The ups and downs of Travis Barker and Shanna Moakler: Inside their explosive divorce and more
Travis Barker and Shanna Moakler’s Ups and Downs: Inside Their Explosive Divorce and More
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Travis Barker and Shanna Moakler’s relationship has been plagued with custody battles, cheating accusations and more.
The former spouses originally called it quits in 2006 after two years of marriage and the arrival of son Landon and daughter Alabama. For the next two years, however, they continued an on-and-off relationship before finalizing their divorce in 2008.
According to court documents obtained by Us Weekly in May 2021, their custody battle got messy in 2014.
“Please keep your drug addict girlfriends away from my kids. All kids from divorced families go through a transition period, I should have never allowed this from when we were separated …” Moakler texted Barker at the time, per the court docs.
Barker replied that he “hate[s]” his ex and said he had “nothing nice” to say to her. He also called her a “f–king call girl.”
Deal of the Day
He further alleged that Moakler was an absent parent to their kids. “I am a very involved parent,” he wrote. “Not only do I regularly take our children to and from school, tutoring, doctors’ appointments and extracurricular events, but I also see that they do their homework, cook them meals, play with them, plan all of their birthday parties and select all of their activities. I purchased another home in Cheviot Hills so that we could be closer to their school. I have concerns about our children’s safety and well-being when in Shanna’s home.”
Scroll through for Barker and Moakler’s relationship timeline:
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2002
The pair met in 2002 and started dating.
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2003
Moakler gave birth to son Landon in October 2003.
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2004
The twosome tied the knot on October 30, 2004.
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2005
Cameras started capturing their relationship for an MTV reality series titled Meet the Barkers in 2005.
“I felt like having the reality show changed Shanna‘s character. Shanna wanted to be an actress, and I felt she started doing things just for the cameras — for attention, or maybe it was just her dramatic personality,” Barker recalled in his 2015 book, Can I Say. “It was turning into a variety show instead of a reality show — and in my mind, she was behaving out of character on camera, which was carrying over to her not being genuine with me.”
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2005
The duo welcomed daughter Alabama in December 2005.
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2006
The same year that Meet the Barkers ended after two seasons, the drummer filed for divorce. The former couple subsequently exchanged public insults, with Barker accusing Moakler of cheating on him and calling her lazy via MySpace. As a result, she told TMZ that her ex needed professional help. Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian were all dragged into the drama with several reports claiming Moakler confronted the women when they were seen with Barker during different nights out at various clubs and parties.
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2008
Following Barker’s near-fatal plane crash in 2008, the twosome reconciled, but their reunion was short-lived after he accused her of cheating while he was still recovering. Moakler then claimed he wasn’t faithful during their union. The twosome finalized their divorce in 2008 but continued to live together to coparent Landon and Alabama and agreed to joint custody.
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2014
Their custody battle for their kids turned nasty in 2014.
“I believe that Shanna loves our children but does not put their interests first,” he wrote in the court docs obtained by Us. “To me, Shanna’s lack of attendance at, for instance, Landon’s football and basketball games and Alabama’s dance performance, sends the wrong message to our children. I attend every one of our children’s events when I am in town, which is most of the time. I believe that it is important to our children to see their parents engaged in their activities and supporting them. I do not believe that Shanna shares this viewpoint with me as she told me when we were still together that she was raised by nannies and intended our children to be so raised as well. This distinct contrast in our parenting beliefs was a major reason for our breakup.”
Moakler, meanwhile, alleged in the docs that Barker threatened her in the past and referred to their relationship as “a very sick cycle.”
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2014
The duo’s back-and-forth dynamic continued for years, and the cops were called after an alleged altercation in December 2014. While she claimed he told her he would “put a bullet in your head,” Barker alleged to the officers that Moakler “threatened to have her boyfriend come and beat him up.” No arrests were made after an investigation into the incident.
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2016
Barker filed to alter the amount of spousal and child support he was ordered to pay Moakler in 2014. During a 2016 interview, the musician said the former couple were working on their coparenting.
“I bought a house that’s very close to my children’s school, so when she’s with the kids, she’s there; when I’m with the kids, I’m there. There’s no making them travel back and forth to different houses,” he told People at the time. “The kids’ best interest is what we all have in mind — there’s nothing else. Our relationship was so long ago. We’re just being friends. Doing the best coparenting is the most important thing.”
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2018
The court sealed the results of their child custody evaluation order in 2018, though Barker and Moakler seemingly continued to have joint custody of Landon and Alabama.
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2021
Barker started dating Kourtney in late 2020. While Moakler told Us that she approved of the relationship, she was often caught throwing subtle shade at the romance. In May 2021, she got her tattoo of his name removed.
“It’s my ex’s name. Don’t tattoo names on your body, kids,” she said via Instagram at the time. “Bye-bye, tattoo. I think we’ll probably only need one more session on this tattoo, and I think I’ll be good. That is intense, but it’s worth it!”
She later addressed Barker ditching his tattoo of her first.
“To my new-found haters, to clarify since everyone seems to know my personal life, my ex put a skull tattoo over our initials on his hand while his new girl lovingly looked on,” she wrote on the social media platform, referring to Kourtney. “That was done with purpose and intent along with posts to try to insult me and my happiness with my new man [Matthew]. Once again weird!”
Credit: Courtesy of Shanna Moakler; Inset: Photographer Group/MEGA
2021
As Barker’s relationship with Kourtney heated up, Moakler alleged to Us in May 2021 that he had an affair with the reality star’s sister Kim Kardashian in the early 2000s.
“I divorced my ex because, I saw them — I caught them having an affair,” she claimed. “Someone sent me all their [text] conversations and I’m also close friends with people who were there, while things were happening. … We were working on our marriage and trying to heal through that affair, that infidelity, [but] he continued to [work with her]. And then I received all the text messages and the other third parties kind of let me know. It’s something I was well aware of.”
Barker, for his part, wrote in his 2015 book that he “never touched” Kim when he was spending time with her then-BFF Paris Hilton. The Selfish author has also denied having a romantic relationship with him in the past.
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2021
In May 2021, Landon and Alabama made allegations about their mother. “My mom has never completely been in my life. Can you guys stop painting her out to be an amazing mom?” Alabama wrote via Instagram after Moakler’s then-boyfriend Matthew Rondeau praised her love for her family. “Did your moms ask to see you on Mother’s Day [because] mine didn’t? I’m done keeping it a secret, reality shows.”
Landon, meanwhile, wrote on TikTok that Moakler “isn’t in [their] lives like” the Blink-182 musician.
Moakler called the claims “completely rediculous [sic]” at the time via an Instagram comment.
Credit: Courtesy of Shanna Moakler/Instagram; Inset: Shutterstock
2022
The former Playboy model spoke out after Barker was hospitalized for pancreatitis. “Thank you to everyone who has reached out with concern to my ex and father of my children,” she told Us in an exclusive statement in June 2022. “I know he is in great hands and surrounded by loving support, the best medical teams available and his beautiful wife Kourtney.”
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2023
After Hulu released a special about Barker and Kardashian’s nuptials, Moakler took to social media to “like” some shady comments about the couple.
“I hope that you get a huge apology some day for what was said on that exploitative, money grabbing, circus. ‘He’s been through Hell’ ‘Kourtney has filled a void for me.’ #parentalalienationawareness,” a follower wrote in April 2023 via Instagram, seemingly referring to the speeches Moakler’s kids made about their stepmother.
In response to another comment about Kardashian calling herself “a mom of 6,” Moakler replied, “She post[s] more of my kids then [SIC] her own lol.”
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2024
In a teaser for an interview on the “Dumb Blonde” podcast released in January 2024, Moakler accused Barker of cheating on her and trolling her online around the time of the 2008 split and his near-fatal plane crash. Moakler alleged that she discovered emails sent to Barker by multiple women while setting up a FaceTime call with their kids on his computer.
“[The other women] didn’t bother as much as when he went to TMZ and he wrote a comment,” she stated. “You write a comment and then [TMZ] will email you a link, and you have to click on the link to approve the comment. And I saw all of these comments in his email that he was posting about me on TMZ about what a s–tty mother I was, what a terrible person I was.”
Moakler added that she “couldn’t f–king believe that he was the one behind some of those comments.” She proceeded to leave him as he was getting a blood transfusion in a hospital to go home and cry “in my mother’s arms for hours.”
