Vanessa Bryant is accusing her mother of trying to “extort a financial windfall” from her family after husband Kobe Bryant’s untimely death, through a new lawsuit.
According to court documents filed Tuesday in California that was obtained by PEOPLE, Sofia Laine, 68, is suing her daughter Vanessa, 38, for financial support, claiming she worked unpaid as a “longtime personal assistant and nanny” for the family. Laine adds in the lawsuit that before his death on Jan. 26 at age 41, Kobe had “promised to take care of” his mother-in-law “for the rest of her life.”
“Unfortunately, Kobe Bryant’s promises did not see the light of day as he is now deceased, and Vanessa Bryant took each and every step she could to void and cancel all of Kobe Bryant’s promises made to [Laine]. Vanessa Bryant did not intend to honor any of the Bryants’ representations, agreements and promises at any stage.”
Vanessa clap back with a public statement of her own. She believes her mother is “continuing to try and find ways to extort a financial windfall from our family.”
The, now, mother-of-three claims “I have supported her for nearly 20 years, and she was never my or Kobe’s personal assistant, nor was she a nanny. I have always been a stay-at-home mother and my husband and I were our daughters’ full-time caregivers.”
“For nearly two decades, we arranged for my mother to live in our nearby properties, at no cost to her because she had claimed that she didn’t have any money to buy her own home after her divorce. My husband and I felt it was best for her not to live in our home. She watched our girls from time to time, just like most grandparents do. She did not take care of business issues or expenses. She was a grandmother who was supported by me and her son-in-law at my request.”
“She now wants to back-charge me $96 per hour for supposedly working 12 hours a day for 18 years for watching her grandchildren. In reality, she only occasionally babysat my older girls when they were toddlers. As of 10 years ago, our kids were full-time students and athletes and I didn’t have another child until 2016. Her claims are obviously false but I still tried, repeatedly, to work things out with my mother.”