The family feud continues. Meghan King filed a temporary restraining order against ex-husband Jim Edmonds earlier this year, Us Weekly confirms.
The Real Housewives of Orange County alum, 37, requested the order in June amid her ongoing custody battle with the retired baseball player, 56. According to TMZ, King alleged that Edmonds has exhibited “frequent and consistent verbal abuse” against her via text and the court-monitored co-parenting app, Our Family Wizard.
Though the reality TV personality has not publicly commented on the restraining order, a representative for the former St. Louis Cardinals player denied the allegations of abuse. “This request for an order of protection is completely baseless and furthermore makes an absolute mockery of the pain suffered by the millions of women in this country who are legitimate victims of abuse,” Edmond’s rep, Steve Honig, tells Us in a statement.
King, who married the sports broadcaster in October 2014, has been open about her their difficult relationship following their October 2019 split. In February, the Missouri native told Us that the pair “struggle” to communicate with one another while attempting to coparent their three children, Aspen, 5, and twins Hart and Hayes, 4. “I don’t know what coparenting is,” she said at the time. “I don’t know what it is. Like, I don’t. I’d be the one to get advice. In order to coparent, you have to communicate right? Yeah, so that would be a good start. … Jim hates me. It’s horrible.”
Five months later, King told fellow Real Housewife Caroline Stanbury that she and Edmonds have a “horrible” relationship. “We have [a worse] relationship than we did when we split up,” she said during a July appearance on the “Divorced Not Dead” podcast. “It’s so detrimental for the kids [and] for us as individuals.”
During the interview — which took place one month after she filed the protection request — the former Bravo personality claimed that she only communicates with her ex-husband through Our Family Wizard. “It makes me feel safer because it makes me feel like the verbal abuse will be toned down a little bit more,” King said. “Unfortunately — and shockingly — that’s not always the case, but it does give me a little bit more solace knowing that I have eyes that can be on it.”
Despite the tension, King told Stanbury that she hoped to one day be able to coparent peacefully with Edmonds. “I’m never going to stop holding out hope [for that],” she said. “I would love to be able to communicate amicably. I would love to sit at a parent-teacher conference and sit with him and chat about our kids.”
Later that month, though, things took a turn for the worse when Edmonds publicly slammed the former “Intimate Knowledge” co-host for “exploiting” son Hart’s potty training struggles for social media content. “Jim wishes Meghan would respect their children’s privacy and stop putting their son and his challenges in the spotlight,” Edmonds’ manager told TMZ at the time. The former athlete also alleged that King got their little one’s diagnosis wrong in her posts about Hart.
While speaking about trying to potty train the toddler, she stated that Hart has trouble learning new skills because he has cerebral palsy. However, Edmonds’ manager told TMZ that he was actually diagnosed with periventricular leukomalacia, or PVL, which causes a softening of white brain tissue near the ventricles. “If Meghan wants to improve her ability to coparent with Jim, it might be a good idea for her to stop constantly disparaging him,” he added.
After the duo’s divorce was finalized in May 2021, Edmonds got engaged to Kortnie O’Connor. King, for her part, married Joe Biden‘s nephew Cuffe Owens in October 2021 after a whirlwind romance. They called it quits just two months later and she confirmed in July that the marriage had been annulled.
