiff, the person who answered the door at Zilis explained that they had no knowledge of a character with that title.
Despite their efforts, the process servers faced hurdles in reaching Musk directly. On various occasions, they were turned away, encountering resistance from security personnel at Tesla and X and even a police officer in Boca Chica. In response, the servers left the court documents with secondary personnel, entrusting them to security workers at X, Tesla, and SpaceX, as detailed in the court documents.
Through her lawyer, Grimes said her process server reaction against Musk’s security at X was enough evidence that she had served him with custody papers.
Leon Kalisto, a lawyer and legal officer, told EatNews that three attempts to serve someone were more than sufficient under the country’s laws and that Grime’s team made tremendous efforts while at it.
He emphasized that substitute service, involving leaving papers with someone else at the individual’s residence or workplace, is acceptable as long as genuine efforts have been made to serve the papers directly. This approach becomes particularly pertinent when dealing with individuals of wealth or fame who have considerable barriers surrounding them.
Leon pointed out, “None of these security guards were willing to grant access to the process server. They could have attempted a hundred times, but the outcome would likely have been the same.”
All these claims were met with severe backlash as Musk and his lawyers argue that Grime and her team should have tried harder to serve him personally.
“He didn’t intentionally avoid being served, but realistically, it’s quite challenging to serve him because anyone attempting to approach would likely be intercepted by security,” he added.
As per Grimes’ legal team, in the additional proof of service, Musk received the substitute service on October 20, and they also sent the custody papers to him by mail on the same date. Leon noted that as per the usual procedure, Musk would typically have a response deadline of 10 days following the substitute service, in addition to the standard 30 days, allowing him until November 29 to respond.
Leon iterated that more reason as to why the date of the service was important was that any standing order preventing Musk from moving X A-Xii out of California would be null and void prior to him being served.
For things to look good for Musk, he would have to file a motion arguing the custody to proceed in Texas, where he initially sued Grimes instead of California. This means they would be in legal limbo for a couple of months before getting an amicable solution from the jury.
They had this on-off- thing going since 2018. The first official breakup hit in 2021, but despite that, they kept up the co-parenting gig for their kiddo. Fast forward to 2021, they welcomed a daughter, and in 2022, a son joined the crew. Grimes and Musk were still sharing a roof in Austin for a bit, even after the initial breakup.
However, things got shaky in September. Grimes posted something on X that hinted at legal woes, but she promptly hit the delete button.
Grimes shared a now-deleted post on September 7, saying, “Tell Elon to let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer.” This resulted from a picture shared by Musk’s biographer, showing Musk with their son, Zilis, at her place in Austin.
Ultimately, Musk has fathered ten children with three women, including the youngest, a 1-year-old son, Techno Mechanicus, who was fathered under a surrogate arrangement last summer.