Mariah Carey Allegedly Demanded a $50 Million ‘Inconvenience Fee’ From Ex-Fiance for Wasting Her Time

Breakups are hard, even for celebrities who have enough funds to cheer themselves up.

It turns out even Grammy Award winners like Mariah Carey are susceptible to heartbreak — and they handle those emotions quite differently. For example, when the top-selling songwriter split from fiancé James Packer in 2015, she demanded a multi-million dollar settlement to help ease her pain.

And yes, she kept the ring, too.

Mariah Carey hasn’t been lucky in love

Carey has a successful musical career that most performers can only dream of. With over 200 million records sold worldwide, she’s one of the best selling musical stars ever and is credited with setting new standards in the music industry. Not every album was successful. But Carey is called the “Songbird Supreme” for her five-octave vocal range and unique style, biography.com reported.

She’s broken records with singing. But in her love life, the 50-year-old performer hasn’t had as much luck. Carey married music producer Tommy Mottola in 1993 but later called the relationship controlling and unhealthy. The pair divorced in 1997. After Mottola, Carey moved on to singer Luis Miguel from 1998 until 2001. She married Nick Cannon in 2008 before the pair announced their split in August 2014.

Carey got cozy with Australian billionaire James Packer in 2015 and the pair got engaged. But then that relationship headed south, too.

The singer demanded compensation for her heartbreak

Carey’s time with Packer was quite short compared to her previous long-term relationships; they were engaged and broke up all in the same year. But it must have done a number on her heart, because the Billboard chart-topper demanded financial compensation from her former fiancé. She also said it caused emotional turmoil moving her family from New York to Los Angeles to be near him.

A source told Entertainment Tonight at the time that Carey sought a $50 million “inconvenience fee” following their split, which was part of the prenuptial they’d been planning for the marriage anyway, Insider reported. The same source reported that Carey also got to keep her $10 million engagement ring as a parting gift.

The former couple allegedly reached a settlement, though most sources report it wasn’t anywhere close to the amount Carey asked for. Still, a couple million probably feels like a drop in the bucket to a billionaire.

Mariah Carey never mentions James Packer in her memoir

The failed engagement and subsequent monetary demands are making headlines all over again following the release of Carey’s memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey.  The book has decent reviews, but critics note how the singer glosses over or skips momentous life events in the book. For example, she doesn’t mention Packer or clarify just how much cash she got in that infamous breakup settlement.

It wasn’t that Carey needed the money. With a net worth of $300 million, including a whopping $60 million from her most popular song alone (“All I Want for Christmas Is You”), Carey is quite comfortable in her lifestyle. Demanding money from Packer was more about saving face, not maintaining income. No one likes having their time wasted.

Let this be a lesson for future love interests: You just don’t mess with Mariah Carey.