Tanya Young Williams filed for divorce from former NBA All-Star Jayson Williams on October 5 in New York — 17 years after she first filed in 2009 and the case was never finished.
Her claim, in court records obtained by TMZ: Jayson owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid child support for their two daughters, Tryumph and Whizdom. She says he provided no financial support from his imprisonment in 2010 through his release in 2012. Payments started after a 2015 settlement, then stopped two years later. She says he’s been absent from the girls’ lives for years and refused their attempts to reach him, and that trying to settle it with his team went nowhere — so now she wants a court to hold him “legally and financially accountable.”
The history behind it is heavy. They married in 2000. In 2002, Jayson was charged over the shooting death of his limousine driver, Costas “Gus” Christofi. Tanya stood by him through the legal battle. She first filed for divorce in 2009, alleging cruel treatment, threats, alcohol abuse, and infidelity. His attorney denied all of it at the time and accused her of making false claims to pressure a settlement. Jayson later pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and served time. One of their daughters publicly called him out in an open letter in 2022.
Here’s what 17 years of unfinished divorce actually means. Nobody got a clean break. Nobody got a final number. The support stopped, the case sat, and the arrears — if her accounting is right — kept growing in the dark.
A divorce that never ends isn’t a marriage. It’s a debt with no due date. And now somebody finally set one.
-SSM