Halle Berry’s Son Can Testify, and a Custody Presumption Looms

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Shelley Kaufman ruled on October 14 that 13-year-old Maceo Martinez may testify, but only about a restraining order. The boy is the son of Halle Berry and Olivier Martinez.

Martinez wants a domestic violence order after an alleged September 26 clash that started while Maceo was playing a virtual reality game. Berry denies she hurt him. A finding from that hearing can still raise a five-year bar on her sharing custody.

Kaufman Limits the Boy’s Testimony to the Restraining Order

Kaufman heard the question on October 14 in Los Angeles Superior Court. Martinez had asked that Maceo be allowed to “provide his side of story” and told the court, “Given that our son is 13 years old, I believe it would certainly be in his best interest for him to address the court at this time.” Berry objected, saying Martinez had been coaching the boy on what to say.

The judge split the difference. Maceo may speak. He may not wander into the rest of the custody fight from that chair.

The minor child is permitted to testify. Testimony by the minor child shall be limited to the request for the issuance of a restraining order.

Shelley Kaufman, Los Angeles Superior Court judge, October 14 order

Kaufman added that other questions about his testimony would wait until “after the Restraining Order Hearing has concluded,” and wrote that “The minor child shall not be coached.” The courtroom will be closed to the public. Only the parties, their lawyers, and court staff may be present.

That closed room is not a private chat. California’s rule on children’s family-court testimony requires a child’s words to be taken on the record, and that duty cannot be waived. The public is out. The transcript is not.

The no-coaching line also stops at the courthouse door. Berry’s papers say Maceo had spent the prior two weeks mainly in Martinez’s care, and that Martinez had already been talking with him about the claims, the case, and the testimony to come. A written ban in the hearing does not police those conversations at home.

What Family Code 3044 Does After a Finding

The October 1 temporary order already cut Berry’s time with Maceo and told her to stay 100 yards from Martinez. It did not decide the custody case. California Family Code section 3044 is the statute that can. Once a court finds that a parent seeking custody committed domestic violence within the previous five years against the other parent or the child, the law starts from a rebuttable presumption against joint custody, legal or physical, sole or shared.

HOW A FINDING CHANGES CUSTODY

Section 3044 also tells the judge to decide whether the statute applies before issuing a custody order. That is why a hearing confined to a restraining order is not a side matter. It is the on-ramp.

WHAT IT TAKES TO MOVE THE PRESUMPTION

• The burden: The parent found to have committed domestic violence must show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that giving that parent custody is still in the child’s best interest.
• The program: Overcoming the rule includes completing a batterer’s treatment program that meets Penal Code standards, a year of weekly sessions in the usual form.
• The barred argument: The usual claim that a child needs frequent contact with both parents may not be used, in whole or in part, to defeat the presumption.

Berry is asking the court to restore the August 2023 50/50 physical schedule and, in later papers, for sole legal custody or at least final say on school, medical care, and mental health if the parents cannot agree after 72 hours. Martinez is asking for sole custody and for Berry to stay away. If a 3044 finding lands on her, she is the parent who has to climb out of that hole.

Two Accounts of the September 26 Argument

Martinez’s October 1 filing says Berry “physically abused” Maceo on Saturday, September 26, “jumping on him, putting her hands around his neck, and choking him.” He says the boy called him after an argument that began while Maceo was playing a virtual reality game. He also points to other claimed incidents over the past year and a half. A judge granted a temporary order that day covering Martinez and Maceo, denied a request to monitor Berry’s sobriety for “insufficient information,” and cut her parenting time.

Berry’s answer is a flat denial. She has described the night as roughhousing that turned into an argument. Her lawyers called Martinez’s filing “entirely meritless and deliberately misleading.”

I have never physically, emotionally, or otherwise abused Maceo. I am a victim of domestic violence, and I help victims of domestic violence. I am not a perpetrator of violence. I would never hurt our child.

Halle Berry, October 5 declaration, Los Angeles Superior Court

The two stories share a house, a game, and a fight. They do not share a chokehold. That gap is what Kaufman has now said a 13-year-old may be asked to fill, in a closed room, on the restraining-order request alone.

Berry’s Papers Call the Teen’s Memory Into Doubt

Berry tried to keep Maceo off the stand. In her response to the restraining-order request she wrote that he has a “personal interest in minimizing his own conduct and shifting responsibility to others,” and that the court cannot assume his account is reliable.

She has been arguing for years, she wrote, that Martinez pulls their son into adult fights. In her telling she is the parent who sets rules, and Martinez is the parent who offers “greater autonomy.” She says that split has taught Maceo to see her as the “bad guy” and his father as the “good guy,” and that those “perceptions developed over time” will shape what he says about one night.

Her papers also describe Maceo as a “neurodivergent thirteen-year-old child” and as a “coached and manipulated child.” She asked the court not to put “substantial weight” on his testimony next to adults who, she says, were in the house. She is asking a judge to hear the boy and then discount him. Kaufman has already decided the first half of that ask.

What Nahla Aubry Told the Court She Never Saw

Berry did not rest on her own declaration. Her 18-year-old daughter, Nahla Aubry, whom she shares with Gabriel Aubry, filed a sworn statement dated October 3. Berry’s fiancé, musician Van Hunt, filed one too. Martinez has tried to keep Aubry out of it, writing that she is “unquestionably biased” and that it is not “appropriate for [Berry] to try to insert her daughter into litigation that does not involve her.”

That objection sits next to his demand that their 13-year-old take the stand. One child of the household is being offered as a witness. The other is being fought as an interloper.

WHAT ADULT WITNESSES PUT IN WRITING

• Nahla Aubry: She wrote, “I have never seen my mom hit, slap, choke, grab, or physically abuse Maceo in any way,” and said she has watched them wrestle and tickle on a floor or a bed. She last spoke with Maceo on September 29, on speaker, while Berry drove him to school, and said he sounded happy. She also wrote that she remembers Martinez “beating up my father in our driveway when I was little,” a claim in her papers, not a finding.
• Van Hunt: He says he was in the house that night, saw Maceo shove Berry twice, and never saw her put her hands on the teen. He also wrote that Maceo has come home from Martinez’s care saying, “I should be the one to decide,” on school and treatment.
• Park Century School: Berry’s later filing cites an October 10 letter from Associate Head of School Sara Love and concerns from staff member Jon Hay, and says Maceo’s behavior at school got worse after the October 1 order.

Aubry’s statement is the most personal rebuttal in the file, and it is still only paper. Kaufman has now said the person who was in the argument may speak, with the adults already on the page waiting to be weighed against him.

The 2023 Deal Still Governs Time and Money

Berry, 60, and Martinez, 60, married in 2013 and filed for divorce in October 2015. The case did not close until August 2023, nearly eight years later. That judgment is the last full map of their parenting, and it is the order Berry wants restored.

THE AUGUST 2023 TERMS

The temporary order from October 1 replaced that calendar with a shorter clock. Berry may see Maceo on Mondays, Tuesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Martinez holds the rest of the time. The money terms from 2023 were not rewritten in the papers describing that order.

THE ROAD TO THE RESTRAINING-ORDER FIGHT

1. 2013: Berry and Martinez marry. Maceo is born that year.
2. October 2015: Berry files for divorce on October 26. Martinez files the next day.
3. August 2023: The divorce is finalized with joint custody and the support figures above.
4. May 2024: They agree to co-parenting therapy. The sessions collapse in a fight over attendance. A later request by Berry to force Martinez back into that work is denied.
5. 2025: An order gives Berry tie-breaking authority on Maceo’s mental health and school needs, which she now wants put back in force.
6. September 26, 2026: The alleged clash at Berry’s home.
7. October 1, 2026: Martinez obtains the temporary restraining order and asks for sole custody.
8. October 14, 2026: Kaufman permits Maceo’s testimony, limited to the restraining order, in a closed courtroom.

The 2023 deal was supposed to be the reset. Berry wrote that it was meant to make “a change for the better” in her relationship with Maceo and with Martinez. Three years later the same two parents are asking a judge to scrap it, in opposite directions, with their son as the remaining live witness on the most serious claim.

Thirteen Falls Below the Age That Makes Testimony Automatic

California draws a bright line at 14. Family Code section 3042 says a child that age or older who wants to address the court on custody or visitation shall be allowed to, unless the judge finds it is not in the child’s best interest and says why on the record. The same statute says children younger than 14 may address the court if the judge decides that is appropriate. Maceo is 13. Kaufman had a choice, and she used it.

The statute also prefers that a child speaking about custody not do so in front of the parents, unless the judge finds that presence is in the child’s interest. Kaufman put the parents in the room anyway, because she confined the testimony to the restraining order rather than opening a custody-preference session. The limit that Berry lost on is the same limit that kept this from being a full custody interview.

Kaufman set that testimony for a closed hearing on October 16. No public account of what Maceo said, or whether he spoke, has been released. The order already on the page is narrow. The five-year presumption, if a finding follows, is not.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a public family-court dispute and a plain-language summary of California statutes. It is informational only and is not legal advice, not an opinion on whether any allegation is true, and not a guide for anyone’s own custody or restraining-order case. Readers with a family-law matter should consult a licensed California family-law attorney before filing papers, agreeing to an order, or relying on any statute discussed here. Court filings, visitation schedules, and the status of any restraining order can change as the Los Angeles Superior Court issues new rulings.