Tate Paul and Taylor Frankie Paul’s Bitter Custody Battle Takes an Odd Turn
Taylor Frankie Paul’s custody drama continues as season 5 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives looms. This time, though, Dakota Mortensen isn’t involved in the drama. Instead, Paul is battling it out with her ex-husband, Tate Paul. Things just took a bit of an unusual turn, too. Tate is looking to have confidential files unsealed, which could change everything for the reality TV star. Here is what we know.
How we got here
Tate Paul and Taylor Frankie Paul were married when she rose to fame on TikTok. Her marriage dissolved with the soft swinging scandal that made her even more famous. While their split was relatively quiet in the years since, everything changed after her domestic violence arrest and additional drama between Taylor and the father of her third child.
Following plenty of public drama, Tate asked the court to grant him a temporary restraining order against Taylor, citing what he described as increasingly erratic behavior and arguing he should have sole legal and physical custody of the kids. As part of that push, Tate submitted text messages and other materials to the court that he claimed raised concerns about Taylor’s ability to safely parent their shared children. Taylor has denied his accusations.
In response, a Utah judge ordered Taylor to undergo drug and alcohol testing as a condition of her parenting time. Under that ruling, Taylor was granted unsupervised visits with her children. A judge did place a stipulation on the mother of three, though. If any test came back positive for unprescribed drugs or alcohol, her time with the kids would automatically shift to supervised visits only, with the children remaining almost entirely with Tate Paul.
Tate Paul wants to make her results public fodder
While the results of Taylor Frankie Paul’s drug screenings are currently private, Tate doesn’t want them to stay that way. He is now asking that the drug test results be unsealed entirely. If the request is granted, Taylor’s private medical information would become public record. The filing came just weeks after his restraining order request made headlines.
While Dakota Mortensen has almost nothing to do with Taylor’s current custody battle, she’s allegedly laying the blame at his feet. A source connected to the Hulu star told TMZ that Taylor believes Tate’s current filings were caused by “misinformation” fed to him by Mortensen, who has had his own very public battle with Taylor.
Taylor and Mortensen share a two-year-old son, Ever, and remain locked in a separate custody battle of their own. The pair were also previously involved in a domestic violence incident that led to Taylor’s arrest back in 2023. The two had not yet welcomed their son together at that point. An additional domestic violence incident was investigated earlier this year, though no charges were filed.
No ruling on Tate’s motion has been announced yet, and it remains unclear whether the drug test results will ultimately be unsealed. In the meantime, both of Taylor’s custody battles, with Tate and separately with Mortensen, continue to play out simultaneously. It is unclear if the most recent filings will continue to influence when or if ABC will ever release her shelved season of The Bachelorette.
This is a developing story.
