Halle Berry’s ex secured temporary custody and a restraining order after alleging she choked their 12-year-old son, a charge her lawyer calls entirely meritless.
Olivier Martinez filed for a temporary restraining order against the Oscar-winning actress and accused her of jumping on their son Maceo and grabbing him by the neck during an incident on September 26, The Sun reported.
A court granted Martinez temporary custody and a temporary domestic violence restraining order. Berry’s side rejected the filing as baseless and said she will keep fighting for the boy’s best interests.
The dispute turns a long-running custody arrangement into an emergency court fight over a child still in middle school. A hearing is set for October 16.
In the petition, Martinez said Berry walked into Maceo’s room while the 12-year-old played a virtual-reality game with goggles on. He claimed she told the boy he looked “stupid” and was an “idiot,” then began pushing him.
Martinez wrote that the first contact “appeared to be intended to be in a joking manner.” He said it did not stay that way.
According to the filing, Berry was “sent into a rage” after being told to stop. Martinez alleged the encounter then became a physical fight.
He described the next moments in blunt terms:
"The situation escalated from there. Petitioner jumped on Maceo and started physically fighting with him. She grabbed Maceo by the neck and started choking him while shouting, ‘Who is dominant now?! Who is dominant?'"
Martinez also claimed he got a “frantic call” from his son asking to be picked up “right now.” He labeled the episode “the latest incident of abuse.”
The filing went further back. Martinez alleged that for the last year-and-a-half, Berry had “wrestled Maceo to the ground and forced him to ‘tap out.’”
No independent witnesses, medical reports, or police findings are described in the available court summary. Injury details for Maceo are not stated.
After Martinez filed on a Thursday, the court handed him temporary custody of Maceo and issued a temporary domestic violence restraining order against Berry.
The order requires Berry to stay 100 yards from Martinez. Her parenting time was cut from a 50/50 split to twice a week and every other weekend until the October 16 hearing.
Legal documents also show the former couple was ordered into confidential mediation on custody.
Those are temporary steps, not a final ruling. They do show a judge treated the petition as serious enough to change the boy’s schedule and limit contact before both sides fully air the case.
Berry’s attorney, Marina Beck, told The Sun the case is empty. Beck said the filing is “entirely meritless.”
She said Berry is “used to this kind of outrageous conduct” from Martinez. Beck added that the actress is “deeply saddened” by the situation but “will not allow it to deter her from fighting for Maceo’s best interests and providing him with the love and support he needs.”
That is a flat denial of the choking claim and the broader abuse framing. The court has not yet held the full hearing where both sides put on evidence.
Berry, 60, and Martinez, 60, filed for divorce in October 2015, two years into the marriage. The divorce was finalized in 2023 after nearly eight years of litigation.
They had agreed to joint legal custody of Maceo. Under the 2023 terms reported from that settlement, Berry was to pay $8,000 a month in child support, plus 4.3 percent of income above $2 million, along with private school tuition, uniforms, supplies, and extracurricular costs, and repayment tied to the 2023/2024 school year.
Berry also has an 18-year-old daughter, Nahla, with Gabriel Aubry. Nahla is not part of the new restraining-order fight.
Berry is known to audiences for her Oscar-winning turn in Monster’s Ball and decades of leading roles. None of that settles what a judge must decide about a 12-year-old’s safety and schedule.
The public account leaves major blanks. The court name, case number, and city are not laid out in the report. The calendar year for the September 26 incident and the October 16 hearing is not stated. Martinez’s petition supplies the narrative of the alleged choking; Berry’s camp calls that story false.
No criminal charges are described. The temporary order and custody shift are civil emergency measures pending the next hearing and mediation.
For now, a 12-year-old is living under a rushed court calendar while adults trade accusations about dominance, rage, and who can be trusted in the home.
When a child is the one on the phone asking to get out, the court is right to slow everyone down and put the boy’s safety ahead of celebrity spin.
