Sia earns all the money, so Sia writes the check — $510,000 a year until their son turns 18. Her verdict on her ex: “Good dads get jobs.”
The headlines said Sia won custody. Read the actual agreement and the story gets more interesting — and more honest.
A judge just approved a temporary deal: Sia and her ex, Dan Bernad, share legal and physical custody of their 2-year-old son, with a reevaluation in September 2027. (Sia calls it “primary custody” in her posts. The paperwork says shared.)
But here’s the number that stops everybody: under the deal, Sia pays Bernad $42,500 a month in child support. It started in April and runs until their son turns 18 — roughly $8 million in base support — plus private school, activities, health insurance, and a $5 million life insurance policy.
Why? Because she’s the only one earning. Bernad was a radiation oncologist. By his own court filing, he left medicine to co-found a treatment company with Sia, let his license lapse, and says she pulled the funding in 2025. When he filed an emergency bid for sole custody last year — calling her unfit — the judge denied it. Her answer, in her filing and then in public: she’s sober, she’s tested weekly, and “good dads get jobs.”
Her other line is the one that should be printed on the courthouse wall: “I’m a sober working mom trying to buy peace.”
This is the case that proves the machine doesn’t care about gender. Child support isn’t a punishment for men — it’s a formula that hunts income. Earn everything, and you will pay, even with the kid sleeping at your house half the week. Men have been saying the math is cold for years. Now the cold math has a pop star’s signature on it.
The formula doesn’t hate anybody. It just bills whoever’s holding the money.
-SSM